by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 10, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By Amazon Watch
Grassroots opposition is mounting as ConocoPhillips’ plans to drill for oil within the fresh-water source for Peru’s largest rainforest city, Amazon Watch said today on the occasion of the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Houston, Texas. Conoco is currently advancing plans to drill exploratory oil wells in Blocks 129 and 123, found within one of the most ecologically sensitive regions in the world.
According to a May 2012 map produced by PROCREL, the Loreto regional environmental authority, ConocoPhillips is planning a total of 16 oil platforms and 48 wells between Block 129 and the adjacent Block 123. Thirteen of these platforms are found within the Upper Nanay-Pintuyacu-Chambira Regional Conservation Area.
“Conoco’s shareholders need to understand that the company’s plans in northern Peru are being met with increasing popular opposition across the region,” said Robert Collier, Corporate Campaigns Director at Amazon Watch. “The reputational risks for Conoco grow by the day.”
“The oil company’s installation and Block 129 in the Nanay watershed has alarmed us because we all know the consequences of oil extraction in other Amazonian watershed,” said José Manuyana, president of the social organization Colectivo Amazonía in today’s local paper La Región. “We know the devastating results and are worried this will happen in the Nanay headwaters which provide drinking water to all of Iquitos’ 500,000 citizens.”
In March of this year citizens of Peru’s Loreto region organized themselves into the Iquitos Water Defense Committee, specifically in response to Conoco’s plans. Today the Committee demanded that the regional government hold a public hearing to explain why they are allowing ConocoPhillips to advance with the exploration. They have also asked that information about Conoco’s plans be made public and that the Regional Government respect prior decisions to exclude mining activities from ecologically sensitive areas.
According to the Iquitos Declaration, issued by the Iquitos Water Defense Committee on April 24th of this year, “The situation is currently getting worse. ConocoPhillips has an oil concession in the headwaters of the Nanay River, even though the first article of the Regional Order No. 020-2009-GRL-CR of October 15th 2009 declared of regional public interest the conservation and protection of the headwaters of watersheds found in the Loreto Region. For us, this river is the primary source of water supply for the city and source of other resources like fish, bush meat, and wood for our house construction.”
International scientific experts are also expressing concern about the probable impacts of oil activities on this ecologically sensitive area. According to Bob Stallard, a bio geochemist who has sampled and analyzed waters from throughout the Amazon and Orinoco river basins since 1976, “Great cities try to protect their water supplies, and Iquitos has one of the best. Based on hundreds of published analyses of dissolved salts in rivers, the Nanay is among the purest rivers in Amazonia. Spills of formation waters and wastes associated with drilling could damage the Nanay as a drinking-water supply.”
The Iquitos Declaration cites information that seismic testing has carved 778 kilometers of lines through the jungle, clearing over 180 hectares of forest cover and detonating more than 15,500 seismic explosives. The statement continues, “now they are trying to get the approval to drill 18 exploratory wells that would function from six platforms within Block 129.”
“Biodiversity in the Nanay basin is spectacular. In three weeks we recorded more than 1,800 species of plants and animals. Because the Nanay River begins in the Peruvian lowlands – not in the Colombian or Ecuadorian Andes like many other rivers in Loreto – it created a singular opportunity to conserve almost the entire watershed,” said Corine Vriesendorp, Ph.D., Director of the Andes-Amazon Program at The Field Museum in Chicago. “Clean water and robust fisheries were the rallying cries for creating the regional conservation area. Now oil activities threaten to negatively impact both water quality and fish stocks, critical for forest dwellers in the Nanay basin and urban residents in Iquitos.”
From Amazon Watch: http://amazonwatch.org/news/2012/0509-conoco-drilling-threatens-water-source-for-half-million-in-peru
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 9, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Natural Resources Defense Council
All currently available options for dealing with contaminated wastewater from fracking are inadequate to protect human health and the environment, but stronger federal and state protections can better safeguard against the threats posed by this byproduct, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report reveals how gas companies in Pennsylvania disposed of more than 30 million gallons of wastewater last year and details the dangers presented by the disposal methods used.
