Oil and gas company sentenced for bird deaths

EnCana Oil & Gas Inc., a company based in Denver, pleaded guilty and was sentenced Aug. 26 for two misdemeanor violations regarding the deaths of about 55 federally protected migratory birds in Colorado and Wyoming.

The company was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Denver for violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the deaths of the birds, including waterfowl and owls, in natural gas well reserve pits and wastewater storage facilities, according to a news release.

The court sentenced the company to pay a total of $200,000 in fines and community service payments for the violations, which occurred in the past four years, after reaching a plea agreement, according to the release.

The violations occurred at facilities in Colorado’s Piceance Basin, located south of Moffat County, and the Sweetwater, Sublette and Lincoln Counties of Wyoming.

According to the release, migratory birds often land on open wastewater ponds at oil and gas facilities and can become coated with or ingest fatal amounts of hydrocarbon discharge as a result of production operations.

Oil and gas companies can prevent such bird deaths, according to the release, by placing obstructions or netting over the water to prevent contact with the wastewater.

As part of the plea agreement, EnCana must implement an environmental compliance plan designed to keep birds from coming in contact with the wastewater in the two states. According to the release, EnCana has already spent $3 million to start the plan.

The fines EnCana must pay as part of the agreement will go to the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

According to the plea agreement, EnCana “failed to heed warnings” during initial investigations from federal agencies in 2005 and 2006 about the uncovered pits in the Piceance Basin.
About 19 migratory birds, such as ducks and owls, were found to have died as a result of the wastewater in the Piceance Basin, many of which were located at facilities in Rio Blanco County, according to the release.

“The United States is bound by several treaties to protect migratory birds, many of which cross international borders and are a resource we share with other counties,” said U.S. District Attorney John Walsh in the release. “The Migratory Bird Treaty Act provides only criminal sanctions for unlawfully taking such birds, and we treat corporate violations of this statute as serious offenses.”
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted in 1918 and creates a misdemeanor criminal sanction for the un-permitted taking of listed birds by any means. None of the birds killed in the case were listed as endangered or threatened under federal law, according to the release.

“Environmental compliance plans, like the one in this case, help reduce the needless killing of protected birds in the future,” said Steve Oberholtzer, Special Agent in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, region six, in the release. “Our agency will continue to investigate these killings and refer appropriate cases for prosecution.”

The cases were investigated by special agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and were prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section and the U.S. District Attorney’s office in Colorado.

Source: CraigDailyPress.com

Rifle area Rancher thinks his activism may have triggered retaliation

One of man's horses was shot and killed

John Colson
Post Independent Staff
Glenwood Springs, CO

 

 

RIFLE, Colorado — A Mamm Creek rancher and critic of the gas drilling industry is wondering if his political activism might be linked to the recent shooting death of one of his horses.

Rick Roles, who lives in the region between Mamm Creek and West Mamm Creek south of Rifle, said this week that one of his stallions was shot and killed some time last week, between June 24 and June 26.

“He was missing Thursday afternoon, and I found him Saturday morning, gut shot,” said Roles when reached on his cell phone.

Roles, who has reported noxious odors and fumes from nearby gas wells, along with claims that his health is negatively affected by those fumes, said he was not home for much of Thursday when the horse went missing.

“I leave every morning to get out of the fumes,” he explained.

By following a trail of blood that started near a horse trailer on his 180-acre property, he said, he located the horse on Saturday.

Roles said he believes that the horse was shot with a rifle, after a check of the carcass revealed “a half-inch entry wound and an exit hole about as big as your fist.”

He estimated that it took the horse about 20-30 minutes to expire from blood loss and shock.

Phillip Strouse, spokesman for the sheriff's office, said a deputy had gone to the scene and had spoken with Roles on June 27, and that the case is under investigation.

This is not the first time one of his stallions has been shot under mysterious circumstances, Roles said.

Two years ago another stallion, “the daddy of all my horses,” also was shot while out grazing. Because it was rifle hunting season, Roles said, authorities concluded it was an accidental shooting, though no one was ever found who might have been responsible.

But this time, Roles hypothesized, the shooting might have been meant as a message. He said that it was kind of a coincidence that the horse was shot right after the last film came out.

Roles has been featured in two films about the impacts of the gas industry in western Colorado — “Split Estate,” by film maker Debra Anderson and narrated by Ali MacGraw, which came out in 2009, and “Gasland,” by filmmaker Josh Fox, recently released and aired on the HBO network — and a book, “Collateral Damage,” written by Garfield County resident Tara Meixsell.

