Stephen Colbert satirically skewered Talisman Energy’s “Talisman Terry” coloring book character Monday night, following the sad tale to its conclusion with the loveable “frack-osaurus” ultimately lighting himself on fire in a natural-gas-contaminated shower scene.

Colbert took aim at Talisman and its 145 violations for various fracking infractions in a skit on the controversial natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing. The company’s coloring book has been widely lampooned for trying to sell the drilling technique, which critics say can contaminate groundwater, to kids. It’s the gas patch equivalent of Joe Camel.

Talisman Terry

Colbert was hitting on fracking in response to the recent debate surrounding New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to pursue partially lifting the hydrofracking ban in that state. The Comedy Central host also couldn’t resist commenting on Cuomo’s recent signing of New York’s same-sex marriage law.

“He just signed a bill saying gay couple could legally frack each other … why can’t energy companies drill in our backyards?” Colbert quipped.

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a high-pressure cocktail of water, sand and undisclosed – but in some cases toxic – chemicals deep into the ground to fracture the earth and free up more gas. Here’s Colbert’s colorful and hilarious description of the process: “It’s like giving the earth an Alka-Seltzer, if the Alka-Seltzer shattered your internal organs so that oil companies could harvest your juices.”

With Colbert now ripping on the industry for such transparent attempts to gloss over the dangers of fracking, the debate has clearly entered into the mainstream. It’s been a fringe topic in Colorado and other natural gas hotbeds for years, but the boom in the Marcellus Shale of New York and Pennsylvania has now made the process a hot national topic. View the entire “Colbert Report” segment here:

Citizen activists on Colorado’s Western Slope are pointing to a Texas case of well-water contamination caused by oil and gas drilling activity as a prime example of what they want to avoid in this state and what regulators should be guarding against in heavily drilled Garfield County.

“This is what we are trying to prevent in Battlement Mesa,” said Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens, referring to an “Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Order” issued last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in South Park County, Texas, just west of Fort Worth.

While the EPA didn’t specifically blame the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for flammable and bubbling drinking water coming out of the taps of two Texas homes, the federal agency did point to the process in its press release:

“EPA believes that natural gas plays a key role in our nation’s clean energy future and the process known as hydraulic fracturing is one way of accessing that vital resource. However, we want to make sure natural gas development is safe. As we announced earlier this year, we are in the process of conducting a comprehensive study on the potential impact of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.

“In the meantime, EPA has made energy extraction sector compliance with environmental laws one of EPA’s National Enforcement Initiatives for 2011 to 2013. The initiative focuses on areas of the country where energy extraction activities such as hydraulic fracturing are concentrated, and EPA’s enforcement activities will vary with the type of activity and pollution problem presented.”

Oil and gas industry officials have long maintained that fracking – a process that injects water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep underground to fracture tight geological formations and free up more natural gas – has never been proven to have caused a single case of drinking water contamination.

Opponents of fracking maintain that’s because the chemicals used in the process are kept secret for proprietary reasons and therefore can’t be traced. They want the federal government to compel companies to publicly disclose the chemical cocktail used in fracking. In the recent Texas case, the EPA cited elevated and dangerous levels of methane, which can cause explosions and fires, and benzene, which can be cancer-causing if ingested.

Industry officials in Colorado admit drilling activity has caused some cases of groundwater contamination, such as the Divide Creek Seep, but they blame faulty cement jobs in natural gas wells and other technological failures, not fracking, which they say is done deep underground and far from groundwater sources.

Texas-based Range Resources denies its activity led to the contamination, because its wells are in the “Barnett Shale formation, which is over a mile below the water zone.” But the wells are near the impacted homes, and in some Colorado communities, there’s a real fear that ramped-up drilling near increasingly dense residential areas will lead to similar cases.

Battlement Mesa, a community of more than 5,000 in unincorporated Garfield County, is faced with up to 200 new natural gas wells under a proposal by Denver-based Antero Resources. Residents there say the operator has proposed three new gas wells just outside the Planned Unit Development (PUD) in order to skirt county special use permit hearings.

