Even before tonight’s jobs speech, conservation groups in Colorado and across the Rocky Mountain West say it’s clear President Barack Obama has chosen polluting industry jobs over other employment sectors, demoralizing the environmental base ahead of the 2012 campaign.

Last week’s decision by the Obama administration to shelve tougher EPA smog standards, coming hard on the heels of the State Department’s nod to the Keystone XL pipeline, has many mainstream environmentalists wondering if young, green voters will turn out for Obama next year the way they did in 2008.

“[The smog decision’s] a huge mistake politically, and I don’t understand it at all,” Dr. Brian Moench, president of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told the Colorado Independent. “Unless they’re calculating that by doing this they will capture campaign funds from the polluting industry that would have gone to the Republicans, and I don’t even see that as a possibility.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Mary Tuma)

As Republican in Congress, including members of Colorado’s delegation, call for even more regulatory rollbacks for the oil and gas industry to create jobs, polls on the ground in Colorado show voters don’t want to improve the economy at the expense of the environment.

And a new report from Headwaters Economics analyzing federal labor statistics (pdf) finds that the oil and gas industry is doing just fine in the current regulatory environment.

“During this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the energy industry has boomed, adding roughly 10,000 jobs a month, and drilling activity is approaching a 30-year high,” according to the report. “This activity already has increased so quickly this year that the sector is starting to fear shortages of skilled labor and machinery.”

In Colorado, where former Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy” focused on conservation and renewables has in some ways been the sole economic bright spot, observers say that the White House has shown some environmental leadership, but ultimately not nearly enough.

Starting with the climate bill …

Colorado Conservation Voters Executive Director Pete Maysmith cited as a positive Obama’s much tougher CAFE (gas mileage) standards for automakers. Others point to a long list of disappointments dating back to the failure in 2009 of a comprehensive climate bill, saying the administration has basically given back any gains from increased vehicle mileage.

“Since the climate bill in particular or moving forward from there, there has been this clear indication that all too often actions to better protect our air and water and address climate change are not the top priority of this administration and are at risk of being jettisoned away,” Maysmith said.

In an interview with the Colorado Independent on energy topics last spring, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi placed blame on both the Senate and environmentalists for the failure of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that narrowly cleared the House.

“The House passes a bill; the Senate passes a bill. That’s the way it works,” Pelosi said. “They can do something different. It wasn’t theology for us. We always thought there’d be something less coming in from the Senate; we didn’t think there’d be nothing.”

And she added environmentalists should have lobbied the Senate harder. Now those groups are dejected by the missed opportunity that may have set the tone for future setbacks.

“I’ve been very clear to the [conservation] community,” Pelosi said, “They really had to work the Senate a lot harder than they did.”

‘The alternative is much worse’

But while environmentalists may be disaffected by the latest Obama administration actions, front-running Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said during Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate that “the science is not settled on [human-caused climate change]. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet, to me, is just nonsense.”

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was the only GOP candidate Wednesday night who said Republicans can’t win in 2012 by denying the body of scientific evidence.

“[Perry’s] an environmental clown, so the alternative [to Obama] is much worse,” Utah physician Moench said of the president’s recent decisions. “But it’s going to affect people’s willingness to try and work at the grassroots level, to donate. It will affect turnout to a certain degree and it’s certainly going to have an effect on turnout for younger voters who traditionally are more in tune with environmental concerns.”

Maysmith said the smog ruling in particular appeared to be more of a political decision than an economic one.

“I’d call it a political decision that indicated some lack of willingness to stand by one’s principles in the face of shout radio and the right-wing tea partiers in Congress, and that is a bit mystifying and certainly frustrating,” Maysmith said.

He added it’s ironic that at a time when the Republican Party is regrettably swinging more and more to the right, denying science and becoming increasingly shrill, the White House isn’t standing up for common-sense environmental policy.

“For people who care about our air and our water, many of them are going to look at someone like candidate Perry and think, ‘No way, that’s not an option,’” Maysmith said. “At that exact moment they’re going to look at some of these decisions coming out of the White House and they’re going to inevitably be deeply disappointed in them. And it will have the effect in some instances of depressing energy and enthusiasm for the 2012 campaign.”