“Contaminated wastewater has long been one of our biggest concerns about fracking, and this report confirms that current practices put both the environment and public health at risk,” said NRDC attorney Rebecca Hammer. “Americans shouldn’t have to trade their safe drinking water for fuel. We need strong safeguards on the books to ensure oil and gas companies aren’t polluting our rivers, contaminating our drinking water or even risking man-made earthquakes when they come to frack in our communities.”
The report, In Fracking’s Wake: New Rules Are Needed to Protect Our Health and Environment from Contaminated Wastewater, represents one of the most comprehensive reviews to date of the available options for disposing high-volume wastewater from fracking. It analyzes wastewater disposal practices in Pennsylvania last year, and provides recommendations for better protecting public health and the environment nationwide. It was co-authored by NRDC and an independent scientist.
Wastewater Disposal Methods
The five most common disposal options for fracking wastewater currently in use are: recycling for additional fracking, treatment and discharge to surface waters, underground injection, storage in open air pits, and spreading on roads for ice or dust control. All of these options present significant risks of harm to public health or the environment. And there are not sufficient rules in place to ensure any of them will not harm people or ecosystems.
Some of these methods present such great threats that they should be banned immediately. These methods include treatment at municipal sewage treatment plants and subsequent discharge into surface waters, storage in open air pits and road spreading. Meanwhile recycling for reuse in fracking operations and underground injection into properly designed and sited disposal wells (that better protect against groundwater contamination and seismic activity) hold the most potential for improvement if strong safety standards are instituted for these methods.
Treatment at industrial facilities faces significant hurdles that may also be addressed with improved safeguards. But it would still remain a less preferable disposal method for a number of reasons, perhaps the most significant of which is the risks it would still pose to people’s health in the event of a misstep, as the treated wastewater is dumped into waterways that provide drinking water.
Pennsylvania Wastewater Disposal in 2011
In Pennsylvania, a majority of the state’s wastewater last year was released into bodies of water—including drinking water supplies—as a result of poor treatment practices. More than half of all fracking wastewater was sent to treatment plants—either industrial facilities or municipal sewage plants. Of this, about 10 percent—or more than 2 million gallons—was sent to facilities that that the state has exempted from its most current water pollution limits, meaning it could be discharged with higher levels of contaminants than waste processed at updated plants.
When this wastewater is sent to municipal sewage facilities, harmful chemicals and other pollutants are merely diluted, rather than removed, and then released into surface waters, posing serious threats to the state’s rivers, lakes and streams, as well as drinking water supplies. Industrial facilities, too, are often not designed to treat the contents of the wastewater, and can also release it into waterways or send it for reuse, after it is processed. Complete information about where industrial facilities sent processed wastewater in Pennsylvania last year was not made available by the state.
Additionally, about one-third of Pennsylvania’s fracking wastewater in 2011 was recycled for reuse in fracking, and about 10 percent was disposed of by underground injection (the majority of which took place in Ohio). The remaining less than 1 percent was reported to be in storage pending treatment or disposal, though information was not available on whether it was in open air pits or enclosed tanks. An unknown amount was applied (typically after only partial treatment) to roadways for ice or dust control, where it is often carried into nearby waterways when it rains or snow melts.
The problem of what to do with this byproduct is growing as the volume of wastewater continues to increase rapidly with the expansion of fracking in the Marcellus Shale formation and nationwide. In Pennsylvania alone, total reported wastewater volumes more than doubled from the first half of 2011 to the second half.
The wastewater disposal methods most commonly used in Pennsylvania differ largely from other parts of the country. On average nationally, 90 percent of wastewater is disposed of in injection wells. The Marcellus Shale region, however, poses particular problems because the geology cannot accommodate large volumes of injected wastewater. Therefore, gas companies there have to ship large quantities of it elsewhere.
