In June, the House Natural Resources Committee invoked a rarely-used authority to force the Bush administration to make one million acres of public land adjacent to the park ineligible for exploration. Two months later, though, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne allowed some 20 new claims in the area by deciding that the committee's move violated executive authority.
Secret Chemicals
In the last decade, a pattern of contamination has also emerged in places where natural gas drilling has intensified. If drilling increases substantially across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, it could also imperil the river.
Most wells rely on a process called hydraulic fracturing, which requires as much as two million gallons of water plus small amounts of often-toxic chemicals for a single well. The waste water then sits in open pits until it is treated, recycled or disposed of.
In February a waste pit high on a mesa overlooking the town of Parachute, Colo. sprang a leak, allowing some 1.6 million gallons of fluid to soak into the arid earth. According to state records, the spill migrated underground until it seeped from a cliff side and froze into a gray pillar of ice more than 200 feet tall. When it melted, the fluids dripped into the torrid currents of Parachute Creek and finally dumped into the Colorado River.
Although the number of gas drilling accidents in the upper Colorado River watershed is small relative to the amount of drilling, they have begun adding up. Colorado state records show that of some 1,500 spills in drilling areas since 2003, more than 300 have seeped into water. In one case last summer a truck carrying drilling fluids crashed into the Colorado, where it remained partially submerged for more than three weeks.
In neighboring Wyoming, the BLM found a 28-mile-long plume of benzene contamination in an aquifer beneath a gigantic gas field. The aquifer is near a tributary to the Green River, which in turn flows into the Colorado.
Doug Hock, a spokesman for the Canadian gas company Encana, which drills in Colorado and Wyoming, says that while there will always be spills, the fears of pollution are exaggerated. Encana uses steel and concrete casing around its drill pipes, lines its waste pits and, increasingly, cleans its waste water and re-uses it inside its wells.
"We have put in place safeguards to protect the water," Hock said. "There is always a balance -- this country has a great demand for energy."
But because the energy industry has been exempted from so many federal environmental regulations during the Bush administration, it's difficult to assess the industry's true impact on the river.
The mix of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing is held as proprietary competitive information by the industry and kept secret from even the EPA. Scientists say that without knowing the specific ingredients in the mix, they don't know what compounds to test for after a spill and can't check to see if they've reached the river.
The 2005 Energy Policy Act exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Also exempted from federal control and water protection laws are the drilling industry's construction activities, including the sediments and dust produced from thousands of miles of road building, site grading and the drilling itself, even though that debris often ends up in waterways.
"We have seen an explosion in drilling, and at the same time we have seen a weakening of the federal standards under which drilling occurs," said Dusty Horwitt, an analyst with the Environmental Working Group.
Given the relaxation in regulatory authority, the development may be out-pacing scientists' ability to measure the implications.
In August drilling companies bid on 55,000 acres of federal parcels atop the Roan Plateau, a cherished wilderness area in central Colorado that drains into the Colorado River. A September report from the University of Colorado Denver predicted that in 15 years Garfield County, a western drilling area bisected by the river, will have 23,000 wells, six times what is has now, based on permit applications already filed with the state.
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11 Comments
Add CommentWhy the sudden last minute grants? Is profit being promised to certain individuals in return? What we in the US do not understand, is that potable (drinkable) water is one of the rarest commodities on the planet. Instead of jeopardizing such a needed and valuable resource, shouldn't we be exploring ways to reduce or eliminate the need for polluting fossil fuels?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting (and very discouraging) when "Scientific" American starts publishing opinions in the forum of neutral science. For example, the USGS has already published more than enough observational science (all available online) about the geochemistry of Colorado River water to clearly show, to someone who takes the time and effort to look at it, that ongoing uranium mineral exploration in the Grand Canyon region in no way threatens the water quality of the river, yet this exploration work is summarily and carelessly characterized as "threatening" the river. It is not enough to fear -- fear should instead drive an examination of observations to determine if there are any real reasons to dwell in this fear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGiven this weakness in reporting in the Grand Canyon region case with which I am familiar, I can only suspect the rest of the article.
This article completely ignores the fact that the colorado river also originally supplied mexico too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving traveled down the river many times from Needles to Lake Havasu, drinking its water and enjoying it beauty I, too, wish to see it protected. But slanted reporting such as this inhibits responsible development in the area surrounding the river. Even if man never drilled or mined here, the river would still carry tons of metals, including uranium, downstream every day. Natural erosion is a fact - have you seen the depth of the canyon? Duh? To not capture these materials is also a waste. In addition, the author recklessly uses the word "contaminated" throughout the article, without reference to actual levels or concentrations. The river does not carry 18 megaohm water and never did. The uranium deposits alone could potentially free us from the need to go after the gas or shale. Let's get it out, do it now and do it cleanly. Think people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLdflipper,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Colorado river is already polluted from previous uranium mining. A uranium tailing pile along the river near Moab has been polluting the river for decades!
Ldflipper,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Colorado river is already polluted as the result of previous uranium mining. A uranium tailings pile near Moab has been leaking into the river for decades.
At the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River carries about 4.7 parts per billion uranium year round (slightly higher when the annual sand bar-flushing water releases through the Canyon take place), according to several USGS reports that can be accessed through http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/. This very safe level of uranium is NORMAL for rivers passing through semi-arid regions like the Colorado River and the Rio Grande do (see p. 578 of "Geochemistry of Mineral Exploration" by Rose et al., 1979, for these published values) . The slight elevation in uranium content of the Colorado River and the Rio Grande in comparison to rivers like the Mississippi and Columbia -- which drain much more humid country -- is primarily a function of evaporative concentration of the arid region river water, and is NOT materially caused by purported leakage of uranium from places like the Moab mill reclamation site. The EPA maximum contamination level threshold for uranium in drinking water is 30 ppb uranium. The Colorado River naturally carries about 118,000 pounds of dissolved uranium downstream each year (and most of this is eventually deposited in sediment at the bottom of Lake Mead) -- another 650,000 pounds or so of uranium would have to be annually added to this natural dissolved uranium content of the River to bring the concentration of uranium up to the problematic level of 30 ppb. The only way this could happen is if the climate becomes MUCH more humid, causing strongly increased leaching of the uranium in the region's rocks and soils. In this event, however, surface and ground water discharge into the River would be MUCH higher and would dilute the added uranium content. Point being, the Colorado River is not at risk from man or nature as far as potential 'uranium contamination' is concerned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLdflipper
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for a very informative, and good blog. I always like the facts.
It just occurred to me that the biggest opponents to clean natural gas are also the largest users of gasoline California and New York! LOL
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey SA after reading the comments on this story ya'll kinda got beat up "huh"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is really ironic that at a time when we are coming up with all kinds of expensive ideas to slow the flow of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the coal, natural gas, and oil industry are devising ways to pollute the earth & atmosphere even faster. Uranium mining leaves waist that will be dangerous for thousands of years. They cannot wait to dig up every last molecule of coal, ounce of uranium, or drop of oil. No one has yet realized that the safest place for all that carbon and uranium is in the ground. Already there is not enough water in the Colorado to supply all its allocated uses. Mexico has not received its fair share in many years. Yet we keep granting more uses for this scarce resource. This madness will only end when the US is totally unfit for human habitation.
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