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/98813/green-voter-anger-at-obama-could-open-door-for-environmental-clown-perry-observers-say/feed 6 http://coloradoindependent.com/98113/bennet-and-udall-send-jobs-report-to-obama http://coloradoindependent.com/98113/bennet-and-udall-send-jobs-report-to-obama#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:54:42 +0000 Scot Kersgaard http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=98113 On the heals of Rep. Diana DeGette hosting a women's business forum with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall and Governor John Hickenlooper, Wednesday sent President Obama a report on innovation and job creation prepared earlier this year by Coloradans for an Innovation Economy, a group representing business and academia.]]>

On the heals of Rep. Diana DeGette hosting a women’s business forum with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall and Governor John Hickenlooper, Wednesday sent President Obama a report on innovation and job creation prepared earlier this year by Coloradans for an Innovation Economy, a group representing business and academia.

“As a delegation, we are committed to working together to build the right environment in Colorado and the country for innovation to thrive,” the authors said in a letter accompanying the report. “We believe that the Colorado Competes Report serves as a good template for a serious discussion on how we can spur innovation and put our country back to work.”

Coloradans for an Innovation Economy came together earlier this year at Bennet’s request to identify ways to promote economic competitiveness at the state and national levels through a greater focus on innovation and cross-sector collaboration. The group includes representatives from business and academia and was co-chaired by Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems; and Holli Riebel, President and CEO of the Colorado Bioscience Association.

From the report:

Even during the worst recession since the Great Depression, we saw our innovation-based industries grow in Colorado.8 Our state is 6th in clean energy employment. We have the third largest aerospace industry in the country, represented by more than 400 companies across the state. We have the 6th largest medical device industry in the country, and bioscience in Colorado is represented by more than 1,000 establishments, employing more than 100,000 people. Our state ranks 2nd in SBIR Innovation Research grants, 3rd in high tech employment, and10th in the number of granted patents.

Many of our economic indicators are strong, but we believe Colorado is in danger of losing its competitive position relative to the rest of the country and the world. Colorado‟s rankings in per-capita personal income and domination of the aerospace industry have declined in recent years. Over the last few years, our state has been losing venture capital dollars, and export dollars from Colorado are the 4th lowest in the country. Colorado is 48th in spending on higher education putting us at risk of losing our competitive workforce.10 In addition, a recent report gave our state only a “D+” in its manufacturing efforts.

Meanwhile, the national and global competition is running full steam ahead. As the Denver Metro Chamber recently stated, “Many of Colorado‟s competitors are far more focused on what we call „purposeful economic development.‟ Countries such as China are acquiring major stakes in rare minerals and playing an increasingly prominent role in the purchase of oil reserves in places such as Canada. Other countries have made giant leaps in the number of scientists, engineers and mathematicians they train for entry into the workforce. For these competitors, the future is now.”

…

Though each of our industries interacts with different federal agencies, we are all hampered by a federal regulatory structure that seems more intent catching our mistakes, than working with us to help us succeed. In an economy where competition is fierce, we are spending greater and greater time and resources complying with sometimes conflicting federal requirements.

We understand the need for regulation, but along with that understanding we desire a partnership with the government than enables both sides to succeed in making Coloradans better off. Several states have initiated a process under which excessive, redundant or wasteful regulations are examined and if determined not to be needed, eliminated. We recommend that you look into pursuing a similar effort at the state and federal levels.

Bennet, Hickenlooper and Udall also wrote a letter to Obama in which they express the hope that Obama will consider the report in drafting a national jobs creation plan. Obama is scheduled to deliver a jobs plan in a nationally televised address on Sept. 8.

Jobs seems to be on everyone’s mind these days, and for good reason. DeGette’s event, held on the Auraria campus, brought seven female business people together to talk about how Congress can help small business owners–especially women–succeed in the current climate.

The women on the panel were not shy about pointing their fingers at what they said was too much regulation and a tax environment that favors large corporations over small business.

