Colorado oil and gas regulators say holding ponds like this one in Pennsylvania cause much more groundwater contamination than hydraulic fracturing (www.industrialscars.com photo).

WRA now wants the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) to implement recommendations (pdf) made in October by a group called the State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) suggesting minimum surface casing depths for oil and gas wells that are fracked.

It’s been suggested that the failure to properly case and cement natural gas wells to depths below the groundwater aquifer may have been to blame in Pavillion, Wyo., where a report last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) linked fracking chemicals to well-water contamination.

“[STRONGER] recommends that the COGCC work with stakeholders to review how available information is used to determine minimum surface casing depths and how those depths assure that casing and cementing procedures are adequate to protect fresh groundwater,” the October STRONGER report reads.

COGCC director David Neslin said on Tuesday that fracking chemical “disclosure is not our first line of environmental defense. It’s important for transparency, it’s important to build public confidence, but our first line of environmental defense is the integrity of the wellbore. It’s the work that our engineers and environmental staff do in reviewing the permit applications.”

Neslin has long said that disclosure won’t stop spills caused by bad cement jobs of wellbores, pipeline problems or leaks from holding ponds that store fracking and other fluids. On Tuesday he said another line of environmental defense is “groundwater sampling, baseline sampling that we require our operators to do, and the prompt response that our field inspectors make when complaints or allegations of impact arise.”

WRA, however, would like to see another rulemaking on both the STRONGER recommendations and “a mandatory program for baseline testing, monitoring and tracers to protect our water quality.”

“Baseline testing can help eliminate the he said, she said arguments over contamination so that we can focus on keeping people safe,” WRA’s Chiropolos said. “One sick person is one too many. The [COGCC] should continue to be proactive in 2012 in order to protect Colorado families and our water.”

There are approximately 45,000 active oil and gas wells in Colorado, which is in the top five nationally for natural gas production and top 10 for oil. Huge reserves in the Niobrara Shale formation on the state’s populous Front Range have sparked a wave of drilling speculation and local fears about the impacts of fracking.

“Colorado citizens are justifiably worried about the practice of fracking and deserve full confidence that the state is protecting the quality of their air, water and soil,” said Josh Joswick, energy issues organizer of the San Juan Citizens Alliance. Joswick was a La Plata County commissioner when local drilling rules were implemented in that gas-rich area of the state.

Increased drilling activity on the Front Range from Colorado Springs all the way north of Denver to the Wyoming state line will occur where far more Coloradans live than on the sparsely populated Western Slope.

“This [disclosure] compromise means there is no free pass for drilling firms,” state Rep. Deb Gardner, D-Longmont, said in a release. “There is now a greater degree of checks and balances.”

Calls for more COGCC rulemaking on issues ranging from surface casing depth to increased baseline water-quality testing to greater setbacks for oil and gas rigs from homes and public buildings will likely increase along with the drilling.

The WRA Tuesday also called for “increased residential setbacks from the current minimum levels — 150 feet for rural areas; 350 feet for urban areas.” That’s an issue that some observers say was never properly resolved during the last significant revision of the state’s oil and gas drilling regulations.

Those revisions in 2007 and 2008 were so sweeping – including some of the first rules in the nation dealing with fracking – that they required the approval of the State Legislature after months of sometimes bitter debate.

Colorado’s senior member of Congress, Democrat Diana DeGette of Denver, has been trying for years to compel the public disclosure of fracking chemicals at the national level. Her Fracturing Responsibility and Chemical Awareness (FRAC) Act would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the fracking process that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005.

She praised the new Colorado rule Tuesday, but also pointed to the Pavillion case.

“The fact that we have a proven case of a connection between hydraulic fracturing and the contamination of an aquifer underscores just how important it is that we take cautionary steps to protect our communities’ water supply,” DeGette said. “That is why I continue to encourage members of Congress to pass my FRAC Act, so communities across the country will have transparency in the drilling process as well.”

EnCana, the Canadian company drilling in the Pavillion area, has disputed the EPA’s findings, and Republican lawmakers and industry trade groups have questioned the agency’s methods and motivations.

A holding pond for fracking fluids in Texas.

One of those retrospective study areas is in Colorado – a state where new fracking regulations are being drafted and an independent review recently recommended a more comprehensive look at water resources available for fracking.

The process, which can use up to 1 million gallons of water per frack job, also includes sand and frequently undisclosed chemical additives. Fracking fluids are injected under higher pressure deep into oil and gas wells to fracture tight sand and rock and free up more gas or oil. Critics of the process say it can lead to groundwater contamination.

