A natural gas drilling rush is on in rural North Dakota. And with it, residents are reporting growing numbers of respiratory ailments, skin lesions, blood oozing from eyes, and the deaths of livestock and pets.

Elsewhere, Wyoming and Pennsylvania residents who thought they’d hit the lottery by signing gas drilling leases have watched their drinking water turn noxious: slick, brown, foamy, flammable.

All along, the industry has claimed that natural gas fracking is safe and doesn’t pollute drinking water. But in December, for the first time, federal regulators scientifically linked fracking to the contamination of an aquifer.

An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found numerous fracking chemicals in groundwater in the rural ranching community of Pavillion, Wyoming. Cancer-causing benzene was found at 50 times safe levels, along with toxic metals, diesel fuel and other hazardous chemicals.

Across the Midwest and nationwide, residents living near fracked gas wells have filed over 1,000 complaints of tainted water, severe illnesses, animal deaths, and fish kills. Complaints, sometimes involving hundreds of households, have risen in tandem with a veritable gold rush of new natural gas wells – now numbering about 490,000 across 31 states.

Still, the fracking industry goes virtually unregulated. Why? Money.

Big oil and gas has reaped billions in profits from fracking. Since 1990, they’ve also pumped $238.7 million into gubernatorial and Congressional election campaigns to squelch oversight – effectively blocking federal regulation. (Republican candidates received three to five times more cash).

Top Congressional recipients include Tim Murphy (R-PA), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Shimkus, (R-IL) and James Inhofe (R-OK) – who claimed the EPA study was “not based on sound science but rather on political science.” The industry also spent $726 million on lobbying from 2001–2011.

Today, only four of 31 fracking states have significant drilling rules and the gas industry is exempted from seven major federal regulations. One of these, the “Halliburton loophole” (pushed through by former Vice-President/former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney) exempts corporations from revealing the chemicals used in fracking fluid – bypassing the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts.

Another loophole leaves hazardous waste, including contaminated soil, water and drilling fluids, unregulated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Another dodges the Superfund law, which requires that polluters remediate for carcinogens like benzene released into the environment – except if they come from oil or gas.

Fracking, invented by Halliburton, injects water, sand and chemicals into the ground at high pressure, blasting apart shale bedrock to release gas. It takes between one and five million gallons of water to frack one well.

Up to 40 percent of that water returns to the surface, carrying toxic drilling chemicals and sometimes, naturally-occurring radioactive material. The rest remains underground, potentially polluting aquifers and drinking water. Streams and groundwater can be contaminated by spills, surface wastewater pits, and by millions of tons of chemical-laden dirt removed during drilling.

Today, 65 probable fracking chemicals are federally listed as hazardous. Many others remain unstudied and unregulated, making it impossible to assess the effects on water resources. EPA documents note that some “cause kidney, liver, heart, blood, and brain damage through prolonged or repeated exposure”, and that fracking fluid migrates over unpredictable distances through different rock layers.

Clearly, the natural gas industry needs federal regulation, something President Obama pledged in his State of the Union speech. Now, as the Interior Department drafts new fracking rules for public lands, it mustn’t be swayed by industry: assuring full disclosure of fracking chemicals, well stability, and proper wastewater disposal. The EPA must likewise impose these rules nationwide.

Congress must also pass the Frac Act, repealing drinking water exemptions. Industry-friendly state agencies – like those in Texas that sometimes approve new drilling permits in two days – must also institute real oversight.

But let’s be realistic. Real oversight means we must prevent elected officials from being bought-and-paid-for by Exxon, Koch Industries and other oil and gas companies. Otherwise, federal loopholes that poison water and ruin health will never be closed. To spark real change, Americans must speak up. Loudly.

Find out how much money flows to your Congressperson by reading Common Cause’s “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets” report online.

The California power grid wants to make sure it can keep electricity flowing as residents rely on a greater amount of wind and solar power and strict water rules force the shutdown of power plants along the coast in the next few years, the agency said.

California has the most ambitious plan of any state to expand use of renewable resources to 33 percent by 2030, by boosting wind and solar generation.

California is also ahead of other states in efforts to dramatically reduce the amount of ocean-water used for cooling at existing natural gas-fired power plants built along the coast.

via Calif. seeks flexible power rules as wind expands | Reuters.

Giant piles of debris from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami scar the country’s once picturesque northeast coast — and the clear-up is hamstrung by fears the rubbish may be contaminated by radiation.

Decades-worth of waste was left behind when the waters receded in March last year after claiming more than 19,000 lives.

The survivors are desperate to rebuild, but must first get rid of more than 22 million tons of rubbish — far too much for the disaster-struck region to deal with alone.

But despite appeals to national solidarity, worries over nuclear contamination from the crippled Fukushima power plant mean virtually no one elsewhere in Japan wants the debris processed near them.

via Japanese grapple with waste mountain – IOL SciTech | IOL.co.za.