DeGette started the forum by saying there are 12,200 women owned businesses in the Denver area, employing about 117,000 people and doing about $19 billion in annual sales.

Despite all the progress toward equality in the country over the past decades, she said women in America still earn only about 78 percent of what men earn for the same jobs.

Pelosi noted that everyone is talking about “jobs, jobs, jobs” but that figuring out how to create more of them is hard. “There is nothing more optimistic than starting a business,” she said before adding the possible exception of getting married, which got a good laugh out of the mostly female audience.

Pelosi said it is no surprise that Americans are disillusioned with Congress, to which DeGette added that people elect Congress to get things done. “Instead they see bickering and division.”

Both women lobbied for The Dream Act and Pelosi said the country is constantly redefining itself as new people come in search of the American Dream.

“What I need from Congress is first to do no more harm,” said Gail Lindley, owner of Denver Bookbinding Company. “We need the confidence that we can grow jobs,” she said. Lindley said small businesses typically pay about 33 percent higher taxes than larger corporations.

Selena Dunham, owner of training firm Classique, said her company grew tremendously in the early 2000s before crashing in 2009. She said when times were good she was proud to offer health insurance benefits to employees but had to drop it when her business fell. She argued for tax incentives to small businesses that offer health insurance and also noted that some of her clients have government contracts and when she does work related to one of those contracts she doesn’t get paid until her client gets paid. “We need prompt payment from the government,” she said.

Kristy Schloss, owner of Schloss Engineered Equipment, said her company has benefited from stimulus spending. “We are alive because of the stimulus,” she said of her 113-year-old company. She said the country needs to do a better job of maintaining its infrastructure of bridges, roads, and water systems, many of which she said are failing.

Purnima Voria, Founder/CEO of the National US India Chamber of Commerce, noted that only 11 Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs. She said corporations need to do a better job of placing and promoting women into jobs where they can compete for CEO slots later.

Diana Gadison, owner of Early Success Academy in Montbello, recounted growing up on welfare then watching her mother go to college to become a teacher and believing she could anything if she tried hard enough. As a business owner, though, she complained about regulation, even saying some regulations seem to cancel out other regulations do the point that she just wants to say “forget it” sometimes.

Lynn Gangone, Dean of the University of Denver Women’s College, said that only about 2.4 percent of woman-owned businesses ever reach $1 million in annual sales and that access to capital remains one of the most challenging aspects of starting or running a small business. She also noted that 60 percent of all new jobs being created in Denver require a college education.

At the end of the meeting, DeGette noted “three threads” that ran through the discussion: access to capital, the need for less regulation and the desire for tax relief. She said the country needs to eliminate duplicitous and unneeded regulation while ensuring “health and well-being.”

If tax relief were to be pursued, she said it should be for the small businesses that need it, not large corporations.

Pelosi said a better system of childcare that is more affordable and more available to working women would be a huge step that would not only be good for business, “but is a business itself.”

She said that most new jobs in the country will be created by small businesses. “Most wealth is created by small business,” she added.

She said Congress is looking at a number of pieces of jobs legislation. “We have to make our own environment for success, winning the future by shaping it ourselves. She said public policy needs to be crafted that inspires people to “follow their passions. We have always been a country of opportunity and hope,” Pelosi said.

Critics of the 2011 Republican battle against abortion on Capitol Hill and in capitals around the country have said it’s about more than abortion. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, told the Colorado Independent this spring that the GOP push had exposed a large percentage of Republican lawmakers as anti-contraception and opposed to family planning. That assertion is supported by the vote and related discussion in New Hampshire last week that rejected a $1.8 million state contract for Planned Parenthood’s family planning and disease prevention and treatment services. The contract had been in place for decades.

Wieczorek: 'If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?'

The state’s all-Republican Executive Council, which approves state contracts as a check on legislative and gubernatorial power, voted 3 to 2 against Planned Parenthood.

According to the Concord Monitor, Executive Councilor Dan St. Hilaire said the contract should go to an organization that does not perform abortions. Councilor Raymond Wieczorek asked if contracts could exclude the issuance of condoms, adding that he supports paying to test for sexually transmitted diseases but does not believe the state should subsidize contraception.