The EPA’s “Plan to Study the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on Drinking Water Resources (pdf)” is now available on the agency’s website. Initial EPA findings will be released to the public in 2012, although the final report won’t be ready until 2014.

U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., wrote the legislation to authorize the study and also is a co-sponsor, with Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act. His district in New York includes the heavily drilled Marcellus Shale.

“I applaud the EPA for releasing a final research plan for its study on hydraulic fracturing,” Hinchey said in a prepared statement. “I wrote the legislative language that initiated this study and, as I had intended, the final study will look at the full cycle of water used in the hydraulic fracturing process.

“Our country is in the middle of a shale gas rush, but unbiased, scientific research into hydraulic fracturing is almost non-existent. This EPA study will provide invaluable information to the public and policy makers interested in understanding the impact of hydraulic fracturing on our water resources.”

The Associated Press reported the move in the wake of ongoing concerns by regulators about the inability of some wastewater treatment plants to handle fracking fluids that sometimes contains elevated levels of radium and other radioactive materials.

A natural gas rig near the entrance to Battlement Mesa on Colorado's Western Slope (David O. Williams photo).

The process, used in about 90 percent of all natural gas wells, injects up to 1 million gallons of water underground under very high pressure. The water, which includes sand and a chemical cocktail that often remains secret for proprietary reasons, forces open rock and sand formations and frees up more gas or oil.

In Colorado, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis have been trying to pass the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act that would compel oil and gas companies to publicly disclose chemical constituents. DeGette has also raised the alarm about the use of diesel fuel in fracking mixtures.

Most fracking fluids are treated and recycled or injected into disposal wells deep beneath the groundwater table. Those wells are now a source of controversy because scientists believe they could be linked to earthquake swarms in places like Arkansas, where several wells were shut down recently.

In Colorado, where regulators have been working through a backlog of old spill enforcement cases, officials have said disclosure of fracking fluid chemicals won’t necessarily stop accidental leaks associated with faulty pipelines, well casings or pit liners meant to keep fluids stored for reuse from leaking into groundwater.

The EPA conducted a study of fracking before Congress voted to exempt the process from the Safe Drinking Water Act when it passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Now the EPA is conducting what many scientists hope will be a much more thorough examination of the process, including using a test area in Colorado. The agency is also considering drafting tougher air quality standards for fracking operations.

The state of Colorado expects to draft its own fracking-specific disclosure regulations by the end of the year.

Coming up with a definition of diesel fuel seems like a fairly straightforward task, but in the world of natural gas drilling and the process of hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – nothing ever comes easy.

Senior Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette on Monday joined fellow Democrats Henry Waxman, Edward Markey and Rush Holt in asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to write a much broader definition of diesel fuel than the industry seems willing to accept.

The Democrats produced a report in January showing Halliburton and other oil service providers may have illegally used millions of gallons of diesel fuel in the controversial but commonly used gas-drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, which injects water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep underground to crack open rocks and free up more gas.

Industry representatives, including the head of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, agreed that diesel fuel was not part of a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for hydraulic fracturing that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005. But they countered that the EPA never engaged in an official rulemaking that defined the parameters for using diesel fuel in fracking. Now DeGette and other Dems want the EPA to do just that.

In a press release Monday announcing a formal letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson the Democrats asked her agency “to craft a definition of ‘diesel fuel’ for its upcoming guidance on permitting hydraulic fracturing activities that is broad enough to protect human health and require permitting for all diesel fuels, including those that contain benzene and other toxic components.”

The same Democrats produced a congressional report in April showing fracking fluids can contain up to 29 known human carcinogens, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX). The 2005 Energy Policy Act exempted fracking from the SDWA “unless the fluid injected contains diesel fuel,” primarily because it contains BTEX.

Tisha Schuller, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA), told the Colorado Independent in February that “EPA never went through the public rulemaking process, or even provided guidance to the states in this regard; thus, there was not a regulatory framework for permitting or reporting hydraulic fracturing with diesel through EPA. As a result, there wasn’t a regulation to be broken.”

For a full text of the DeGette, Waxman, Markey, Holt letter to Jackson, click here (pdf).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hasn’t exactly given the controversial Colorado Roadless Rule a failing grade, but the federal agency this week did issue an “I” for incomplete.

