Fracking Affects Animal Health

photo by Frank Finan

Farmers from Colorado to Louisiana to Pennsylvania have seen their livestock sickened or killed from exposure to drilling fluids, muds and additives. Emissions from well sites, processing facilities and flaring also contribute to health impacts. Animals that don’t die outright may lose weight, show decreased fertility, or experience an increased number of stillbirths, abortions, and birth defects. 

Industrialized gas drilling has turned rural communities into “de facto laboratories for the study of environmental toxicology,” say veterinarian/researchers Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald. Farmers – and their animals – are not just exposed to drilling substances; they’re also exposed to the naturally occurring metals, volatile organics and radioactive compounds that are brought back to the surface during the drilling process.

Last year the team documented 24 cases of animal and human health problems with potential links to gas drilling. They visited farms, interviewed farmers and veterinarians, obtained water, soil and air testing results and results from human and animal lab tests.

Only two cases of the cases resulted from direct exposure to hydraulic fracturing fluid; most of the exposures were due to consumption of contaminated water from wells, springs, ponds or creeks. While some cases were due to accidents or negligence, for the most part exposures were a consequence of “normal” drilling operations.

The most common symptoms Bamberger and Oswald found were associated with reproduction: cows had trouble breeding and experienced a higher incidence of stillbirths. Of the seven cattle farms studied closely, 50 percent of the herd, on average, either died or failed to breed.

They lucked out when two beef farms provided natural “controls” – an opportunity to compare exposed cattle with their cohorts who were not exposed. In one case 140 cattle were exposed to wastewater that leaked from an impoundment; 70 died and the survivors suffered a high incidence of stillborn and stunted calves. The remainder of the herd – 60 head pastured with no access to the wastewater – experienced no health problems.

In addition to livestock, Bamberger and Oswald documented health impacts for farm dogs, cats, horses, poultry and llamas. In some cases, dogs and cats drank from puddles left when drilling waste fluid was sprayed to reduce dust on roads. Those companion animals experienced reproductive problems. They also suffered from seizures and other neurological problems, gastrointestinal symptoms, and developed skin rashes or lost feathers and hair.

It’s not just the animals that pay the price. Carol and Don Johnson, who raise beef cattle on their Tioga County (PA) farm, have a well drilled on their property. Two years ago, flowback fluid leaked from an impoundment pit leaked onto a pasture where the Johnson grazed their cattle. In response, the PA Department of Agriculture quarantined 28 head, including 16 cows, four heifers and eight calves. Adult animals were held from the food chain for 6 months and calves exposed in utero were held from the food chain for 8 months. But the exposed calves were quarantined for two years – a real loss of income for the Johnsons. Then, last spring they suffered additional losses: eight of 11 calves born to previously quarantined cows died at birth.  At $500 to $600 a head this represents a significant financial loss, and the Johnsons have yet to collect any royalties from the well.

Here's a video from Bamberger and Oswald's recent talk in Endicott, NY (filmed by Vera Scroggins)

Chesapeake Rallies The Troops

photo by Frank Finan

Not content with going after the New York Times, now the gas industry is targeting public meetings – at least in a more obvious manner (because – heck – they’ve always sent industry supporters to meetings).

Yesterday Jennifer Cox, Chesapeake Energy’s “coordinator of corporate development for Marcellus Shale” sent out an urgent e-mail appeal asking pro-gas supporters to attend a talk in Deposit. Not one that Chesapeake is presenting – but one organized by a group of citizens who want to know more about what gas drilling looks like in agricultural communities.

The event, “Neighbor to Neighbor: Living the Drill” features two Bradford County (PA) dairy farmers, Carolyn Knapp and Carol French. I’ve heard these women – they speak honestly about how industrialized drilling has changed their agricultural landscape. They share accounts of how drilling has impacted their neighbors – some of whom have had to sell their livestock because the drilling made it impossible to move cows to pasture or bring hay back to the barn.

The idea that people might be talking to their neighbors seems to bother Chesapeake, so Cox is asking drilling supporters to “attend and share with others the economic benefits that natural gas development has brought to your community and the positive impact the industry can have on our nation’s economy and energy security”.

Why is she – and Chesapeake – so concerned? “Public opinion about the industry is still being shaped,” Cox wrote, “and you have an important role to play.”

If you want to hear just normal folks share what it’s been like to continue farming while surrounded by a ring of wells a mile away, head to Deposit this Sunday, October 23. The talk begins at 2 pm at the State Theatre, 148 Front Street. Doors open at 1:45 for refreshments and conversation.

Read more here and here.

Gas Talk Turns Fractious

Shale isn’t the only thing that’s getting fractured in this region. Communities are too, as last night’s talk at the Vestal American Legion illustrated. Pulteney (NY) farmers-turned-filmmakers Jeff and Jodi Andrysick have been presenting a traveling roadshow in the Marcellus region - a program of stories from those living in the Colorado drill zone.

Huge pickups plastered with banners thanking drilling supporters for “being American” lined the driveway, and members of the Joint Landowners Coalition stood about holding “Friends of Natural Gas” signs. The stories of contamination are just lies and belong in tabloids alongside tales of alien encounters, they insist. Inside the Legion Hall they settled onto folding chairs behind equally passionate residents holding “no frack” signs and hand-lettered posters declaring their need for water, not gas.

Weston Wilson spoke first. He's the environmental engineer who blew the whistle on the EPA for whitewashing the 2004 hydraulic fracturing study. The problem, he says, is that the oil and gas industry enjoys a great many exemptions from regulations. Take the Safe Drinking Water Act –  Congress specifically exempted the practice of injecting fracturing fluids during drilling from the SDWA. It’s telling that the exemption doesn’t extend to cases in which they inject those same fluids into disposal wells.

Wilson listed some of the problems with wells: faulty cement casing, spills, and mismanagement of returned fluids. The National Transportation Safety Board investigates plane accidents, he said. We need something similar for the oil and gas industry.

Tara Meixsell, author of Collateral Damage said the gas boom changed her life. Colorado law allows drilling as close as 150 feet to homes, a distance that exposes families to dust and chemicals. Some of those chemicals, such as 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE), are carcinogenic. Meixsell shared stories about friends and neighbors who suffered ill health from exposure.

Drilling is about more than gas – it’s about money and people’s lives, Meixsell said. Citing a confrontation earlier that evening in the parking lot, she implored people to be civil to one another. Respect each other’s opinions, she said. “You have to remain neighbors… at the end of the day you’re all breathing the same air and drinking the same water.”

Colorado rancher Rick Roles told how drilling affected his horses and goats. He leased his land because he thought it would bring the ranch much-needed income. Now he’s got 19 "holes" on his land and another 100 wells within a mile of his home – plus three compressor stations and a water treatment plant within a mile and a half.

He listed numerous problems: mares aborting foals, studs becoming sterile, goats having stillbirths, and his own health problems.  He also spoke of how spills were covered up with dirt instead of reported, and a persistently leaking condensate tank. When Roles finally got a toxicology screen he discovered high levels of benzene, toluene, xylene and a long list of related chemicals in his blood.

“Sure, we earned a little money,” Roles said. “But our property was ruined.”

The goal of last evening’s program was to allow those suffering negative impacts of gas to share their stories. But it was clear that some people, a minority to be sure, came with no intention of listening to what the speakers had to say. When the question-and-answer session grew contentious [“frack-tious” one person called it] moderator Don Glauber reminded people to be civil.

“I don’t know how many of you came here with your minds made up, or with anger in your hearts, but that’s not why we’re here tonight,” he said. Referring to acrimonious comments Glauber said, “This is why we have had so much trouble talking openly, honestly and safely.”