“If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?” he said about women seeking contraception.

The Monitor reports that New Hampshire’s Planned Parenthood abortion practice is funded through private donations, an assertion backed up by regular audits.

The Monitor also compiled some relevant statistics:

Last year, Planned Parenthood provided contraception for 13,242 patients in New Hampshire, Trombley said. The organization also provided 6,112 breast exams, 5,548 screenings for cervical cancer and 18,858 tests for sexually transmitted infections. If the contract is not renewed, Planned Parenthood will drastically reduce its services, Trombley said. The organization employs 80 people in New Hampshire.

Six Planned Parenthood clinics in the state have reportedly stopped dispensing contraception. Women who came to the clinics looking to fill prescriptions for birth control pills only to be turned away told the Monitor they were baffled by the logic of the councilors, men who say they are against abortion and yet refuse to support planning that prevents unwanted pregnancies.

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Indiana Republican lawmakers stripped funding from Planned Parenthood last month and in doing so made contraception unaffordable for thousands of Medicaid patients. The battle over the law in Indiana is another high-profile example of the way Republicans, in seeking to pass sweeping anti-abortion bills, have unveiled a longstanding antipathy among a growing bloc of Republican lawmakers to the kind of basic family planning that the vast majority Americans have come to embrace instinctively as a modern-world human right, according to Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

“People now know what we’ve been trying to tell them for years and in my case for decades,” Pelosi told the Colorado Independent earlier this spring. “People can see it. The actions and the legislation they’re pushing make it very clear that these [Republicans] are against family planning and contraception. For years, we have not been able to get a vote on the floor [of the House] for even benign issues of women’s health because [Republicans] tie them all to the abortion issue.

“They have taken this to such an extreme place that it has awakened women in America and people who care about women’s health,” she said.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt is reviewing the Indiana law and is expected to rule by the end of the month. The intent, ostensibly, was to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood as the “leader in the abortion industry,” as proponents of the law have put it. Yet federal statutes already bar public funding from paying for abortions, including at Planned Prenthood, and it is illegal to prevent Medicaid patients from using their coverage to receive the non-abortion services and drugs, such as pap smears, pre-natal care, cancer screenings and birth control pills, that Planned Parenthood is also a leader in providing. Medicaid administrators have sent a letter to Indiana saying as much and the Justice Department has similarly informed Judge Pratt.

Since the law passed last month, Planned Parenthood has been paying for women on Medicaid in Indiana to receive care but strapped clinics are likely to shut down soon.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told Medicaid patients that health services are available at other clinics. As media outlets in the state have reported, however, clinics designed to treat poor women will be few and far between once Planned Parenthood is taken out of the picture.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow recently reviewed the new Indiana law and talked with Betty Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

DeGette told the Colorado Independent that the Republican position, adopted widely in the states and in the capital, is untenable, that Americans don’t support it and that it has gridlocked women’s health issues in Congress.

DeGette heads the congressional pro-choice caucus and has been leading the defense against anti-abortion legislation this year.

“People come up to me in church,” she said. “They ask me if it’s really true that Republicans were going to shut down the government over funding for family planning.

“‘Yeah they would have,’ I said.”

It hasn’t always been this way. DeGette said extreme social conservatives have backed GOP lawmakers into a corner.

“What the far right does is they say everything is about abortion. If you’re cutting Planned Parenthood, pap smears, breast cancer screenings, that’s all related to cutting abortion.”

Even though that messaging strategy has been very successful, DeGette believes it will ultimately fail.

“Average American women, they might think Well, I’ll never need an abortion, but if you say to them ‘These lawmakers want to shut down Planned Parenthood,’ then women say, ‘Wooah. I just went there for my annual exam. I don’t have money for health insurance.’ So this affects women right where they are.”

DeGette said the general stand taken now by Republicans, where family planning is equated with abortion, has made it “very hard for people of good intent” in Washington to work together to bolster women’s health.