Just last week, Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC) won assurances from the three-member board of county commissioners that they would intervene with the state on those wells and request a permitting delay until an outside Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is completed.
“That was the best we could hope for,” BCC’s Devanney said. “They’re intervening; they’re going to call for a meeting; and they’re going to propose the [Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Committee] defer until after the HIA is done.”

The draft HIA, paid for by the county, is still being finalized.

“The comprehensive and complex nature of the comments received on the draft HIA has resulted in the need for further discussion between the [board of county commissioners] and the [Colorado School of Public Health] research team,” Garfield County environmental health officer Jim Rada said in an email. The board will again discuss the study at another meeting today in Glenwood Springs.

The BCC group last week also continued its push for the county to utilize its 1041 powers over gas drilling, which other counties have successfully used to direct infrastructure projects such as water diversion and power lines. Named for a 1974 bill, 1041 rules have never been used to regulate oil and gas drilling.

“It’s time for the county to step up to the plate and take more action to protect the citizens of the county here from the impacts of the intensity of oil and gas regulations, especially near residential communities, and hopefully they got that message,” BCC’s Ron Galterio said.

An Antero official did not return a call requesting comment.

Another Denver-based drilling company made headlines last week in the eastern part of the country.

Anschutz Exploration Company, owned by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, has been linked to contaminated wells in New York’s massive Marcellus Shale play, although a company spokesman disputed it was the result of their drilling activities, which did not include fracking.

Denver-based Antero Resources, the company involved in Battlement Mesa, recently announced its own new venture into the Marcellus Shale, acquiring a West Virginia company (pdf) with holdings in that state and Pennsylvania.

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In Colorado, the controversial but widely used process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has been hotly debated the last several years. Critics say the high pressure injection of water and undisclosed chemicals meant to fracture shale and free up gas can lead to the contamination of groundwater. Industry officials deny such allegations.

Colorado’s senior congresswoman, Democrat Diana DeGette, introduced a bill last year meant to repeal an exemption for fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005. DeGette’s FRAC Act has languished in Congress, but now the EPA is studying the process.

ProPublica reports Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has indicated he opposes the ordinance banning gas drilling — which some say may be illegal because it prohibits a controversial but otherwise lawful commercial endeavor — and that the mayor has 10 days to review and possibly veto the measure. Six council votes would be needed to override his veto.

The Marcellus Shale, which runs under much of Pennsylvania and New York, has brought significant attention to natural gas drilling and the fracking process because it’s taking place in highly populous areas near major drinking water sources, including rivers and streams that feed the New York City water supply.

Fox’s 16-minute short on the industry last year, called “Life in the Red Zone,” featured flaming tap water near Fort Lupton in Weld County, but the Colorado portions of Gasland focus on Garfield County, where activists and property owners like Lisa Bracken and Tara Meixsell have been persistently warning of air and water pollution stemming from drilling activities.

Gasland won a prestigious special jury prize at the most recent Sundance (Utah) Film Festival, and The New York Times today had this description of Fox: “Like a less manic Michael Moore, Mr. Fox capitalizes on people’s refusals to be interviewed, presenting several montages in which he is seen supposedly making repeated, fruitless phone calls to corporate offices.”

Fox, in fact, tried to interview Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director David Neslin, who has consistently answered questions for the Colorado Independent, and the Times takes Fox to task for not providing the context of his interview requests.

“… What we don’t see with any real specificity is how these people were approached or what they were told about the film, leaving it difficult to make judgments about their refusals to appear on camera,” the Times notes regarding Fox’s unsuccessful attempts to interview Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and various oil and gas CEOs.

There have been two previous showings of Gasland in Colorado, late last month in Telluride and Paonia, and industry officials have reportedly been working hard to discredit the film – much as some oil and gas representatives questioned the journalism value of “Split Estate,” another documentary that examined gas drilling in Garfield County.

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The idea is a hot topic among those favoring increased federal oversight of the process, but industry officials won’t even discuss the idea, and state regulators say it’s barely on their radar screens.

Frack-water pipes in a rural neighborhood in Texas (Photo: TxSharon)

“It’s my understanding that it might be conceivable to use a chemical tag with fracking fluid,” said David Neslin, executive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC). “I’m not aware of anyone who’s doing that, and we went through an extensive rule-making last year and I don’t recall that being proposed as part of our rule-making process by any of the participants.”

