SandBoxBlogs: Times Union "Letter: Hydrofracking success stories"

John Krohn, Washington D.C.:
"In "Fracking hazardous to New Yorkers' health" (April 24). Sandra Steingraber makes some extreme claims about hydraulic fracturing.

The author declares hydraulic fracturing will ruin our air for pregnant mothers, children and innocent grandparents without citing a single source.

On the same day Ms. Steingraber made these claims, the American Lung Association released a report on our nation's air quality. The study found North Dakota's air quality among the nation's best. The state is home to more than 6,500 oil and natural gas wells developed and fractured in just the past few years.

Ms. Steingraber also referenced a Colorado School of Public Health study that used flawed assumptions and committed gross errors in reaching its findings. One example: The study relied on samples taken a mile from a major interstate. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that automobiles are one of the largest sources of harmful emissions such as benzene. As a result, the study was criticized by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and scuttled by the Garfield County Board of Commissioners.

Contrary to Ms. Steingraber's claims, a recent Bloomberg article noted greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to decline through the end of the decade thanks to natural gas use in power generation. This is helping achieve the goals of recent ill-fated cap-and-trade legislation. This is an environmental success story, not the horror story Steingraber is hoping to promote..."  (Read more? Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBoxBlogs: KDNK "EnCana Engineer Fills CDale Trustees in on Fracking"

The trickle down effect.  Or, possibly also the trickle up results.

Much emphasis these days on hard and soft corruption, the drug 'war', illegal immigration enforcement, reforms, civil disobedience, bullies, power abuse, economic equality in the business and work force.  So many ways to pick up the morning news, in every part of the nation, and feel discouraged on one hand while cautiously optimistic on the other.

Is that the way it has 'always been'?  In some ways, I think so.  The question at this point in time is 'why' are all of these things coming into focus for so many along with increasing clarity that they really are all linked together?

When you look back historically and see the epochal moments that have altered the course we all have stayed as a collective whole, it is not difficult to notice that a major event of some kind and often a series of major events, have brought a collective need to personally reassess the common grounds we all share. 

Common ground that is not about the politics and other mechanisms we all use to propel our lives and others forward.  My reference is to the common ground of the need for shelter, sustenance, relationships and all of those things that bring us all in the end, to the heart of the matter.

One of the thoughts I personally have on cause and effect types of common ground, is that the birth of 24/7 news cycles and juggernaut rising of communications technology,  is responsible for the vast majority of modern day effects on the folks lives. 

That the trouble is, those news cycles and technological advancements have risen to 90% artificial foundation that has no human connection once it leaves the keyboard. 

The salvation of the 24/7 news cycle, in my view, lies in Independent Media and human beings with certain skill sets such as writing, connecting through words and analytical analysis of the old gum-shoe variety.  These are human beings out here and the trickle down effect rules all here in the real world.

The Great Recession is one such event.  9/11 before that. The folks reached out their arms and gathered their most dear back in back in 2001.  Reminded themselves that we are dependent on survival first and foremost.  And that we need heroes sometimes. The 'gift' of 9/11, lay in part as that reminder.

The recession slammed a tsunami of awareness that the things we hold as materially secure can be ripped from us at the hand of others in the blink of an eye.  The common ground shared with the event of 9/11 is the reminder that first and foremost we are survival oriented and sometimes, we need heroes to help us.

Tortuous interference and unjust enrichment take many forms.  Within law, the gamut can run from loss of life and what that person could have been 'worth' in legal value.  A brutally cold legal formula that is used in civil action for wrongful death.  It can be seen in business and contractual law.  Even flow over into criminal law if the enrichment gained by a wrongful act meets certain legal standards.

Where should the common  man look to, in their own small nucleus of the world, to see how they should be dealing with all these cause and effect movements?  That in all ways we ultimately are all dependent upon?  Or, why look at all?  Why pay attention?

The answer to that one is that we always can choose to be the collateral damage to an effect.  Pretty easy way to live, just rolling with the punches.  Or we can hold the circled wagons together and just wait for a lighter storm to roll in while we weather the tsunami.  Or we can choose to be awake and aware so that we can play the role we choose in the cause of the effects.

Here's a thought.  Possibly even alter the effect of harm brought to our family, friends, loved ones and community.

The latest flap about land leases is not about fracking.  Technology in oil and gas industries.  Water rights, price of gas or even jobs.

Where the entire problem lies, is in communication and the individual choice on whether or not to play a role in active participation.  Here's another thought.  How tough is it to be alert and attentive and reach for direct source information instead of filtered through third party?  As easy as clicking the title above and listening to the trusted podcast of KDNK rather than picking up still yet another shuck and jive dance on the energy industry over here on the GSPI.   

Today, let's listen to some of the actual statements, directly from EnCana as presented to the Carbondale Trustees. 

Maybe even do some private thinking on the ways all of our lives intertwine with each other.  What one person might accomplish if they just decided their time had come to be their very own version of a hero.  Kinda like the KDNK guys today.  Maybe even the EnCana guys.  Each of them offering themselves as direct  source.

Who knew it could be so easy as clicking on a podcast?  win win.

KDNK:
"Carbondale trustees got a visit from EnCana Corporation Tuesday night, when an engineer and a stakeholder relations advisor gave a presentation on hydraulic fracturing.