“There’s a real bipartisan tradition of pro-family planning. On the board of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains there are many Republicans,” she said. “But in Congress, Republicans are being pushed not just into an anti-abortion position but also into an anti-family planning, an anti-birth control position.”

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GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Mormon former governor of Massachusetts who led the nation in government-based health reform, is already no favorite with the Tea Party-wing of the Republican electorate. He has now cemented that unpopularity by saying in public what he said in his book last year: that he stands behind the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists who believe that the planet is warming and that that’s a bad thing and that humans are no small part of the problem– not that he’s going to do anything about it, policy-wise.

Still, Romney may be the only Republican 2012 presidential candidate and is definitely one of a dwindling number of Republican lawmakers in Washington and around the country who will either admit to believing in man-made global warming or at least admit to once believing in man-made global warming.

His rivals Newt Gingrich and John Huntsman believed in it, once upon a time.

There’s little place for the Romneys of the right in today’s Republican party. For perspective, it’s worth re-looking at the ThinkProgress rundown of the “climate zombie” Congress elected to make laws for the country last November:

Well over half (55 percent) of the incoming Republican caucus are [climate-change deniers]. Thirty-five of the 46 (76 percent) Republicans in the U.S. Senate next year publicly question the science of global warming. Of the 240 Republicans elected to the House of Representatives, 125 (52 percent) publicly question the science.

Of the freshmen Republicans 36 of 85 in the House and 11 of 13 in the Senate have publicly questioned the science. There are no freshmen Republicans, in the House or Senate, who publicly accept the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is an immediate threat.

Nearly all the rest of the Republicans in the 112th Caucus either signed the “No Climate Tax” pledge from the climate-denier Koch Industries front group Americans For Prosperity, the “No Cap-And-Tax” Tea Party pledge, or co-sponsored a resolution to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse pollution threatens the American public’s health and welfare.

Top national thermal-earth-geo-climate scientists John Abraham, Michael Mann, Michael Oppenheimer and Peter Gleick have led in the fight against anti-climate change science politics. They have written op-eds and letters to Congress that are bold and clear on the matter. An excerpt from Politico:

Th[e] science-free approach serves only the interests of oil and coal producers and other big polluters who don’t want Congress — or the American people — to know what decades of scientific research have revealed about current climate trends and the growing future risks we face.

Science is the Achilles heel for those who try to perpetuate the myth that climate change is not occurring, or that the massive build-up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is not the main reason the climate is changing. There is no serious disagreement in the scientific community that global temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising, the oceans are becoming more acidic and that fossil fuel combustion is the primary cause.

In addition, the rapid shrinking of Arctic sea ice and the pattern of extreme weather and climate — including widespread drought, extraordinarily intense rainstorms, heat waves and wildfires — reflect more than just natural climate variability.

That piece came in March ahead of congressional hearings on climate change, where scientists were asked to testify for the one side and conservative pundits were asked to testify for the other.

The Romney campaign is doomed.

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“We know there are risks,” Tillerson said, according to Reuters. “We’re not trying to characterize this as an activity that does not have risks.”

Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson

Fracking involves the high pressure injection of water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep into natural gas wells to fracture tight geological formations and free up more gas. Critics say the chemicals need to be publically disclosed because the process can lead to groundwater contamination.

Also today, more than 40 percent of Chevron’s shareholders voted in favor of a similar As You Sow resolution.

“Today’s votes clearly demonstrate that mainstream investors are concerned about fracking and want more disclosure on how these companies are dealing with the environmental, public health, and financial risks associated with this practice,” Michael Passoff, senior strategist with As You Sow, said in a release.

“The fact that 41 percent of Chevron investors voted in favor of more disclosure, an exceptionally high level of support for a first-year resolution, shows how seriously the company’s shareholders are taking this issue.”

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently told the Colorado Independent that oil and gas companies should voluntarily move toward full disclosure of proprietary fracking formulas for their own protection, in order to avoid future litigation.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., sponsored the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act to remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption granted the process during the Bush administration in 2005. DeGette says the disclosure of chemicals is an “interim remedy” with bipartisan support.