The two films portray the gas industry as causing significant environmental and health impacts to the communities in the regions where they are working. Both have drawn heavy criticism from industry spokespersons, who have claimed that many of the facts cited in the films are inaccurate hyperbole.

The book is billed as a “journal” of Meixsell's life and times in the “gas patch.”

jcolson@postindependent.com

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

 

National Environmental Policy Act

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted in 1969, also exempts certain oil and gas drilling activities, obviating the need to conduct environmental impact statements (EIS) (BLM 2008).

The exemption, enacted by Congress in 2005, effectively shifts the burden of proof to the public to prove that such activities would be unsafe. In 2006 and 2007, the BLM granted this exemption to about 25 percent of all wells approved on public land in the West (BLM Budget 2009).
The activities thus exempted include:

“(1) Individual surface disturbances of less than 5 acres so long as the total surface disturbance on the lease is not greater than 150 acres and site-specific analysis in a document prepared pursuant to NEPA has been previously completed.

(2) Drilling an oil or gas well at a location or well pad site at which drilling has occurred previously within 5 years prior to the date of spudding the well.

(3) Drilling an oil or gas well within a developed field for which an approved land use plan or any environmental document prepared pursuant to NEPA analyzed such drilling as a reasonably foreseeable activity, so long as such plan or document was approved within 5 years prior to the date of spudding the well.

(4) Placement of a pipeline in an approved right-of-way corridor, so long as the corridor was approved within 5 years prior to the date of placement of the pipeline.

(5) Maintenance of a minor activity, other than any construction or major renovation or a building or facility” (NEPA 2009).

Environmental Working Group

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)

Thousands of post-1980 wells are exempt from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) that holds most industries accountable for cleaning up hazardous waste. The act, passed in 1980 and amended in 1986, allows the federal government to respond to releases of hazardous substances that threaten human health or the environment. It created a trust fund known as “Superfund” to be used to clean up contaminated sites; the fund is financed via taxes on the chemical and petroleum industries.
Congress has since abolished the taxes and pays for the fund through general revenues. As a result, the fund is too small to meet cleanup goals. Yet the liability exemption for drilling companies remains (Mall et al. 2007, CERCLA 2008).

Superfund allows Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs) to be held liable for clean-up costs for a release or threatened release of a “hazardous substance.” But the law defines this term to exclude oil and natural gas (CERCLA 2008).

Consequently, the industry has little incentive to clean up its hazardous waste and to minimize leaks and spills. In 2006, oil companies in Campbell County, Wyoming reported five spills including 265 barrels of oil that leaked from a storage tank and 150 barrels from a valve left open. (Mall et al. 2008, NRS 2008). IHS data show that

Campbell County is one of the most intensively drilled counties in the West.

Clean Water Act

Companies have drilled thousands of the nearly 270,000 wells in the West since 1980 under an exemption from the Clean Water Act that sets standards for stormwater discharge despite the potential for significant runoff from thousands of well pads, pipelines and other infrastructure. In 1987, Congress added amendments to the Clean Water Act requiring EPA to develop a permitting program for stormwater runoff. These amendments exempted oil and gas exploration, production, processing or treatment operations, and transmission facilities. However, the EPA considered the standards to apply to construction facilities.
Beginning in 1992, the EPA required stormwater permits for oil and gas construction facilities of five acres or more. In the 2005 Energy Bill, Congress extended the exemption to all oil and gas construction facilities (Clean Water Act 2008, EPA NPDES 2006, W&WNews 2006).

In New Mexico, anglers fishing the trout waters of the San Juan River below Navajo Dam have seen a dramatic decline in the quality of fishing over the last seven years. This four-mile stretch of the San Juan was once rated as a world-class trout fishery that was estimated to bring approximately $40 million to the region each year. But anglers say that fishing has dwindled in part due to sediment run-off impacting the river that has coincided with a dramatic increase in oil and gas development and infrastructure.

 Over the past 30 years, companies have drilled close to 20,000 wells in San Juan County and Rio Arriba County that straddle the San Juan River. Hundreds of wells and associated networks of roads and pipelines are located within three major drainage areas that flow into this stretch of the river (Bryan 2009). Application of the Clean Water Act could help reduce the runoff from oil and gas activities.

Environmental Working Group