14 | June 17, 2011
NEWS
Brittany’s Babysitting Service • Experienced • Responsible • Reasonable Rates
970.209.0724 Providing excellent care of your children while you enjoy a little time for yourself . . .
4th of July Tennis Tournament
The Club at Crested Butte will be hosting the 4th of July Tennis Tournament on Saturday and Sunday, July 2nd and 3rd. For more information, please call The Club at Crested Butte at 970.349.6127 www.theclubatcrestedbutte.com
visit us on
Vote
for SteVe Schechter
GCEA BoArd distriCt 4 Ballots should be in your mail box Gunnison County Electric Association needs more: • Programs to help members control costs and save energy • Locally produced power from sun, hydro and geothermal
PleaSe mail in your ballot and Vote for SteVe Schechter
Meet Pelli GVAWL’s Featured Pet
Pelli is a sweet 12-year-old female. She was adopted to a good home a year ago, but was recently returned to us when her new guardian was forced to move. She is affectionate and somewhat vocal, and she needs a home without dogs.
Can you help Pelli, or another homeless pet, by providing a foster home or a forever home? Please call or email. Gunnison Valley Animal Welfare League 970.641.1173
gvawl.org
info@gvawl.org
Crested Butte News
Oil and gas amendment hearing continued from page 1
“Natural gas production is an intrusive, toxic business and we’re just now starting to see its widespread and pervasive impacts. You, our county commissioners, represent the people and ecosystems of Gunnison County. You have the ability today to put the environment on equal footing with gas developers.” For Crested Butte resident Larry Mosher, “This is an outstandingly ridiculous situation for us to be in, to be trying to keep an industry from poisoning our water and our air and not really being able to do it because we’re stuck relying on the state… I look on the state as not being impartial to our interests.” Mosher attributed a share of the problem with natural gas development to former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, who effectively made hydraulic fracturing fluids, among other things, exempt from “our primary environmental protection laws.” It is primarily because of those exemptions, Mosher said, that we have a “problem to begin with, this fracking problem… Now we’re in a situation Weston W. Wilson of having to defend ourselves from having an industry come in and inject highly dangerous and toxic chemicals into our ground and we don’t seem to be able to stop them at all.” The next to speak was Weston W. Wilson, an environmental engineer formerly of the Environmental Protection Agency, who gained fame as a whistleblower in the documentary film Gasland, which touched on the EPA’s lack of investigation into the claims gas development was affecting people’s drinking water. Speaking on behalf of citizens’ group Gunnison County United, Wilson told the commissioners and crowd “The operation of modern horizontal drilling and fracking uses a large volume of water… Fracking can have some recycled water, but what we recommend is identifying the estimates of quantity and source of water being used.” Wilson also passed along a recommendation that the public be able to attend site visits to gas facilities and “when possible coordinate those with visits by Colorado oil and gas officials.” He also echoed Mosher’s recommendation for more disclosure. “Let me make one point about the way Colorado now does that,” Wilson said. “The companies are now required to keep on site a record of the chemicals used. But it’s not available to the public; it’s available to medical professionals in case of emergencies.” He recommended the county adopt a requirement similar to what Wyoming has in place that requires chemicals used in fracking be reported at the time they’re injected. “There’s a large problem with this industry and that is identifying a pollution source if ground water is contaminated,” Wilson concluded. “What we recommend is a strict liability… that says if a groundwater well is within a halfmile of a frack well, then that operator is liable.” He also encouraged the county to adopt the state’s “green completion rule” for any well drilled in the county. Green completion, Wilson said, are techniques that would minimize the release of natural gas and oil vapors to cut back on the “volatile organic compounds that are released from the pits.” In a follow-up comment, Wilson said, “To the maximum extent possible fracking fluids should be benign, they should be as ‘green’ as they can be. It wasn’t until the EPA subpoenaed Halliburton that the following week Halliburton came out with a rec-
photos by Alex Fenlon
ipe for green fracking fluid.” Some of the recommendations Wilson had for the commissioners, or at least the goals they envisioned, were repeated throughout the hearing, from a call to conduct more baseline studies to concern over some of the things that might come back to the surface with the produced water, like radioactive material. Concern over the environment ruled the day. Then, just before Brad Burritt stood to share some thoughts from the group Citizens for a Healthy Community, which is encouraging the commissioners to adopt the proposed amendments, and to talk about his sons who represent a sixth generation in Delta County, something out of the ordinary happened. Crested Butte resident Jackson Melnick got up from his chair and, a little hunched over, approached the commissioners’ table with a handful of white roses. He bowed before handing each commissioner a rose, while the crowd chuckled, but he said nothing. Dressed in a dark dinner jacket, he turned with one rose left that he held against his chest with both hands. Then he lay down on the floor in front of the commissioners’ table for the rest of the meeting. Another Crested Butte resident, Jeremy Rubingh, stood up to explain what Melnick had not. “I’m
not going to speak for Jackson here, but this suggests to me that we’re attending the next generation’s funeral or something here. I think that’s an important thing to think about.” Melnick stayed silent through statements made by longtime activist Sue Navy and former Crested Butte councilman and HCCA president Billy Rankin and a half-dozen more until Planning Commission chairman Ramon Reed had nearly completed his comments and was being asked to take a seat by commissioner Hap Channell. Then Melnick screamed out, as if in pain. Channell jumped out of his seat. continued on next page