EnCana is one of the largest natural gas operators in the country, and here in Garfield County, they're a major player in the extraction of natural gas. Last night, engineer Mark Balderston assured the board that because of the use of best practices when it comes to safety, they're in control of the "whole situation, all the time"....."  (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBoxBlogs: National Review "The Truth about Fracking"

Kevin D. Williamson:
"In the middle-of-frackin’-nowhere Pennsylvania, Boy Genius is showing off his giant robot: It’s about 150 feet tall, God and the almighty engineers alone know how many hundreds of tons of steel, and four big, flat duck feet on bright orange legs. “Yeah, this is kind of cool,” he says of his supersized Erector Set project.

“You can set those feet at 45 degrees, and it will walk around in circles all day,” a colleague adds.

But Boy Genius is not letting himself get too excited about all this — it’s pretty clearly not his first giant robot, and he’s a lot more excited about his seismic-imaging system: “It’s kind of like a GPS, but it’s underground and it works with the Earth’s magnetic characteristics.” Nods all around — that is cool.

Everybody here has a three-day beard and a hardhat and steel-toed work boots, but there’s a strong whiff of chess club and Science Olympiad in the air, young men who are no strangers to the pocket protector, who in adolescence discovered an unusual facility for fluid dynamics and now are beavering away at mind-clutchingly complex technical problems, one of which is how to get a 150-foot-tall tower of machinery from A to B without taking it apart and trucking it (solution: add feet). That giant robot may walk, but it isn’t too fast: It can take half a day to move 20 feet, because this isn’t a Transformers movie, this is The Play, and Boy Genius is a member of the startlingly youthful and bespectacled tribe of engineers swarming out of the University of Pittsburgh and the Colorado School of Mines and Penn State and into the booming gas fields of Pennsylvania, where the math weenies are running the show in the Marcellus shale, figuring out how to relentlessly suck a Saudi Arabia’s worth of natural gas out of a vein of hot and impermeable rock thousands of feet beneath the green valleys of Penn’s woods. Forget about your wildcatters, your roughnecks, your swaggering Texans in big hats: The nerds have taken over...." (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBox Comments: Summit County Citizens Voice "Wyoming water pollution linked with fracking"

There is only one.

One Western Colorado investigative reporter that is respected and trusted to factually report on one of his specialties; the environment.

Bob Berwyn.  Up and over on the locals favorite Summit County Citizens Voice.

The others in the area and state often border on disgraceful to their industry work product of tabloid and flamer style 'eco-pen terrorism' 'journalism'.  Which of course, completely destroys any hope they may have of getting their point across or voices heard.

John Colson, based with Swift Communications on the Post Independent and Aspen Times,  has been so pressured by the general public; he has recently improved  100 times over.  Yet still, is greeted with skepticism and is a third or fourth time removed choice before even read.  Colson also writes a once per week opinion column.  Up on the Aspen Times.  Calls it 'Hit and Run'.  Each week (with the exception of this past week (first one in 7 months of weekly columns)) he subjects readership of the Times to scathing verbal assaults, premised on his first amendment right to demean, abuse and denigrate anyone with an equal right to the first amendment.   Nobody likes a bully and his genre is not the spin of commentary and satire.  Rather, he calls himself a professional journalist and often comes very, very close to demanding respect. With an open claim of professional credentials posted at the bottom of each column; to say that it is 'difficult' for readership to buy into Colson's points is often an understatement.  Each week, readership diligently searches for anything at all to back John Colson up on that claim. With the growing number of complaints from readership publicly displayed in open letters and commentary, there seems to be a very long way to go for John.  He's a good writer.  Most hope he makes it up the Everest he's climbing.

Troy Hooper and David O. Williams off the Real sites and the Colorado Independent sit at the top of the leader board and took Colson's #1 spot.  Brilliant writers and respected in all other areas of output; their environmental work and often their political output greatly diminish their respectability with consumers.  Nobody likes a bully and their genre is not the spin of commentary and satire.  Rather, they are supposed to be professional journalists. 

Why this brutally honest, scathing in tone and succinct wording from 'SandBox Nanny' this morning? On a piece of high caliber journalism?

Because there are days when she gets so fed up with 'professionals'  in positions of trust in  public eyes....who do everything they possibly can to destroy our precious gifts that we have in our environment.  Colorado is one of the most blessed by nature spots on the planet.  To stay that way, she needs all the help she can get from all sides of any issue she faces.  Every single time you people pick up your pens and perform like high school students in a creative writing class you not only completely destroy any hope of being fully respected by readership; you add still yet another layer of cover-up on top of all things Colorado.  Wading through your dross and multiple layers of deception before they can even get to the heart of an environmental issue; investigative reporters such as yourselves force the industries, the legislators, law enforcement, elected officials and the public at-large to sometimes waste years simply getting to the point.  Shame on you. 

A very special thank you goes out to Bob Berwyn for this factual and unbiased report on the fracking news out of Wyoming.  You are appreciated.    

Bob Berwyn:

SUMMIT COUNTY —After a two-year investigation in Wyoming, the EPA this week released a draft report that links polluted groundwater in the town of Pavilion with nearby gas drilling and related fracking operations.

The EPA teamed up with gas field owner Encana to assess groundwater quality in the area and to identify potential sources of contamination.

The EPA’s analysis of samples taken fromdeep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids.

Benzene concentrations are  well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels were also detected.

Given the area’s complex geology and the proximity of drinking water wells to ground water contamination, the EPA is concerned about the movement of contaminants within the aquifer and the safety of drinking water wells over time...."

(Read more?  Click title. Comment to discuss)

"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."