Colorado’s top oil and gas regulator and the head of one of the state’s leading industry lobbying groups both say federal legislation compelling disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing would not have prevented the state’s worst cases of groundwater contamination.

COGCC Director David Neslin

“Has the action of injecting at high pressure these fluids into the hydrocarbon formation, do we have evidence that that has contaminated groundwater? No, we don’t,” said David Neslin, executive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates natural gas drilling for the state.

“But I’ve also made no secret of the fact that, yes, there have been other operational aspects of oil and gas development such as pit leaks, pipeline breaks and in a couple of cases bad cement jobs that have leaked methane, which have impacted the environment.”

U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, are sponsors of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which would require public disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Rep. Diana DeGette

DeGette says it’s necessary to disclose the chemicals and regulate the process under the Safe Drinking Water Act because of public fears and anecdotal evidence that fracking has contaminated groundwater supplies. The process has been exempt fro the Water Act since the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Industry officials, however, say secrecy is necessary for proprietary reasons. They also maintain fracking — which involves the high-pressure injection of mostly water, sand and some chemical additives deep into natural gas wells to force open fissures and free up more gas — occurs so far below the surface that there’s no way the chemicals, some of which are known human carcinogens, are contaminating much shallower groundwater supplies.

“The main question that I contemplate is why the focus on disclosure?” said Tisha Schuller, executive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA). “Disclosure doesn’t actually prevent groundwater contamination.”

Schuller also echoed Neslin’s sentiments in an article posted on the COGA website: “The two most important areas to prevent environmental effects are spills and proper well construction. Both of these areas are regulated by state law.”

But DeGette, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, has helped spearhead two recent congressional probes showing the use of diesel fuel in fracking, as well as up to 29 known human carcinogens.

“We have all of this anecdotal reporting of hydraulic fracturing fluid harming people, but because [companies] don’t have to report what’s in it [under the Safe Drinking Water Act], then we don’t have proof that that’s what’s harming people,” DeGette said, “so I’ve suggested an interim remedy since the industry says there’s nothing wrong with this fluid of reporting it.”

Her bill would only require companies to report the types of chemicals used in fracking, not the proportions. Current Colorado regulations require operators to keep a list of chemicals being used on site at drilling operations and to make it available to state regulators and emergency responders upon request within 24 hours.

“But if the industry thinks, ‘Well, gee, we should regulate these holding ponds and the casings and things like that,’ what that is, that’s my original bill that they really disagree with,” DeGette said. “So they may not want to make that argument, because the issue of disclosure is sort of a medium-range issue.”

The record state fine for contamination of a drinking water well was leveled against Oklahoma-based Williams, the largest natural gas producer on Colorado’s Western Slope. Ned Prather chugged benzene-laced water from his well near Prather Springs, prompting a $423,000 fine for Williams and shattering the old mark of $390,000 against Oxy USA in the Cascade Canyon spill.

“Would requiring the disclosure of the chemicals in the fracking fluid that was used for the well in question have better protected Mr. Prather from impact or prevented a leak of condensate from the pit? No, it wouldn’t have,” Neslin said. “A better lined pit and better monitoring and maintenance of the pit would have reduced the risks in question in the Prather situation and so that’s what we should be focusing on.”

Lined holding pits are used to store fracking fluids for re-use, but they also hold condensate (hydrocarbons naturally present in the formation that come to the surface during drilling) and produced water (water naturally in the formation that’s “produced” along with oil and gas).

The most famous case of groundwater contamination occurred when a badly cemented well bore resulted in methane flowing into West Divide Creek in Garfield County. For years, that case held the record fine amount of more than $370,000 leveled against EnCana.

“The cement job that everybody thinks of is Divide Creek of course, and that didn’t involve contamination by fracking fluids. It involved contamination by methane,” Neslin said. “These are important issues, but we need to deal with them factually and deal with them specifically and deal with them in context.”

