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Fracking Disclosure Rules Approved In CO

Posted by Unknown on from the quench-your-thirst dept.

ExE122 writes "Colorado has approved new measures taking a tough stance on the disclosure of chemicals used in fracking. The new law is 'requiring companies to disclose the concentrations of chemicals in addition to the chemicals themselves.' Fracking is a controversial method of natural gas extraction that raises concerns about health and safety issues to surrounding communities. This measure is said to be tougher than similar measures passed in Texas earlier this year."

10 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Great! by harrkev · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I live in Colorado (although not near any drilling sites), and I approve of this. Public safety > trade secrets.

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    1. Re:Great! by N7DR · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Apparently the greatest concentration of fracking sites in the US (possibly the world) is in south-western Weld County in Colorado. Which is where I live. From my house I can see perhaps a dozen of these drilling sites. It's always seemed bizarre to me that it's even legal to push chemicals into the ground under and around my house -- but apparently it is, because around here very few people own the mineral rights associated with the ground on which their house stands.

      But then, it's also illegal for me to capture rainwater, which seems at least equally strange.

    2. Re:Great! by AnotherAnonymousUser · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because the water from precipitation is so low in Colorado and we're in a semi-arid climate, there's a lot of concern for the watershed and depriving the people downstream of water. Rainbarrels are technically illegal because that moisture is needed to maintain the natural flow of streams - damming, controlling, or restricting its natural flow can cause problems further down the line, or so it's proposed. But it's scarce enough on a climate level that even the rain is considered necessary.

    3. Re:Great! by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hyrdrofracking for gas is an extremely recent development - at least in the form currently used. It was not legally possible to use the current methods of hydrofracking until the Halliburton Loophole exemptions to the Clean Water Act were pased as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

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    4. Re:Great! by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Insightful
      And this is why we need government, and why we need government regulation. In that bizarre fantasy world that the Libertarian true believers inhabit, we can let the free market take care of everything. The reality is that corporations will risk people's health, risk people's property, and risk people's lives in order to make a profit. We saw this with the Deepwater Horizon drill rig, where BP took shortcuts that killed workers, led to a disastrous oil spill, and shut down offshore oil exploration. We saw this in West Virginia, when a mine owner cut corners on safety, leading to an explosion that killed 29 people. We saw this with the paint industry, which continued to put toxic amounts of lead in paint long after this was known to be a major health risk. And we saw this with Wall Street, which gambled with billions of dollars of borrowed money, causing a financial panic that sent the economy into a recession.

      Government regulation can get out of hand. But if you just let corporations police themselves and expect the market to solve everything, then what you get is the situation in China: poison in baby formula, lead paint in children's toys, toxins in the toothpaste. Of course, if even a fraction of the health concerns raised about fracking are true, we may be closer to that situation than we'd like to think.

    5. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Up until a week or so ago, you'd be right.

      However, the EPA has released a draft report of a study that says otherwise.

      Expect most news sources to continue to spout "the debate over fracking is likely to continue" B.S. until there is high test coming out of your ice maker. We already saw this go down with global warming: The energy companies deny everything and make the problem as bad as they can until there is irrefutable proof that the problem exists.

      Once the studies are done and the problem is confirmed to exist, they continue to make it worse (to their profit) while arguing that there is no proof that the problem is caused by them.

      The next step, once there is evidence that they are at fault, is to say that cleaning up after themselves is impossible. This will take a third round of studies to prove that cleanup is possible.

      If the offending parties face any punishment, it will be a fine that is insignificant next to the profits they've made by pissing in the community pool.

    6. Re:Great! by Tsingi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The billions gambled in Wall Street were backed by the government. In fact, the government you praise bail them out. How many arrests were made in the recent Wall Street scandals?

      The government deregulated Wall Street, this is the problem. I don't think anyone is praising the way any of that was (is being) handled. None of that is going to change as long as Corporations can donate unlimited money anonymously to political campaigns.

  2. Re:Secret Sauce by LoyalOpposition · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm pretty sure they aren't fracking with 1000 Island dressing.

    Strangely enough, a major component of fraccing fluids is guar, which is also a major component of most salad dressings.

    ~Loyal
     

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  3. Re:Secret Sauce by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Frankly, imposing almost-certainly-negative externalities on unconsenting bystanders' persons and property during the course of your business makes you the ethical equivalent of a serial mugger. It is a pity that it doesn't make you the legal equivalent of one.

    That's what I've never understood about the notion that these sorts of environmental regulations are 'anti-freedom' or 'anti-free-market'... Effectively, emitting pollutants that leave your property(as they almost always have a nasty tendency to do...) is some combination of assault and destruction of property, depending on exactly how much damage to other people's health and damage to other people's property you cause. That would seem to bring you trivially under the police power of the state to protect its citizens from violence against them by others.

    Failure to protect the people from pollution involuntarily forced on them seems different only in degree from failing to prosecute poisoners or fly-tippers. Also arguably, environmental regulations that allow some harmful levels of pollution are actually more statist; because they assert the state's right to submit everyone to damage to the benefit of specific parties(almost exactly the same thing as the almost universally reviled Kelo v. City of New London decision: The state asserting its right to involuntarily transfer part of the property of everybody to the polluter for 'economic development' purposes). The only real areas of economic regulation that would seem to be purely 'environmentalist' in motivation, as opposed to a downright libertarian exercise of the state's right and duty to protect its citizens from violence, force, and fraud, would be those that govern pollution affecting only the polluter and those who have given informed consent to the pollution(employees accepting high risk for higher pay, say, with knowledge of that risk) and those that protect species and wetlands and things in themselves even when they are fully encompassed within a single chunk of property.

    Politically, it isn't exactly a surprise that "libertarian" and "environmentalist" usually don't get along all that well; but ideologically, I've always been fascinated by how immediate, direct, property crimes for profit have no friends at all, and we can't seem to hang the perps high enough for anybody's satisfaction; but covert, indirect, property crimes for profit are eminently respectable, and have friends in all the most desirable places... (As for the case of the 'secret sauce' product, it seems like it would depend on exactly why the sauce is secret: if, as is common at the experimental edges of medicine, nobody knows exactly what the sauce will do, it would seem to be the right of a competent adult to take risk upon themselves. If the sauce is secret because I'm just not telling you what it is, it becomes much harder to argue that we have actually achieved a genuine consent in the contractual sense, since I'm deliberately keeping you in a state shy of 'informed consent' for my own convenience.)

  4. Re:Finally got a handle on the friggin' fracking by CowTipperGore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Soon enough? Fracturing has been done in the United States since 1947.

    And if you think today's fracking is anything like what was done in 1947, you have no business in this conversation. Industry misinformation like this is not relevant to the discussion.