“Pennsylvania and the entire Marcellus Shale region have geological limitations that make wastewater disposal a particularly vexing problem for the area,” said Kate Sinding, senior attorney at NRDC. “But the lessons learned there are applicable nationwide. It is critical states in this region that are already fracking clean up their act fast. And states like New York, where gas companies are still knocking on the door, must not let them in until they get this right.”
Read more from EcoWatch
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 4, 2012 | Agriculture, Toxification
By Pesticide Action Network
Results released today from water sampling across four Midwestern states – Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota – indicate that the endocrine disrupting pesticide atrazine is still being found in drinking water at levels linked to birth defects and low birth weight. Syngenta, one of the world’s largest pesticide corporations, has continued to promote the use of the chemical, despite growing concerns from independent scientists. The US Environmental Protection Agency will weigh these findings as it continues its re-evaluation of the chemical in the coming months.
“These water monitoring results should raise concerns for policymakers, they confirm that atrazine continues to contaminate Midwest drinking water at meaningful levels,” said Emily Marquez, PhD, endocrinologist and staff scientist for Pesticide Action Network. “Endocrine disrupting chemicals like atrazine are hormonally active at vanishingly small amounts. That is why scientists are looking again at atrazine, and that is why the EU set water contamination tolerance levels at 0.1 ppb. EPA’s current legal limit of 3 ppb is 30 times that and much too permissive. The best way to ensure rural communities and farmers are protected is to keep atrazine out of their water entirely.”
In the results released today, atrazine was found in a majority of water samples from Midwestern homes and farms. Atrazine is found more often than any other pesticide in groundwater – 94% of drinking water tested by USDA contains the chemical. The weed killer is the second most widely used pesticides in the U.S., with more than 76 million pounds used last year, mostly on Midwestern corn fields. Atrazine is applied most heavily in Illinois, where applications exceed 85 pounds per square mile.
The results, on average, demonstrate that levels frequently found in drinking water are five times the former legal limit in Europe, and five times the levels associated with adverse health effects, including low birth-weight in babies. Europe’s legal limit was 0.1 ppb before the chemical was banned in 2003. One Illinois sample is above the EPA limit for atrazine in drinking water, and is well above the level associated with significantly increased risk of birth defects.
“Syngenta’s atrazine is linked to irreversible harms like cancer and birth defects. Rural families are on the frontlines of pesticide exposure and we risk contaminating the water of millions of people with the chemical’s continued use,” said Julia Govis, a mother, author of Who’s Poisoning Our Children, and Statewide Program Coordinator of Illinois Farm to School.
As EPA continues its reevaluation of the chemical and plans to release additional findings on atrazine in June, new studies highlight the link between low-level exposure atrazine and adverse human health effects, including cancer and altered development. At the same time, the chemical’s manufacturer, Syngenta, continues to influence scientific analysis of the chemical, downplaying evidence showing that atrazine is harmful.
Last summer, EPA’s independent scientific advisory panel concluded an 18-month review of atrazine’s health and environmental effects. They pointed to “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential” for ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer.
Unfortunately, EPA has been misled or ignored key findings. Dr. Jason Rohr, a scientist from University of South Florida, took a look at industry-funded reviews of the effects of atrazine on fish and frogs, indicators of impacts on human health, and he found: “The industry-funded review misrepresented more than 50 studies and included 122 inaccurate and 22 misleading statements. Of these inaccurate and misleading statements, 96.5% seem to benefit the makers of atrazine in that they support the safety of the chemical.”
Despite pressure from pesticide maker Syngenta, farmers across the Midwest are demonstrating ways of producing corn and growing food without relying on Syngenta’s atrazine.
“Levels of atrazine in our water raise concerns about the health impacts on farmers and communities like mine. The results underscore the challenges facing many farmers; they are caught in a pesticide trap, and it’s no surprise that they are forced to use more and more pesticides. These results should spur state and federal officials to take action and support farmers as they transition away from Syngenta’s atrazine, towards safe and healthy farming,” said Anita Poeppel, owner of Broad Branch Farm in Central Illinois.
From Pesticide Action Network: http://www.panna.org/press-release/atrazine-found-water-dozens-midwest-communities
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 3, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Abraham Lustgarten / ProPublica
A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.