Neslin was accused by the nonprofit Checks and Balances Project of misleading the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when he testified last month that hydraulic fracturing has never been found to have contaminated groundwater in Colorado. He later told the project’s reporter that other aspects of drilling – bad cement jobs, pit leaks and pipeline failures – have caused contamination.

“I don’t view it as compartmentalizing,” Neslin said. “I view it as our job as regulators to look at the different aspects of oil and gas development, try to understand the risks associated with those different operations or aspects of development and ensure that those risks are properly regulated and mitigated.”

But Democratic lawmakers, and even some Republicans, continue to make the argument that if hydraulic fracturing is so benign, then the industry should simply disclose the chemicals and no longer hide behind the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process granted by Congress during the Bush administration in 2005.

“It’s a Catch 22 in that there’s no reporting [of chemicals] and so they say there’s no evidence [of fracking contaminating groundwater], so let’s find out,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Colorado Independent. “It may be that they’re not in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and that they’re going deeper or whatever it happens to be. But if there’s so much natural gas that they want to get at, the public has a right to know.”

Neslin said that so far this year about 75 percent of the new natural gas wells in Colorado have been drilled by companies that are participating in or have committed to participating in the state’s new voluntary disclosure website. He hopes that percentage will only increase over time.

“I know that there have been concerns about the fact that it’s a voluntary website, but if you look on the website, it contains an impressive level of detail and information and in terms of accuracy there are ways that organizations involved can audit the information or have audits of the information done to hopefully provide even greater levels of credibility for that website,” he said.

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Nancy Pelosi

Nearly half of the shareholders of Energen Corporation recently supported “increased transparency and accountability around its hydraulic fracturing operations,” according to SEC filings. Still, a slight majority voted to maintain the status quo.

“This vote is the highest on record for this issue and is among one of the highest votes for any environmental proposal,” Luan Steinhilber of Miller/Howard Investments said in a release. Miller/Howard filed the proposal at Energen. “In addition to the 49.5 percent voting yes among all those voting yes or no, a sizeable percentage of the voting shareholders declined to support management’s recommendation to oppose the resolution, and instead voted to ‘abstain.’

“This is a wake-up call for the company to increase disclosure on how it is managing and reducing potential risks associated with its fracturing operations,” she added.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette has once again proposed the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act to better regulate hydraulic fracturing, in which water, sand and chemicals are injected under high pressure into natural gas wells to free up more gas. DeGette has spearheaded recent congressional studies showing diesel fuel and 29 different human carcinogens have been used in fracking operations.

Oil and gas industry representatives countered that fracking occurs too deep to contaminate shallow drinking water supplies and that federal oversight is unwarranted because there is no evidence of fracking tainting groundwater.

Shareholders at Carrizo Oil & Gas, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Ultra Petroleum will have an opportunity to vote on the issue in coming weeks.

In a sit-down interview with the Colorado Independent in Denver this week, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette said the natural gas industry should support full public disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing as a “protection” from potential litigation.

Nancy Pelosi

DeGette’s FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act would compel the industry to disclose chemicals used in the process, which industry officials say must be kept under wraps for proprietary reasons. Known as “fracking,” the process frees up more gas by injecting water, sand and chemicals into natural gas wells deep underground – too deep to contaminate groundwater supplies, industry officials say.

DeGette points to anecdotal evidence of fracking causing groundwater contamination and to recent probes by her congressional committee revealing diesel fuel and up to 29 known cancer-causing human carcinogens are being used in hydraulic fracturing operations. She wants the chemicals disclosed and regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Pelosi chimed in that the industry should want the same thing, if for no other reason than to “protect” itself. That sentiment is echoed by environmental shareholder groups that forced votes at ExxonMobil – the nation’s largest natural gas producer with its acquisition last year of XTO Energy – and other natural gas companies showing some support for the full disclosure of fracking chemicals. The groups view the move as a means of avoiding future litigation.

Similar votes have occurred among shareholders of companies such as Williams, the largest natural gas producer on Colorado’s Western Slope.

Pelosi said the industry should not continue to oppose the release of more information on fracking by arguing there’s been no evidence thus far of fracking contaminating groundwater.