Neslin said a number of other state safeguards were put in place to regulate hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, when the new COGCC rules were adopted by the legislature last spring, but chemical tagging was not one of them. Nor does he or anyone on his staff think it’s necessary.

“I’ve worked here for quite some time and we’ve never seen a groundwater contamination that was related to a frack job that occurred while the fracking was going on,” said COGCC environmental manager Debbie Baldwin. “Nonetheless, we’ve investigated complaints where people have alleged that they’ve been impacted by frack fluids and … and we will look for the major components of frack fluids to see whether or not an impact has occurred.

“So no, we’re not looking at operator-specific, or manufacturer-specific tags, but we certainly look for the chemical constituents of the frack fluid.”

Fracking involves injecting at extremely high pressures a mixture of mostly water and sand with a low percentage of undisclosed chemicals deep into natural gas wells in order to fracture tight geological formations and free up more gas. Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette last summer (D-Denver) introduced the FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) to mandate EPA oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Industry officials contend there has never been a verified case of groundwater contamination resulting from the process, although critics say that’s because officials don’t know what chemicals to test for. And recent cases in Pennsylvania suggest fracturing operations deep underground can communicate with groundwater.

A spokeswoman for Williams, the most active natural gas producer on Colorado’s Western Slope, referred questions about the concept of chemical tagging to the COGCC. And at a meeting last week of the Garfield County Energy Advisory Board, an associate professor of the Petroleum Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines referred chemical tagging questions to the COGCC as well.

“It would seem to me with all the chemical compounds we have out here anymore, they could come up with some chemical that’s relatively inert that could be issued to a company so that when they frack Exxon’s well or Encana’s well or Williams’ well, whatever chemical is assigned to them has to be a part of that fracking fluid,” said Bob Elderkin, a biologist and retired oil and gas specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management who now lives near Silt.

“Then if we have an upset condition, now all we have to do is check for one chemical and whatever that chemical is, if there’s no other people are drilling there, then it’s pretty obvious, but the very presence of that specific chemical in somebody’s well or in the creek ties right back to the company. That would just prove that you are in fact polluting something.”

Industry officials argue EPA oversight and the FRAC Act’s requirement to publicly disclose fracking fluid chemicals to regulators is akin to Coke being forced to share its secret formula with Pepsi. Elderkin and other industry critics aren’t buying that argument.

“They could keep the fracking mix confidential but the tag should be public information,” he said. “It’s just one chemical. It has nothing to do with the fracking fluid; all it does is identify it.”

But Neslin said in the many meetings he’s had with his regulatory counterparts from other states he’s never heard chemical tracers or tags for fracking fluids even being discussed.

In New York, where the state is on the verge of a major drilling boom in the Marcellus Shale, some politicians are calling for an outright drilling ban in New York City’s water supply, while others say tracers should be used to show what potential pollution is occurring from current drilling operations.

Leslie Robinson, a Rifle-based activist with the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, says there’s a good reason the industry doesn’t want to uses tracers to either prove or disprove fracking contamination.

“I brought up the idea about a chemical tracer at the [Garfield County] Energy Advisory Board meeting and a COGCC employee was there, too,” Robinson said. “The comments from industry were they don’t know all the chemicals used in fracking fluid since its proprietary info, let alone introduce another chemical in the mix. And the COGCC guy said there are 40,000 wells in Colorado and it would be impracticable to come up with that many different chemical tracers.”

She added that the costs associated with such a process would be a sticking point for the industry.

“Some chemical engineer out there could make some money if they ‘invented’ chemical tracers for drilling rigs,” Robinson said. “However, probably only a random surface owner would pay for it. Keeping drill rig seep sources as confusing to trace as possible, reasonable deniability, seems to work for the industry … and the state.”

However, Neslin said such tracers would not have had any effect in the two most high-profile cases of contamination in Garfield County – West Divide Creek and Prather Springs – because neither one resulted from a fracking operation.

