the russians would be so which bryson if you knew about someone from fines to pressure. the stance on t.v. don't count. on coming over the top stories from moscow tonight the deadliest riot since the egyptian revolution flare up in cairo as religious tensions lead to dozens of deaths in clashes between the country's christians and security forces the violence erupted at a peaceful rally against the attacks on christian churches by muslim extremists. and wall street protests is a turning up the volume as the campaign continues to spread despite multiple arrests and claims of a heavy handed response from the police people across the u.s. are demanding the end of what they call the government protection and call for

blossom. and russia says along with other brics countries that it's ready to help the debt ridden e.u. find a way out of the financial turmoil that's is growing poverty in european countries spirals out of control because of cuts in social spending. this is r.t. . in two thousand and four some residents in garfield county began to complain that they were getting sick as a result of the drilling activities in their neighborhoods. a young woman from sales laura amos was one of the earliest and loudest voices. as everyone in this room probably knows my groundwater has been contaminated with methane williamsport gets a lot of people in this room with contamination and pollution issues so who then is responsible for the that last of my welfare it's not you the gas commission

if the well is drilled next to your residence or residence within the legal setbacks and there's a perceived or real impact on the property value we don't address. in two thousand and one gas wells were drilled using the fracking technique a mere five hundred feet from the amos home underground the drilling breached their water well causing their drinking water to fill with gray sediment and phases like . a colorado oil and gas conservation commission tested the water well and found methane but said it was safe but they warned the amas is to keep a window open so the methane gas wouldn't build up and cause an explosion in their home they amos's stopped drinking the water but continued to bathe in it she later found out that a chemical that had been used in the two thousand and one fracking has been linked to adrenal gland chewers. when she went to end canada they denied using it on that

well or any other months later the oil and gas commission admitted that it had been used after all. after years of mounting medical bills devalued property and diminishing options laura agreed to a monetary settlement with encountering. the company responsible for her problems. the settlement stipulated she stopped telling her story publicly which is why she was not interviewed for this film many family stories like hers will never be told because of company settlements that require silence. let's go around the trampoline in spite of the well explosion and fire de hoffmeister his stage in her house surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

this kind of helps me and gives me a little more steadiness until i can grab something you know they were doing ok as long as the regs on that weren't there and i was just working a while and you still got with smells and that night just outside it wasn't. but then they brought in the temporary rig because they're having problems with one of the holes i think and then the smells all started up again as they were doing a fracking and it all boils right over here we had one back there behind us we had two on the side here that were all working and. flaring with gas and i have much more as you know after the fire whatever was there or just burned and came right at me you know it was like somebody had just dumped chemicals on me finally i couldn't stand it anymore and monday my husband took me to the emergency

room at the hospital to get down. i had twenty one grandkids and i'm very. happy. yeah they've been pretty sick they've had colds as girls. like infection. lambs as most really bad he's on four different medicines. basically we found that if you were to take all of the chemicals that are used in a particular state always where you see the highest percentage of possible health effects it's always been irritation ira taishan in blistering sinuses as coughing and then this effect called sensitizing and she's good fairly thin he still lives on dry hollow road shortly after this interview these son and daughter in law and their four children moved out of the state and when they moved there respiratory problems disappeared. in two thousand and four the

bush cheney administration's environmental protection agency asserted that fracturing does not threaten drinking water this was childish way a thirty year e.p.a. environmental engineer weston wilson acting under protected whistleblower status the former chairman c.e.o. of halliburton cheney within a few months of coming into office and as vice president he was pressuring the ministry or of e.p.a. christie todd whitman to exempt hydraulic fracking from safe drinking water act regulations from my own point of view as a technician i just thought it a very i'm arming the e.p.a. technically had described how toxic these materials are toxic at the point of injection and still come out with a summary that says they don't need to pay a reported a regular. and that led me in the fall of zero four to object on technical

grounds then the inspector general of e.p.a. again investigation of my complaints. and several months into the. congress took the report from me saying that fracking did not present a risk. along with other information and exempted i dryly cracking from regulation on the safe drinking water act that leaves you and i as the american public in this position we cannot know what the industry injects in our land when it is exempt from being reported.