More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.
Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth’s underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry’s argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.
But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as “just a few years.”
“Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable,” said the study’s author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.
“The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability,” he said. “Fluids could move from most any injection process.”
The research for the study was paid for by Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Park Foundation, two upstate New York organizations that have opposed gas drilling and fracking in the Marcellus.
Much of the debate about the environmental risks of gas drilling has centered on the risk that spills could pollute surface water or that structural failures would cause wells to leak.
Though some scientists believed it was possible for fracking to contaminate underground water supplies, those risks have been considered secondary. The study in Ground Water is the first peer-reviewed research evaluating this possibility.
The study did not use sampling or case histories to assess contamination risks. Rather, it used software and computer modeling to predict how fracking fluids would move over time. The simulations sought to account for the natural fractures and faults in the underground rock formations and the effects of fracking.
The models predict that fracking will dramatically speed up the movement of chemicals injected into the ground. Fluids traveled distances within 100 years that would take tens of thousands of years under natural conditions. And when the models factored in the Marcellus’ natural faults and fractures, fluids could move 10 times as fast as that.
Where man-made fractures intersect with natural faults, or break out of the Marcellus layer into the stone layer above it, the study found, “contaminants could reach the surface areas in tens of years, or less.”
The study also concluded that the force that fracking exerts does not immediately let up when the process ends. It can take nearly a year to ease.
As a result, chemicals left underground are still being pushed away from the drill site long after drilling is finished. It can take five or six years before the natural balance of pressure in the underground system is fully restored, the study found.
Myers’ research focused exclusively on the Marcellus, but he said his findings may have broader relevance. Many regions where oil and gas is being drilled have more permeable underground environments than the one he analyzed, he said.
“One would have to say that the possible travel times for a similar thing in Arkansas or Northeast Texas is probably faster than what I’ve come up with,” Myers said.
Read more from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/fracking-fluids-aquifers_n_1472355.html?ref=green
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 21, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Toxification
By Environment News Service
Thousands of Peruvians protesting in the streets of Cajamarca against a proposed gold and copper mine say they will continue their demonstrations every day until the government rejects the development. They fear the surface open pit mine would pollute their water supplies and destroy the region’s environment.
The object of their anger is the Conga Project, located north of the Peruvian Andes 73 km (45 miles) northeast of the city of Cajamarca, at elevations ranging from 3,700 to 4,260 meters (12,140 to 13,980 feet). The mine would straddle two provinces, Cajamarca and Celendin.
The project is proposed by Minera Yanacocha, which already has a giant open pit mine in the area that has polluted water supplies with mercury, among other toxics.
Minera Yanacocha is a joint venture of three partners: Compañía de Minas Buenaventura of Peru, Newmont Mining Corp. of Denver, Colorado and the International Finance Corporation.
The Conga Environmental Impact Study, prepared for the Peruvian government by Knight Piésold Consulting, identifies the resource as 3.1 billion pounds of copper and 11.6 million ounces of gold to be extracted over 19 years. Concentrates would be trucked to Salaverry port on Peru’s north coast for transport to international markets.
After numerous demonstrations throughout April and a regional strike on April 11, organizers of the Cajamarca protests Wednesday declared a “permanent control conference,” with daily demonstrations and vigils, and public forums aimed at convincing the government of President Ollanta Humala to deny a permit for the new mine.
The protests continue despite the presence of police and military forces sent by the government to control demonstrators in the regional capital and other locations affected by the Conga project.
In Cajamarca, a rally in the Plaza de Armas Wednesday drew an estimated 10,000 people. There, Idelso Hernandez, president of the Front for the Defence of the Interests of Cajamarca, said the protests will continue at least until President Humala comes to Cajamarca to talk to the residents.
“The position of Cajamarca is adamant that the Conga project will not go ahead,” he said. “We are tired of the central government making fun of us, we will continue protests in other provinces and brigades until the people of Cajamarca are heard.”
Read more from Environment News Service:
