EPA to citizens: Frack you

In the Rockies, a gas-extraction process called "fracking" may be releasing a carcinogenic stew of chemicals. Dozens of people say it has made them seriously ill, but the EPA refuses to investigate -- a failure one of its own engineers calls "irrational and corrupt."

By Rebecca Clarren

Read more: Politics, News

Photos by AP/David Zalubowski

A natural-gas derrick towers over a home in the Dry Hollow area outside Silt, Colo.

May 5, 2006 | SILT, Colo. -- The 20 miles of interstate highway between rural Silt and Parachute, Colo., slice a crusty landscape where sagebrush clings to ochre mesas. Nearby, the snakelike silver Colorado River carves a valley floor where poplar trees, naked in the winter cold, cast spindly blue shadows across the snow. There are few exits through this section of Garfield County, where the local population of deer and elk rival the number of ranchers, retirees and others who live here.

Susan Haire, a former elementary teacher who ranches on a small scale, has lived atop one of the surrounding mesas for nearly a decade. But she says the landscape has been turned against her. When she drives down this stretch of highway, her nose bleeds, her eyes burn, and her head pounds. She's taken to wearing a respirator, even in the car.

"I feel like an alien, like I don't fit into my own environment. It's frightening," says Haire, 55, tears filling her pale slate eyes as she looks through her living room window out on her back fields. "It's horrifying what's happening here. The changes that have happened in the past 18 months are so dramatic. It's just a nightmare."

Haire's doctor blames her health problems on the scenery's relatively recent addition: 600 natural gas wells, drilled by oil companies over the past two years. Every few feet, 150-foot-tall drill rigs, graced with American flags, rise upward into the sky. Compressor stations, banks of rectangular huts with five-foot-diameter fans, sit back from the road and pump the gas into underground pipelines.

Haire is not alone. Several dozen people in the area blame a rash of health problems on the wells, says Colorado lawyer Lance Astrella. For 15 years, Astrella was a successful attorney for the energy industry. For the past 15 years, he has been defending citizens like those in Garfield County, who blame the wells near their homes for their cancerous tumors, rectal bleeding and chronic headaches. Between January and March of this year, eight people called the Garfield County oil and gas department, complaining about black smoke and strong chemical odors they worry are making them sick.

Scientists and environmentalists say the health hazards of the natural gas wells stem not only from air pollution but "fracking fluid," a mixture of carcinogenic chemicals, used in many of them. Laura Amos, 43, an outfitter who lives 20 miles from Haire, recently developed a tumor in her adrenal gland, which she blames on her exposure to the chemicals. Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is a half century-old process in which a gas company injects water, sand and the chemicals into the wells. Developed by Halliburton, the corporation formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, fracking loosens the rock and maximizes the flow of gas to the surface.

At least 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie in the tight sand and coal bed formations below Garfield County, according to gas companies and industry geologists. Over the next eight years, energy companies expect to build more than 10,000 additional wells in the county.

The small Colorado community is a microcosm of the natural-gas boom exploding across the Rocky Mountains. Today, federal and state agencies in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico are issuing more permits to drill for gas than ever before -- the increase in some places is 90 percent. The Bush administration has said that such development is critical to reducing foreign imports and ensuring national security. And in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Congress has pushed to increase energy sources beyond the reach of the coastline. Colorado holds an estimated 7.6 percent of America's natural gas reserves, making it "one the most growing active regions," says Fred Lawrence of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

In ramping up energy production, the federal government has weakened environmental regulations and reduced enforcement of public-health laws. Despite the potential for health problems from unregulated pollution, neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the Environmental Protection Agency is conducting any long-term public-health studies. There is literally no broad statistical information about how natural-gas development may be polluting the air or water and affecting human health.

A group of 18 top public health experts wrote EPA and Interior Department officials in 2004, asserting that accelerated oil and gas drilling is taking place without adequate regard for human health. But rather than conduct tests, the EPA appears to be trying to get out of the gas companies' way. Last June, Steve Johnson, an EPA administrator, said the agency was asking itself, "What can we be doing to identify the pitfalls [that] energy companies are experiencing to obtain permits, rather than being a stumbling block or a hindrance?"

For its part, the oil industry says there's no need for concern about the health impact of the wells. "We're one of the most regulated industries out there," says Dan Larson, a Durango, Colo.-based spokesperson for British Petroleum. "The best safeguard that exists is the company's desire to not harm its neighbors."

Haire and her neighbors say they're carrying the burden of America's addiction to oil and gas. "You can't put your finger on it exactly, it's hard to say exactly what it's all from, but there's something going on," says Deb Meader, a nurse for the past six years at Valley View Hospital, the county's largest medical facility. Meader grew up in the area and lives on the same road as Haire. "We look around the mesa and everyone's got high blood pressure or cancer or something," she says. "The guy below us had a real bad heart attack. The guy that owns the orchard has prostate cancer. I have headaches. My husband has high blood pressure and gets headaches. My daughter has symptoms of bladder infections. Everybody has a sinus infection that doesn't go away. We're having a reaction to what's in the air."

Meader acknowledges that her views, and those of her colleagues, are not based on official studies but on their daily experiences with patients. Hospital administrators refused to answer any questions about the potential impact of the wells. Of course, many other personal or medical factors could explain the apparent rise in the health problems that Meader has witnessed. Currently, Garfield County is conducting a public health study, paid for with energy industry fines. But environmental experts say it is narrow in scope, underfunded and far from a comprehensive epidemiological analysis. What is really happening, say an increasing number of scientists, agency whistleblowers and public health officials, is the government is intentionally ignoring the plight of rural citizens.

"It's a Catch-22," says the remarkably frank Weston Wilson, an environmental engineer with the EPA's Denver office for the past 32 years. "If the EPA doesn't study the health impacts, then there's no proof that there's anything dangerous happening. It's irrational and corrupt. We used to investigate mysteries, and now we're not. It's sad. It's kind of like we're being paid off with our generous salaries. The American public would be shocked if they knew we [at EPA] make six figures and we basically sit around and do nothing."

Next page: Such rare tumors are associated with a chemical found in fracturing fluid