down the colorado river about nine miles to the west of silt is the town of rifle. out then own thoughts. this is only losing one word. this is before. the problems are before with the right this is in the three i will be married like a hundred years. it's been the worst fifteen years i'm fifty four she's fifty nine. there's. a tradition. in one nine hundred ninety three chris and steve he decided to leave california to move to colorado we both got laid off from our work because we both

volunteered to be laid off because we wanted to get out of california moved to colorado where it was beautiful and clean air and clean water they found themselves in garfield county looking for a new home there's chris. in nineteen ninety five they bought their dream house a fixer upper in a rural neighborhood outside rifle we have a window with a place and we plan to stay there forever. it was shortly after chris and steve moved in the drilling rigs began to appear on some of their neighbors land and in the surrounding hills. everything changed. crisper get in the shower. her skin turned bright red i think. it hurt her skin it was it was burning on fire she was well steve began to develop symptoms as well i feel dizzy.

i give her the nose as chris's health began to deteriorate rapidly she began losing her sight had severe headaches and had pain in her hands and feet there were two surgeries to remove a chewer terri tumor and she developed a rare neurological speech impairment but i think i think i got the same well say. for. i've had several patients who have. been having symptoms since the time they were exposed the world gas exploration near their homes these are all people in a small cause for a rifle. last year e.p.a. several citizens requests from garfield county and the citizens were saying gosh my drinking water might be contaminated by this practice or the air we breathe might

be affected e.p.a. can you look into it e.p.a. should of. myself in another staff person we had prepared the letters and we were we were ready to write to the colorado oil and gas commission that we felt that this practice cause imminent substantial risk to public drinking water source and the e.p.a. was going to take over the investigation however as soon as we got to our political point supervisors they canceled that investigation so e.p.a. did not investigate legitimate complaints from citizens in garfield county. if you live in a rural residential area and you were in a low lying area your house was in a low lying area they could accumulate these gases when they come off the tank battery and so forth you may be breathing those for twelve hours a day and one of the concerns of the agency with respect to the oil and gas industry is how much volatile organic carbon how much volatile gases come from the

industry especially from storage of the oil or storage of gas. last summer in an effort to track down how much volatile organic carbon was coming from the oil and gas industry a unique study was undertaken by you to get an e.p.a. brought in some infrared cameras. and turned them towards these oil and gas facilities and under infrared light. the volatile organic commissions were visible . they look like a. mirage. and so one could see in this interview great camera the amount of both organic carbon coming off these storage tanks. every well is thrilled into a straight and it has organic chemicals. oil is a mixture of these very heavy organics but it's

a range from these kind of greasy very heavy oil we suffer from stuff which is quite those materials rapparee very quickly all those are potentially toxic but we don't know to what extent. many of them are dangerous ethylene for instance is converted in humans ethylene oxide and ethylene oxide is a car senator besides the drilling in their immediate neighborhood chris and steve ridgway wrecked leave downwind to what was becoming a major drilling field exposing them to even higher levels of airborne toxins. another source of possible exposure was a waste water treatment facility located across the river from their home. in one nine hundred ninety seven as chris's symptoms were getting worse a water well near the most baldies was blown out and contaminated by drilling.

according to state records on september fifteenth one thousand nine hundred ninety seven barrett resources lost well control while drilling the burned clogged gas well the gas company told everybody not to drink the water and they actually started delivering water to us then they came back and told us that your water safe to drink so we started drinking the water there. when the exposure is through a water pathway people are usually given an alternate drinking water supply you don't think of it but there are a lot of sources of water vapor in the house your dishwasher every time you flush the toilet and you were even if you observe it through your skin you would go so the volatile organic. from the shower water will be several times that those you would have gotten from drinking water we started thinking that was not right but a glass of water left said overnight there was

a little oil slick. in desperation chris and steve moved to grand junction colorado abandoning their home and a place that had been their dream. you know. and it was four hundred forty thousand dollars and we just walked away from it. there are no official statistics tracking people who have moved away because of the effects of gas and oil development but in the two colorado communities profiled in this film the impact has been profound. there is a record of at least nine dry hollow families who formally complained about the drilling and they have moved away. some were afraid some were sick all were exhausted by their fight with the industry. chris and steve have seen the same thing in their neighborhood in rifle i think almost all of our neighbors have

moved away and all the people that occupy the houses now are people who work for the world. and. there's a growing. on the part of people who live in the path of drilling. that living with this development has affected our lives in nearly every way imaginable with other recourse some landowners have become activists. i think there's no question that people are getting sick from the environmental effects of

gas exploration and production throughout the united states and what's striking is when you ask them what their symptoms are it's the same one area. that is another very. own oil and gas states like new mexico and colorado are caught between intense pressure from the federal government to lease more land for drilling and desire to protect the land in their citizens. in june of two thousand and seven. colorado governor bill ritter is faced with a critical confrontation with the bureau of land management and agency of the interior parts they had authorized more than fifteen hundred new gas wells on the road. one of the last pristine areas in garfield county we just started with a very modest request a hundred twenty days for

