twitter feed off here underscore calm where our correspondents in america share what they see on the sport up next hour part two of our special report from the rocky mountains in the u.s. where locals battle with an energy company drilling for gas right in their backyard . 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 silt laura amos was one of the earliest and loudest voices. as everyone in this room probably knows my groundwater has been contaminated with methane. gets a lot of people in this room with contamination and pollution issues so who then is responsible to me for that that loss of my welfare if it's not you the gas commission if a whale is drilled next to your residence near your residence within the legal setbacks and there's

a perceived or real impact on your property value we don't address that 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 fit is like soda pop. the 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 the 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 tumors. 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 and can a corp. 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 over the trampoline in spite of her well explosion and fire. 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 there were eggs and that weren't there and i was just working a while and you still got smells and that i just couldn't go outside it wasn't in the house but then they brought in the temporary rig because they were having problems with one of the holes i think and then the smells started up again because they were doing a fracking and it all blows right over here we had one back there behind us we had two on the side here that were all working you know flaring with gas and i have much more 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 any more and monday my husband took me to the emergency room hospital to get down.

that. yeah they've been pretty sick they've had colds as my girls. in fact. liam's as much 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 stage always where you see the highest percentage a possible health effects it's always skin irritation and blistering sinuses as coughing and then this effect called sensitizing it she's good earnest in d. still lives on dry hollow road shortly after this interview d's son and daughter in law and their four children moved out of the state 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 child lynched by a thirty year e.p.a. environmental engineer weston wilson acting under protected whistleblower status the former chairman c.e.o. of halliburton dick cheney within a few months of coming into office as vice president he was pressuring the administrators of e.p.a. christie todd whitman to exempt hydraulic fracking from safe drinking water act regulations my own point of view as a technician i just thought it 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 be reported or regular. and that led me in the fall of zero four to object on technical grounds then the inspector general of e.p.a. began an investigation of my complaints. and. several

months into that congress took the report from e.p.a. saying that fracking did not present a risk. along with other information and exempted hydraulic fracking from regulation under the safe drinking water act that lays you and i as the american public in this position we cannot know what the industry injects in our land. it is exempt from being reported. down the colorado river about nine miles to the west of silt is the town of rifle.

m. phone thought through. this is only needed one was . this is before. the problems with the rifle this is in the three. hundred years. it's been the worst fifteen years i'm i'm fifty four fifty nine. years. in one thousand nine hundred ninety three chris and steve 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 move 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. place and we plan to stay there for. 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 was ninety six. her skin was it was burning fire she was. steve began to develop symptoms as well i feel dizzy. i give 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 pituitary tumor and she developed a rare neurological speech impairment but i think i think i. always say. place. i've had several patients who have. been. having symptoms since the time they were exposed to oil and gas exploration near their homes these are all people in a small cluster around rifle. last year e.p.a. got 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 and 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 that e.p.a. was going to take over the investigation however as soon as we got that to our political appointee supervisors they canceled that investigation so e.p.a. did not investigate legitimate complaints from citizens in garfield county. if you lived in or in a rural residential area and you were in a low lying area your house was in a low lying area that could accumulate these gases when they come off the tank battery and so forth you may be breathing those for twelve hours a day 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 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 e.p.a. and e.p.a. brought in some infrared cameras. and turned them towards these oil and gas facilities under infrared light. the targeting commissions were visible. they looked like a. mirage. and so one could see in this in pretty good red camera the amount of volatile organic carbon coming off these storage tanks. every well is drilled into a strait and it has organic chemicals. oil is a mixture of these very heavy organics but it's a range from these kind of. very heavy oily stuff to stuff which is quite good

all those materials are very quickly all of those are potentially toxic but we don't know to what extent. many of them are dangerous ethylene for instance is converted to human. side is a car senator besides the drilling in their immediate neighborhood christene stever directly down window 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 my 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 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. 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 breathe it in. through your skin or a dose of the volatile organic compounds from the the shower water will be several times the dose you would have gotten from drinking water after we started thinking . that a glass of water left over there was like 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. just. you know. 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 had seen the same thing in their neighborhood in rifle i think almost all of our neighbors. and all the people that occupy the houses now are all people who work for the world.

and. there's a growing. on the part of people who live in the path of. living with this development has affected our lives in nearly every way imaginable we. have become activists. i think there's no question people are getting sick from the environmental effects of oil and 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 in another area. states like new mexico and colorado are caught between intense pressure from the federal government to lease more land for drilling and the desire to protect the land and their citizens. in june of two thousand and seven newly elected colorado governor bill ritter was faced with a critical confrontation with the bureau of land management an agency of the interior. 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 improve. too much that we don't know for us to be able to really respond in a very short amount of time. with secretary. requests . 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 the federal auction of leases on the rhone plateau. the entire top of the plateau fifty five thousand acres was leased nearly fifteen thousand citizens sent protest letters but the bureau found the protests to be without merit and issued the leases anyway our goal is ciro incidence and zero impact on the environment and . we're not there obviously. we do have injuries we do have bills. but we try and prevent them and we do the best that we can. get across the

road anywhere i mean you know it's not oh it's not any more dangerous as natural gas or not talk in a while or the natural gas. today's hearing will examine loopholes in federal health and environmental protections that are exploited by the oil industry as children we all learned about basic fairness and we know that it's not just not fair when 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 test 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. due in part to the activism of landowners in colorado and new mexico new legislation was passed in both states giving landowners 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 that was passed by the halves 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 it changed the makeup of the state commission that regulates the industry the ceremony was attended by some of the residents of garfield county island boys. and these we had. to offer their. thirty forty one may be one of the most significant things that we accomplished in this legislative session to reorganize the card only gas cuts of fish 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 climb as the number of effect flights climb as well. half of the state of colorado or more. and so. this is an issue that will be with us for many many years to come in the decisions that we make today are going to define. how this we're all. over the next twenty years. the fact that today we have close to five thousand wells have been drilled in the northwestern area and if you. fifteen years. sixty thousand wells sixty thousand wells. williams is

going to have to respectfully decline to participate in your project. radio. to them. if you wish you the best in your endeavor and thank you for your consideration. 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 nineteen ninety hundreds of thousands of new wells have been drilled and the pace of development is excel or.

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. technology is available for industry to comply with all these laws 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 profits now in the industry are so high that there's no reason why they can't start using some new technology develop the new technology to capture the escaping gases the video sees but also to do something with that water. when they capture these has to substances they can also capture more of their saleable product we need data. we need data on

humans we need a population. that requires again money a plan you know doing. this for us in 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 at the same standards as other industries if the industry way it's fifteen years down the road 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 these pollution control equipment and practices on your operation why when you knew that there were sicknesses you know why didn't you do it.

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cause honest boy. not all. right to say. he's not a good sign to reach out. beyond the confines you do not. then sign. with us on. this.

well the british soil the sun. spot on the. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser reports.

with twenty five dead and three hundred injured egypt's military rulers ordered an investigation into the deadly its rise in cairo since the revolution be as clashes between christians and security forces. paul says the european leaders work against the clock to try to save the view from an economic disaster russia said it could help faltering eurozone economies by buying up debt but only out to brussels produces a clear strategy on how to exit the crisis. and wall street to bed until straight on to the question say increase the pressure as a protest gather pain pace throughout the us and spread to other countries while demonstrating the keys police the bully boy tactics and making groundless i bet. and our correspondent the new yorker in the very heart of the protests for you so follow our twitter stream at all t underscore call to find out the nature stop dates but right now and because it's report well knocks.