Technically, the EPA rated the revised draft environmental impact statement (RDEIS) by the U.S. Forest Service an EC-2, or “Environmental Concerns – Insufficient Information.” That means EPA wants a lot more information before it will sign off on a plan by the state of Colorado and the USFS for managing nearly 4.2 million acres of roadless national forest in the state.

A coal mine venting methane gas along the North Fork of the Gunnison (WildEarth Guardians photo).

In Alternative 2, the Forest Service’s preferred alternative, 562,200 acres are afforded “upper tier” protection from road building. Opponents of the state-specific plan for managing federal roadless areas have long maintained that granting only 13 percent of the overall acreage upper tier status is woefully inadequate.

That’s a sentiment echoed by Colorado’s senior member of Congress, Rep. Diana DeGette, just last week.

“The proposed alternative of the Colorado Roadless Rule falls short in several ways,” DeGette wrote to the Forest Service. “It provides ‘upper tier’ protection to only 13 percent of Inventoried Roadless Areas even though over 65 percent of these areas are identified in the various alternatives for the ‘upper tier’ category.”

The EPA agrees, pointing out 2,614,200 acres would be designated upper tier in Alternative 4, with all eight of the national forests in Colorado included.

“The substantial additional upper tier acreage of Alternative 4 would provide greater protection of roadless characteristics and less opportunity for adverse impacts to air quality and aquatic resources,” EPA wrote. “Therefore, we recommend expanding the preferred alternative to include additional upper tier acreage.”

Environmentalists argue Idaho’s roadless rule provides much more upper tier protection, but Colorado officials counter Idaho had less federal land protected as wilderness.

EPA also asked the Forest Service to conduct additional baseline air quality studies near communities that would be impacted by any road-building exemptions for mining, oil and gas drilling, logging or ski area expansion – especially nearly 20,000 acres exempted for coal mining along the North Fork of the Gunnison River.

With the potential for leases that could ultimately recover up to 360 million tons of coal, EPA wants the USFS to “quantify and disclose projected annual and total lifetime cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions from combustion of the mined coal, resulting from potential future coal development.”

Environmental groups have been battling to have federal land management agencies such as the Forest Service and BLM take into consideration the venting of methane gas from Colorado coal mines. Methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

EPA also wants the Forest Service to quantify the impacts of road building for tree removal, linear construction zones and ski resort expansion on wetlands in the state’s national forests.

Finally, the federal agency is seeking more information on how road building might impact low-income and minority communities in and around national forest roadless areas – so-called “environmental justice” concerns.

“We recommend the FEIS [final environmental impact statement] include the process the USFS used to identify low income and minority communities as well as the potential direct, indirect and cumulative environmental impacts of roadless activities on these communities,” EPA officials wrote.

The Colorado Roadless Rule has taken nearly six years to get to this point after the Bush administration allowed state-specific plans for managing federal roadless areas. Only Idaho and Colorado pursued their own rules, with the rest of the nation willing to wait out ongoing legal challenges to the 2001 Clinton Roadless Rule.

Luckily, Alexis Bonogofsky has a day job with the National Wildlife Federation, because her goat ranch and farm on the banks of the Yellowstone River south of Billings, Mont., has been completely shut down by last week’s ExxonMobil pipeline break and oil spill.

Oil from the ExxonMobil pipeline spill on the Bonogofsky family farm along the Yellowstone River (Alexis Bonogofsky photo)..

On Friday, July 1, an ExxonMobil pipeline passing under the Yellowstone River near Laurel, Mont., broke and spewed what the company says is about 1,000 barrels (or 42,000 gallons) of oil into the flooded Yellowstone River – the longest undammed river in the United States and a world-renowned recreational fishery.

Bonogofsky disputes Exxon’s calculations, saying up to twice as much oil likely poured into the river given that the company has now admitted the pipeline was open for nearly an hour rather than the original estimate of 30 minutes.

“It actually ran for I think 20 minutes longer than they said it did, so each minute 2,000 to 3,000 gallons comes out of the pipeline,” Bonogofsky said. “So if you do the math, that’s almost twice as much oil as they initially said it was, which is why I’m interested to see why the press keeps reporting that 42,000-gallon number.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8 office, which is now overseeing the cleanup efforts of 544 responders (360 actually in the field), again repeated the 1,000-barrel number in a press release Thursday night. ExxonMobil did not repeat a gallon or barrel estimate in its press release Thursday but did report that “municipal water systems are being notified to monitor water quality by the EPA; no reports of impacts have been received to date.”