a new administration and we were turned down and we don't think twenty four days is enough for us to be able to really have a thoughtful and. too much that we don't know for us to be able to really respond in a very short amount of time so. the governor has made. in the summer of two thousand. and in eight in spite of protests from governor ritter and colorado legislators the bureau of land management went ahead with a federal auction of leases on the rhone plateau. the entire top of the plateau fifty five thousand acres it was leased nearly fifteen thousand citizens sent protest letters like the bureau found the protests to be without merit and issued the leases anyway our goal is zero incidence and zero impact on the environmental and. we're not there obviously. when we do have injuries where you

have. what we try and prevent them are in the past so we can sign a market enjoys the market across the road anywhere i mean you know that's not how it's not a more dangerous as natural gas we're not out in a while or all skills are natural gas and oil from them are dangerous. days hearing will examine loopholes in federal health and environmental protections that are exploited by the oil and gas industry as children we all learned about basic fairness and we know that it's not just not fair would someone gets to play by different rules than the rest of us but as we learned today there is one set of environmental rules for the oil and gas industry and a different set of rules for the rest of america the federal government's got to be involved in that this isn't something that the states can do definitely because this chemical testing is expensive states don't have the money would you think it

would be hard to find these chemicals if you waited for years to sample them definitely yes why does it you know why take so long to do the testing. because this is what you traditionally chest for are we not doing enough basic research into this area we are not there slipping through our safety net truly. there have been many attempts to create more balance between the interests of industry and those of surface owners. to impart to the activism of landowners and colorado in new mexico new legislation was passed in both states giving land owners some new rights but for industry it is still essentially business as usual the pace of new drilling continues to accelerate unabated attempts at regulatory change at the federal level have not been as successful the energy

bill was passed at house of representatives in two thousand and seven did include additional protections for surface owners when the oil and gas is owned by the federal government. that those provisions unfortunately did not make it into law. in the spring of two thousand and seven governor bill ritter signed one of the new colorado bills in change the makeup of the state commission that regulates the industry the ceremony was attended by some of the residents of garfield county island boy some. of these we had to hire to you know you have to honor their. house bill thirty forty one maybe one of the most significant things that we accomplished in this legislative session they reorganize the current oil and gas conservation commission we believe it brings a better balance to the commission so that's not dominated by any one interest

group but we're going to be responsible as we move forward but to be mindful of the impact is the number of drilling applications time as the number of the impact from plates climb as well. as half of the state of colorado or more sensible than gas barons known. and so this is an issue that will be with us for many many years to come and the decisions that we make today are going to define. how this will all transpire over the next twenty years. i hope that people of this state i hope people listening look at the fact that today we have close to five thousand wells have been drilled that's just in the northwestern area and if you look down the road fifteen years and you start cultivating sixty thousand wells sixty thousand

volts what is said to. williams but after respectfully declined to participate in your project. we struggled to hear back to like. you'd like to know that. we transfer. radio and radio. over. and over to them there's a cure for it i don't know if there is a store if you want the best year ever and that they feel that right. as in the rocky mountains the growth of domestic drilling is beginning to impact people and places across america in ways never imagined oil companies are seeking new leases in thirty two states since ninety nine hundred hundreds of

thousands of new wells are drilled and the pace of development is excel radian. incredibly drilling is now planned in the new york city watershed which provides drinking water to millions. but some feel it doesn't have to be this way. technologies available for industry to comply with all these mines and to conduct their business in a much cleaner way it's often affordable and it's often profitable we can make them do it better the traffic it's now in the industry are so high that there's no reason why they can't start using some new technology develop a new technology to capture the escaping gas and b.o.c. but also to do something with that water. when they capture these hazardous substances they can also capture more have their saleable product we need data

and we need data on animals we need data on humans we need data on the population and that requires again money a plan you know and doing. this for one or two this and this does serve the country through alternative energy we all use energy we all know we need energy there are a lot better ways we could do energy and i'd like to see us move towards a clean energy future what's most important is for congress to close these loopholes and to hold the oil and gas industry in the same standards as other industries if the industry way fifteen years down the road there he was answering some very hard questions to a jury and to a number of plaintiffs saying you know when it was so inexpensive to put some of the these pollution control equipment and practices on your operation why when you

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