The situation in the Youngstown area has attracted extensive national and local media attention.

The Dec. 31, 2011, earthquake shook Youngstown and reportedly was felt in several states and as far away as Ontario, Canada.

The earthquake may have awakened many more citizens to the serious health and safety issues reported by those living near fracking and injection wells and to reports of drinking-water source contamination, meeting organizers said.

via Youngstown News, Meeting will address quakes, injection wells.

Coal ash holds metals that can be toxic in high doses. But the elements most widely detected at the power plants, iron and manganese, also occur naturally and aren’t considered health risks.

State regulators now have to figure out which is affecting the wells.

via Metals found in water at coal plants | CharlotteObserver.com & The Charlotte Observer Newspaper.

via An Oil Minister, Plugging Renewables? – NYTimes.com.

During a Republican presidential primary debate last June, Michele Bachmann lit into the Environmental Protection Agency, recommending it be renamed the “job-killing organization of America.” Her fellow contenders nodded in agreement, each explaining how shutting down the EPA, or at least instituting a moratorium on regulations, would be a priority in their White House.

The GOP’s desire to kill America’s chief environmental regulator hasn’t just been grist for the bizarre sideshow that is the Republican Party’s presidential primary. Over the past year, Republicans in Congress — in actual positions of power — have succeeded in massively defunding the EPA. In March, no less than nineteen riders were floated on the floor of the House of Representatives to cut the EPA’s budget. Fifteen Republican senators even proposed deleting the EPA as a cabinet-level agency. The harshest of these legislative bombs were diffused, but the cuts that prevailed added up to the largest single year drop in EPA funding since 1981 when President Reagan (“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do”) began his unprecedented assault on the greens.

Republicans by no means have a monopoly on the “job killer” trope. Moderate, so called-Blue Dog Democratic senators like Jay Rockefeller and Ben Nelson, who hail from states with huge corporate energy interests, have co-sponsored legislation to ditch specific EPA standards. Even President Obama recently reinforced the mythology that environmental regulations are counterproductive to economic development, saying in September that his decision to rescind ozone air-quality standards was essential to the nation’s economic recovery. Both parties also are seriously pursuing environmental deregulation of industry, and cuts to the nation’s major cleanup programs.

The problem with all of this, however, is that California’s economy is now crucially dependent on environmental regulation and remediation. This is especially true in cities where decades of industrial pollution have created an environment not only toxic to human health, but also economic investment.

In fact, cleaning up toxic sites has become a fundamental driver of the Bay Area’s economy. As a result, cutting the EPA’s budget, and possibly reducing funds for the state agency responsible for partnering in cleanup, the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), will stall job creation and condemn huge swaths of urban California as economic dead zones.

But the fallacy that environmental laws kill jobs doesn’t end there. According to economists who study the impact of regulation on markets, California’s economy will likely add more jobs and develop new vibrant sectors of activity much faster if politicians embrace ambitious environmental goals. According to this emerging school of thought, environmental regulations aren’t only pivotal for human health and environmental quality, they stimulate innovation, and innovation is the key to California’s economy.

Read the rest here.

On November 6, 2011, Bill McKibben arrived at Washington, D.C.’s, Lafayette Park to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry oil 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. McKibben, a Vermont writer and environmentalist, had been one of 1,252 people arrested in front of the White House in August and September, protesting the same pipeline. He’d spent two nights in the district’s Central Cell Block, and now was back with thousands more people and a bold new plan.

“We can’t literally occupy the White House,” McKibben had told his fellow protesters, “so the next best thing is to surround it.” And that’s what they would do, encircle the White House in a “giant hug” to remind President Obama of his campaign promise to “end the tyranny of oil.” McKibben wasn’t sure how many people he would need to “hug” the White House, though, and was worried that he wouldn’t have enough.

via The man who crushed the Keystone XL pipeline – Boston.com.

Huge thanks go to Brett Shipp for staying on this story. To recap:

• A chemical plant blew up and I knew right away that fracking was involved.
• Chemical fire spawns fish kill, criminal investigation
• Waxahachie chemical firm cited for environmental violations
• Chemical plant relocation upsetting Ellis County residents
• Ellis County Commissioners catch heat from chemical plant foes

So that was that. A bunch of fish died, people got sick, water was contaminated, the plant wants to locate next to a diary and… life goes on.

Then it started raining.

Now the rain is washing away the containment areas and the chemicals are causing massive foaming in the creeks. Here is Shipp’s story with some great video.  But, don’t worry because Jerrell with TCEQ is on the scene and they are monitoring it.

People, people, PEOPLE!!!  This is nothing new. We have been trying to tell you about foaming creeks, ditches and well water for years now.

WFAA-TV posts video with a report on its site.