Tracking the Bush Administration's Environmental Misdeeds
bushgreenwatch.org
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October 27, 2004
HEALTH OFFICIALS WARN ON WESTERN OIL, GAS DRILLING
A group of 18 prominent public health experts from leading
academies and institutions warned Federal regulators this week
that accelerated oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain West
is becoming a threat to human health.
In an October 22 letter addressed to U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency chief Mike Leavitt and Secretary of Interior
Gale Norton, the group of doctors, scientists and public health
advocates said the oil and gas industry should be required to
"fully comply" with laws that protect human health. [1]
"In western states, the public is learning the hard way that the
oil and gas industry needs to follow laws intended to protect
drinking water and water quality," said Dr. Theo Colborn, who
resides in Paonia, Colorado. Dr. Colborn was co-author of "Our
Stolen Future," the book that sparked the issue of endocrine
disrupting chemicals.
During the past four years, oil and gas drilling have surged
dramatically in the Rocky Mountain states, spurred by high
prices and government policies that soften regulation and reduce
enforcement of public health laws.
The public health experts' letter specifically identified the
oil and gas industry's efforts to weaken the Safe Drinking Water
Act and Clean Water Act. They warned that the government's
failure to regulate air pollution from oil and gas development
is a "highly dangerous" practice that allows "unknown quantities
of harmful emissions" to be released into the air.
Their letter pointed to several recent events in Rocky Mountain
states that they say bolster their concern that oil and gas
industry activities need to be more tightly regulated.
This spring, an accident at a methane gas well near Silt,
Colorado, resulted in the temporary contamination of a tributary
of the Colorado River with the carcinogen benzene. The operator
in the case, EnCana Corp., was fined by state officials for the
spill, but the site continues to contaminate water supplies with
methane gas. EnCana and Halliburton Corp. developed the wells in
the area.
Similarly, in the San Juan basin of Colorado and New Mexico,
where the Department of Interior recently approved thousands of
new methane wells, air pollution is reaching levels usually seen
in dense, urban areas. "Health officials are concerned because
ozone concentrations are increasing to levels just shy of the
EPA health standard, which is highly unusual for such a rural
area," the experts wrote.
"The oil and gas industry can continue to prosper while
complying with the same fundamental human health laws that apply
to other businesses," said Celeste Monforton, a senior research
associate at the Department of Environmental and Occupational
Health at the George Washington University School of Public
Health and Health Services in Washington, DC.
###
SOURCES:
[1] Letter to EPA and DOI, Oct. 22, 2004,
ga3.org.
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