“It’s a catch 22 in that there’s no reporting and so they say there’s no evidence, so let’s find out,” Pelosi said. “And I think it’s a really important issue that deserves a bright spotlight on and it may be that they’re not in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and that they’re going deeper [than groundwater] or whatever it happens to be. If there’s so much natural gas that they want to get at, the public has a right to know [the chemicals].”

Pelosi said fracking has sparked a highly emotional debate around the country that needs to be informed by more study, more information and greater industry transparency.

“Natural gas is a domestic supply that again is plentiful and is not so expensive and I hope not as dangerous to the environment as other fossil fuels. The evidence seems to point that it isn’t,” Pelosi said. “It’s a great transition to when all the renewables are ready and much more operating. And it may be that it’s clean enough to be an answer for a very long time to come. But this [fracking issue] has to be cleared up.”

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Speaker of the House John Boehner has contracted high-profile conservative attorney Paul Clement to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on behalf of the House of Representatives. Boehner has agreed to pay Clement initially up to $500,000 to defend the law, although analysts say that figure is sure to rise. Colorado Springs Christian right organization Focus on the Family celebrated the arrangement, touting Clement’s resume as one of the nation’s top attorneys.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it just doesn’t get any better on a Monday than to hear that the House of Representatives has selected Paul Clement as its outside counsel to take on the defense of DOMA,” wrote Focus blogger Bruce Hausknecht on Monday. “Clement’s resume’ reads like a lawyer’s fantasy: Georgetown, Cambridge, Harvard Law, Scalia law clerk, Solicitor General of the United States, even acting Attorney General of the United States – for a day!”

Clement is a partner at international firm King & Spaulding, which represents major multinational businesses and employs more than 800 attorneys. The firm’s billing reportedly reaches upwards of $900 per hour for top personnel.

The Obama Administration Justice Department announced in February that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court because it believes DOMA unconstitutionally discriminates against gay citizens. Boehner responded by declaring that the House would defend the Act and asked this week for a part of the Justice Department budget to pay Clement.

Legal analysts have suggested it will be very difficult to defend DOMA against charges of unconstitutionality given legal precedent being set in courts around the country. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi decried Boehner for even trying, given that the controversial position is sure to distract from the crisis-level economic and fiscal matters demanding to be addressed by lawmakers.

“Speaker Boehner is spending half a million dollars of taxpayer money to defend discrimination. If Republicans were really interested in cutting spending, this should be at the top of the list,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told the Huffington Post.

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese told the Huffington Post that the number of DOMA cases lining up suggest Clement will end up costing Congress much more than the initial $500,000 Boehner has agreed to pay him.

Ed Whelan, president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and contributor to the National Review blog, was reportedly the first to suggest Boehner tap Justice Department funds to pay outside counsel. He made the suggestion during a “Defending Marriage” House hearing Friday.

“The Department’s irresponsible course of action is fully to blame for the House’s need to incur legal fees in defending DOMA. Thus, although it is refreshing to witness concerns of fiscal frugality from some members of the House not ordinarily associated with such concerns, those concerns are misdirected if they are deployed to question or oppose the House’s retention of counsel. The far more sensible course is for the House to make clear that the sum to be appropriated for the Department will be reduced by the sum expended on legal fees in defense of DOMA—or, better yet, by some healthy multiple of that sum.”

ThinkProgress posted a montage of video from the hearing where Whelan testified. He appears at 2:30. Full video available here.

Tea Party voters concerned primarily with fiscal matters swept a record number of Republicans into Congress last November. The new GOP majority, however, has dedicated itself above all to pushing repeated flash-point partisan social legislation.

Since January, Republicans have introduced several bills attempting to block access to abortion, for example. One of the bills attempted to redefine rape to only include “forcible” attacks. Another bill sought to reintroduce the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy repealed in December that barred gay soldiers from serving openly. Republicans also introduced three bills to defund public broadcasting for its supposed liberal bias. And this month, they placed a provision that would have stripped funding from Planned Parenthood-– the top women’s reproductive health organization in the country–- at the center of the just-passed federal budget showdown.

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