The EPA also says water quality is acceptable for agricultural use: “Water sampling conducted by EPA between Laurel and Miles City, MT indicates there are no petroleum hydrocarbons above drinking water levels standards in that region. Preliminary results indicate that the Yellowstone River opposes (sic) no threat to agriculture use.”

Bonogofsky says, “It’s really bad. We had to move [150 goats] all the way up to where our house is basically – the two pastures that we have up by our house and the only ones that didn’t get flooded. So we can’t use the majority of our farm right now. We can’t cut hay. We can’t graze our animals. It’s really bad.”

Even conservation groups are going with the lower estimate. Trout Unlimited repeated it in a press release on Wednesday.

“This accident demonstrates the very real need for diligence when it comes to how we develop and transport oil and gas in the West,” said Montana state Sen. Kendall Van Dyk, TU’s Montana energy field coordinator. “We believe that energy companies should drill for and transport domestic fossil fuels in the West, but … incidents like this one, where oil was spilled into one of the nation’s most treasured rivers, are simply not acceptable.”

Bonogofsky also said there’s a move to engage in independent air-quality monitoring over the weekend because many of the local landowners don’t trust the official testing.

“They’re like, ‘Stay away from it, but it’s fine.’ That’s what’s coming out of [EPA’s] mouths,” Bonogofsky said. “Well, pick, either it’s not fine or it’s fine, and it’s safe or it’s not safe.”

Per the EPA release: “Air monitoring using real-time instruments that look for volatile organic compounds and hydrogen sulfide continue to show no detections in ambient air along the Yellowstone River. Additionally, air sampling for benzene has been conducted between Laurel, MT, and Billings, MT, with no detections.”

But Bonogofsky says the chemical smell is still strong on her property about 14 river miles downstream from where the pipeline broke nearly a week ago and that globs of oil can be seen in the water.

“I’m lucky I have a job separate from [the ranch], but ultimately [ExxonMobil and EPA] won’t answer any questions about toxicity, health issues for livestock or humans,” said Bonogofsky, who emphasized she was speaking as a landowner and not in her role as senior tribal lands coordinator for the NWF. “Because I help other people deal with these issues, so to be the person dealing with this is kind of, I don’t know, crazy.”

Sportsmen’s groups as far away as Colorado are deeply concerned about the potential degradation of fish and wildlife habitat resulting from Friday’s ExxonMobil oil spill in the pristine Yellowstone River 20 miles upstream from Billings, Mont

Brook trout (USFWS photo).

“Any time there’s a threat to the habitat, you obviously run the risk of impairing some of the tourism to a place like Yellowstone as well as the opportunity for quality hunting and fishing.”

Friday’s pipeline break, which the company now admits spilled more than 1,000 barrels of oil (or at least 42,000 gallons) is more than 100 miles downstream from Yellowstone National Park. But the river near the town of Laurel, where the rupture occurred, is known for world-class fishing.

Wildlife officials told MSNBC they don’t expect to see short-term impacts such as dead fish floating on the surface, but they are worried about long-term effects on small forms of aquatic life that fish eat. That would adversely impact the fish habitat on the nation’s longest undammed river.

As of Wednesday, more than 440 people were working to soak up the oil, according to a press release from Region 8 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which includes Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.

“[Wednesday] EPA issued an order to ExxonMobil, pursuant to the Clean Water Act, directing the company to take a number of clean-up and restoration activities as a result of an oil spill into the Yellowstone River,” the release reads. “EPA will continue in its role in directing and overseeing the cleanup and restoration of the river and ensuring the protection of human health and the environment.

“EPA is coordinating its response actions with the Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service and state and local agencies and will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure ExxonMobil, as the responsible party, addresses any and all potential impacts of this spill.”

Environmental groups have already begun questioning Exxon’s estimates of the size and scope of the spill.

Alexis Bonogofsky, whose family farm is in Laurel, told CNN oil has polluted the edge of her farmland to the point that she can’t let her animals graze. “You go down to where the oil is,” she said, “and you don’t hear anything anymore. No birds, no toads, no crickets, nothing. It’s just silent.”

Bonogofsky is the daughter of Debra Bonogofsky, a moderate Republican businesswoman who last year told the Colorado Independent she was the victim of a “smear campaign” orchestrated by Western Tradition Partnership – a pro-oil-and-gas political advocacy group originally registered in Colorado.

