Congressional hearing in Denver tackles fracking

USA TODAY
May 2, 2012


DENVER – Western state officials took turns bashing the federal government Wednesday at a congressional field hearing on proposed nationwide drilling rules on hydraulic fracturing.



The field hearing by the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources was called in response to last month's announcement by the Obama administration that it would seek coordinated federal oversight of natural gas production. The Interior Department, meanwhile, is expected to issue new rules in the next few weeks on natural gas drilling on public lands
The federal oversight was denounced by officials from Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas production.


"We have a knee-jerk reaction in Washington that the federal government needs to be in charge and be in control, and I couldn't disagree more," said Kathleen Clarke, director of the Utah Office of Public Land Policy Coordination.


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Priscilla Stuckey: A revolutionary law—for people and nature

tck tck tck

April 23, 2012

This is a guest post by Priscilla Stuckey, a finalist in the TckTckTck Rio Blogger Prize competition. If you would like to see this entrant as the official TckTckTck blogger at Rio+20 this June, please help spread the word by sharing this post on your social networks.

My friend in the next county lives near a gas well. It’s a fracking well, where millions of gallons of toxic liquid are pumped a mile underground under high pressure to crack shale and extract methane. Her county holds 18,000 oil and gas wells, and her town of Erie, Colorado, once a peaceful village with panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains, now has more methane in its air than Houston, Texas, with its oil industry.

My friend’s son asked her recently, “Why are they doing this to us?”

What can she say? That corporations don’t care they are poisoning the air and water and causingearthquakes? That local governments won’t protect their citizens?

Thomas Linzey is an attorney who thinks the problem goes far deeper:

Local people don’t have the power to say no

Current law elevates the rights of corporations over those of local people. “Under our present system,” hesays, “it is perfectly legal for a small number of people within a corporation to override whole communities.”

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