How BLM Helped Poison, Kill People: Investigative Report

The Bureau of Land Management has allegedly helped poison Americans with contaminated water and helped kill some people by failing to inspect thousands of high-risk oil and gas wells, congressional investigators say. Compounding human misery from being poisoned is the government gagging doctors from telling patients that the source of their ill health and injury is oil and gas industry-related, and other cover-ups, too often resulting in death.

A report obtained by The Associated Press before its public release shows the agency that manages oil and gas development on federal and Indian lands has failed to protect people from being poisoned by fracking and other oil and gas industry operations.

“This report reaffirms our concern that the government needs to pay attention to the environment and protect public health and drinking sources from the risks of oil and gas development,” said Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In Pennsylvania alone, an Associated Press investigation found 398 complaints made to the state in 2013 alleging oil or natural gas drilling polluted or otherwise affected private water wells. Over 100 cases of pollution were confirmed over the past five years.

The disturbing report said the Interior Department’s  BLM cannot even ”accurately and efficiently identify whether federal and Indian resources are properly protected or that federal and Indian resources are at risk of being extracted without agency approval.”

It isn’t only BLM’s permitting tainted water that is killing communities slowly. Its neglect is resulting in other fraccidents that kill quickly, such as well explosions.  

BLM failed to inspection over 2,100 of the 3,702 wells that it specified as “high priority” and drilled from 2009 through 2012, according to the report. BLM had yet to indicate whether another 1,784 wells were high priority or not. The agency considers a well “high priority” based on a greater need to protect against possible water contamination and other environmental safety issues.  

BLM failed to monitor inspection activities at its state and field offices, so it could not provide “reasonable assurance” that those offices were completing the required inspections. 

Dupré has learned from government documents that federal and state failures to oversee and halt illegal oil and gas operations in Pennsylvania directly resulted in the fracking explosion in Bobtown/Dumkard Township that killed a young worker in February.  

Equally disturbing has been an ongoing government coverup of those illegal operations resulting in injuries, ill health, and death, as Deborah Dupré’s investigative report explained and her video demonstrated after Chevron’s Bobtown fracking explosion.

An unprecedented gas drilling boom occurring across the United States has been damaging individual health, communities, and farmlands by the controversial technology called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a form of geo-engineering causing environmental disasters called “fraccidents,” often unseen and considered “mysterious,” sometimes disastrous, and too often deadly.

Geo-engineering, the artificial modification of the earth’s climate systems, is an environment modification (ENMOD) science for the “deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space that can be applied as a weapon of mass destruction.” (“Geo-engineers at annual conference to face human rights defender rally (videos),” Dupré, D. National Human Rights | Examiner.com)

“Fraccident“ is a term coined by Earth Justice to refer to “poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, industrial disasters and explosions” caused by oil and gas geo-engineering.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking involves pumping huge volumes of water, sand and chemicals underground to split open rocks to allow oil and gas to flow.

“It has produced major economic benefits,” AP reports, blatantly failing to factor the cost of human health. 

Fracking has “raised fears” of fracking tainting water, AP reports, failing to acknowledge those fears as justifiable, since typically, the process poisons aquifers, ending up in people’s drinking and bathing water and that. Since 2011, it’s been known that BLM and other agencies have allowed fracking radioactive wastewater to be dumped with impunity across the nation.  (Fraccidents: Geoengineered environmental disasters, Dupré, 2011)

February, over 1,000 gagged doctors and other health care professionals asked President Barack Obama in a letter to ban fracking in certain areas in the U.S. and ensure fracking was no longer exempt from environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. The doctors outlined secret dangers fracking poses to human health and the environment – drinking water contamination, carcinogenic air pollution, acute and chronic health effects, and greenhouse gas emissions – that government prevents them from telling their patients suffering from fracking. The doctors’ letter said that fracking has:

“…contaminated drinking water sources from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. Leaks and spills of fracturing fluid – often containing known carcinogens (e.g. benzene) and endocrine-disrupting chemicals – have polluted rivers and streams. Other contaminants have flowed  into residential wells. And fracking wastewater – often containing heavy metals (e.g. lead, arsenic) and radioactive materials (e.g. radon, uranium) – has leached from hundreds of waste pits into groundwater. 

 
“released… volatile organic compounds (VOCs); some are carcinogenic, and some damage the liver, kidneys and central nervous system. Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Public Health found that people living within a half-mile of gas fracking wells had a higher excess lifetime risk of developing cancer than people living farther away. 

 
“caused… acute and chronic health effects…including nausea, rashes, dizziness, headaches and nose bleeds. Physicians reviewing medical records in Pennsylvania have called these illnesses “the tip of  the iceberg” of fracking impacts on health…”

 
“Given this toll of damage, the prudent and precautionary response would be to stop fracking,” the letter reads. “Instead, the oil and gas industry is seeking to expand fracking at a frenzied pace, even into areas that provide drinking water for millions of Americans.” 

[Read: Alarming Secret Your Doctor Is Gagged From Telling You, Dupré, Feb. 23. 2014]

Government’s oil and gas-related failures and coverups are directly resulting in environmental diseases such as cancer, miscarriages, and in some cases, even suicide, as Deborah Dupré’s investigation showed last year in heavily fracked Arkansas communities. 

The bureau had become a symbol of federal overreach to industry groups opposed to government regulations related to oil and gas drilling. With BLM’s involvement in the recent Bundy Ranch fiasco, however, even conservatives are less than impressed with it.

On the other hand, environmental groups trying to protect people of all party lines have been saying for years that the Obama administration needs to do more to protect Americans by guarding against environmental damage. While the administration is expected to issue rules on fracking and methane gas emissions, daily, Americans across the nation continue being exposed to chemicals that are bioaccumulating in their bodies and many face possible explosions in their neighborhoods.

The report claims much of BLM’s failures to inspect high-priority oil and gas wells is due to limited money and staff.

We were gonna do better

BLM officials said they were in the process of updating several of its policies later this year.

Investigators reviewed 14 states in full or part: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. In Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, fracking has become increasingly prevalent. 

The BLM has developed agreements with some states, which also have jurisdiction over well inspections on federal lands. According to the GAO, it had reached agreements with regulators in California, Colorado, Nevada and Wyoming.

BLM has failed to review and update many of its oil and gas rules to reflect technological advances, as required by a 2011 executive order. They include guidance on spacing of wells, that could help maximize oil and gas production, according to the report. The bureau acknowledged it had not updated its guidance on oil and gas drainage since 1999 or its guidance on mineral trespass — interference of drilling or mining activity — since 2003.

Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs at Western Energy Alliance, a trade group representing energy companies, said the report’s findings show that states are better positioned to regulate oil and gas drilling.

Considering states’ typical responses to complaints, injuries and deaths, and states’ leaders being puppets for oil and gas industry, Sgamma’s passing the buck is hardly the real solution.

Sources: Associated Press, Before It’s News, Examiner.com

Email: [email protected]  Follow Ms. Dupré on Twitter @DeborahDupre