Bonogofsky filed a formal complaint against the group with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, who determined WTP violated Montana campaign finance and disclosure laws in a 2008 legislative race. WTP, now American Tradition Partnership, describes itself as a “no-compromise grassroots organization dedicated to fighting the radical environmentalist agenda.”

WTP and ATP have been very active in Colorado political races in recent years, targeting Democrats who favor more renewable energy and challenging the state’s aggressive renewable energy standard.

While Colorado in recent years has not seen a high-profile spill along the lines of the Montana pipeline break or recent ruptures in Michigan and Illinois, Perricone’s Bull Moose group in May released a report detailing more than 1,000 small spills of more than 5.6 million gallons of oil, wastewater and other drilling fluids in three western Colorado counties over the past decade.

“If we develop our natural resources in an appropriate manner, then wildlife-related activity is a well that can be tapped in perpetuity,” Perricone said. “However, if we get to the point where the extraction of our natural resources damages wildlife and wildlife habitat to the degree that it can’t recover, then that certainly is not a place that we’d like to find ourselves.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced seven sites for its ongoing and congressionally mandated study of the potential impacts of the natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water supplies. One of those sites is in Las Animas County, Colorado.

The site in the Raton Basin of southern Colorado will be used in a retrospective case study, which will examine hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” impacts on drinking water in an area where drilling has already occurred. Four other sites – in North Dakota, Texas, and two in Pennsylvania — will be part of the retrospective study.

Two areas – in Pennsylvania and Louisiana – will be used as prospective case studies, in which the EPA will monitor the hydraulic fracturing process throughout the life of a well. There’s great anticipation building over the ongoing EPA study, which seeks to definitively answer key questions about whether or how fracking can contaminate groundwater.

Oil and gas industry officials maintain that fracking, in which water, sand and undisclosed chemicals are injected deep into gas wells to force open tight sand and rock formations and free up more gas, has been going on for decades without a documented case of groundwater contamination. Critics charge that’s because the industry has been allowed to keep the chemicals used in the process secret for proprietary reasons there’s no way of knowing for sure.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette has introduced a bill to mandate national public disclosure of fracking chemicals.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), which oversees natural gas drilling and has rules on the books specifically addressing fracking, is currently undergoing an independent review of those regulations. State and industry officials admit that spills do occur when fracking fluids are being stored in pits for re-use, but say there’s no evidence of a frack job itself somehow tainting much shallower groundwater supplies with toxic chemicals.

“This is an important part of a process that will use the best science to help us better understand the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water,” Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, said in a release.

“We’ve met with community members, state experts and industry and environmental leaders to choose these case studies. This is about using the best possible science to do what the American people expect the EPA to do: ensure that the health of their communities and families is protected.”

Perhaps Colorado’s most famous mining town, Leadville has become a bedroom community for the nearby resort towns of Vail and Summit County, and some residents are worried about toxins leaching from massive tailings piles and pouring into an increasingly decrepit drainage tunnel that’s been blocked since 2008.

“Concerns about the safety of the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel have persisted for over 30 years, as have questions about federal agencies’ responsibility to address those concerns,” Udall said today before introducing the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel Act.

“My bill will finally clarify federal jurisdiction and give the residents of Leadville, as well as the entire Arkansas River Basin, an additional measure of certainty that the federal government will maintain safe conditions at the tunnel.”

Udall’s bill clarifies that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation must maintain the structural integrity of the tunnel and it also compels the bureau to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Colorado officials to come up with a long-term solution.

The EPA has been grappling with mining cleanup issues in Leadville for years, and the potential drainage tunnel disaster has made headlines for years, prompting local concern that it will fail and dump toxic water into the upper Arkansas River.

A previous bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009 but never won approval of the Senate.

And now the EPA is firing back, countering that a bill Gardner introduced to remove regulatory hurdles to offshore oil drilling in Alaska may significantly increase air pollution exposure for that state’s population.

EPA assistant administrator Gina McCarthy testified last week that Gardner’s Jobs and Energy Permitting Act, which would block the EPA from enforcing air standards for the company’s drilling off Alaska’s coast, could have adverse health impacts for Alaska residents.

Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, McCarthy said, “One exploratory outer continental shelf source could emit approximately as much on a daily basis as a large state-of-the art refinery,” according to Bloomberg.

“This bill will create tens of thousands of jobs, increase energy security, and lessen our dependence on foreign oil,” Gardner said in a release. “It will add billions of dollars in salary to Alaska and other states over the next several decades, bringing good paying jobs to our country.”