Drilling pads on the Roan Plateau

The FRAC Act, introduced by Colorado congressional members Diana DeGette (D-Denver) and Jared Polis (D-Boulder), as well as New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey, seeks to regulate the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Critics say the process, which injects water, sand and chemicals deep into gas wells, can contaminate drinking water supplies.

According to a story in Saturday’s Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation has recorded 270 incidents of “wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979.”

Only 60 of those incidents were discovered by the DEC, with the rest reported by residents or other public safety officials. In a refrain similar to Colorado, DEC officials in New York say current state regulations are adequate to police the industry even in the face of a looming drilling surge to tap into the massive Marcellus Shale – the nation’s largest gas field.

Colorado officials, with some of the toughest drilling regulations in the nation, say they can handle fracking and don’t need Congress to lift a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005. But critics here say there have been too many cases of water contamination by unknown chemicals related to fracking.

Public disclosure of the chemicals is unnecessary and would compromise valuable trade secrets, oil and gas industry officials claim.

Walter Hang, president of Toxic Targeting, put together the list of New York incidents. According to the Press & Sun-Bulletin, Hang directs an environmental research firm that provides information to engineers, consultants and municipalities. “We’re students of how you clean this crap up,” he told the paper. “That’s what we really care about.”

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Josh Fox, apparently concerned about the looming natural gas boom in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania and New York, jumped in his car, drove west and filmed Fort Lupton, Colo., residents lighting their tap water on fire because of excess methane in their well water that they attribute to nearby natural gas drilling. Check out the film on Fox’s website waterunderattack.com.

Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director David Neslin, the state official charged with permitted and regulating the natural gas industry in Colorado, declined to do an interview on camera, instead offering to go off the record and provide background to Fox.

Neslin, who has spoken to the Colorado Independent, does not support the FRAC Act, introduced by Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis (as well as New York congressman Maurice Hinchey) because he says the state already has the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing covered and that federal regulation would spread his staff too thin.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals into gas wells to free up more natural gas. Critics claim fracking is introducing chemicals and gas into groundwater supplies and sickening an increasing number of residents of heavily drilled regions, or “Red Zones.”

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Held up by proponents of proposed federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as yet another example of potential environmental problems associated with the process, the Pennsylvania case has been portrayed as another warning sign in the ongoing natural gas boom in the Mid-Atlantic region’s Marcellus Shale formation.

In Colorado’s heavily drilled Garfield County, commissioners are weighing a resolution supporting federal legislation co-sponsored by Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis that would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for fracking that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005.

While some Coloradans are concerned about water quality and wildlife habitat in the Rocky Mountains, opponents of the boom in the Marcellus Shale are worried New York City’s watershed may be compromised by fracking, which involves injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals into tight rock and sand formations to force out more natural gas.

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Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has been a source of ongoing debate in Colorado, where Garfield County residents say their water wells have been contaminated by undisclosed chemicals contained in solutions of water and sand that are injected into gas wells to free up more gas from tight geological formations.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, D-Denver, has introduced the FRAC Act to bring the process under federal control and require disclosure of proprietary chemicals under the Safe Drinking Water Act, but the oil and gas industry has bitterly opposed the legislation, pointing to a spotless record of virtually no water-contamination cases directly connected to fracking.

U.S. Rep Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., co-sponsored the bill because of the impacts of the gas boom going on in his district, which is part of the massive Marcellus Shale Formation that stretches into northeastern Pennsylvania.

When Hinchey and DeGette introduced the FRAC Act in June, one part-time resident of Dimock, Carolyn Wells, told the Colorado Independent natural gas drilling was destroying the formerly sleepy, rural getaway for residents of New York City and Philadelphia.

“People started leasing their land like crazy during the past two years, without reading the fine print or doing any research on what it means. All they see is dollar signs that they think they will get,” Wells said in June. “I can’t believe people will sacrifice clean air and water for money. Doesn’t do too much good if your environment is toxic or you get cancer.”

ProPublica has reported on previous cases of contamination near Dimock related to drilling operations by Texas-based Cabot Oil and Gas, but the latest spill, blamed on faulty pipe work, resulted in a significant fish kill and other fish “swimming erratically,” according to Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection.

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