Source:  The Wall Street Journal | Thursday, March 24, 2011

Associated Press

DENVER — A western Colorado family has filed a lawsuit saying that negligence by oil and gas drilling companies contaminated their drinking water and air and forced them from their home.

Beth and Bill Strudley and their sons, ages 11 and 13, moved in 2005 outside Silt but said they started living in Glenwood Springs this year to escape the effects of work by Antero Resources Corp. and subcontractors Frontier Drilling and Calfrac Well Services. The Strudleys still own the home outside Silt. Their lawsuit in Denver District Court accuses all three firms of negligence.

Denver-based Antero said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Calfrac had no immediate comment, and a phone message for Frontier Drilling wasn’t returned.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates oil and gas development, has said it has found no scientific data that the water quality in the family’s well was contaminated by drilling, but the Strudleys said they have conducted their own tests. They and their lawyers declined to disclose the results Thursday, saying only that they were “abnormal.”

The family said they started getting sick after drilling started within a mile of their home in August. They wouldn’t discuss details at a news conference Thursday, but Beth Strudley, 46, told The Post Independent of Glenwood Springs in January that they have suffered rashes and nosebleeds.

Bill Strudley, 50, said Thursday he still feels ill whenever he returns to the Silt-area home to retrieve belongings.

Residents in the Battlement Mesa community also have complained of odors that have caused nausea, dizziness, coughing and burning eyes that they say are because of Antero’s operations.

The Strudleys are represented in part by a law firm that has filed a suit alleging drilling by the Anschutz Exploration Corp. in New York contaminated the drinking water of nine families. Denver-based Anschutz Exploration has called the lawsuit “an act of financial extortion” by some lawyers trying to enrich themselves.

The Strudleys are seeking damages to cover health monitoring and medical costs.

“Gas drillers have got to be made to have safe drilling operations for the environment, for humans, for animal life,” said Marc Bern, one of their attorneys. “Individuals drilling in this area care about one thing: profits. Profits over safety.”

The family does not own the rights to minerals beneath their property. Beth Strudley said before they bought their home, she asked the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission whether the area could be drilled. She said she was told a company had done tests and found it would be economically difficult.

More than 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater was produced by Pennsylvania wells over the past three years, far more than has been previously disclosed. Most of this water — enough to cover Manhattan in three inches — was sent to treatment plants not equipped to remove many of the toxic materials in drilling waste." "...danger of radioactive wastewater is its potential to contaminate drinking water or enter the food chain through fish or farming. Once radium enters a person’s body, by eating, drinking or breathing, it can cause cancer and other health problems, many federal studies show." See the rest of this entry »

Source : Billings Gazette

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Four out of five people who have returned health surveys report respiratory problems in a central Wyoming community where some residents say gas drilling has polluted their water wells, an environmental group said Wednesday.

Respondents also reported headaches, nausea, itchy skin, dizziness and other ailments, according to the Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project.

Wilma Subra, a Louisiana chemist and environmentalist who has investigated oil and gas industry pollution worldwide, is conducting the survey. She said survey forms from the first 16 people — more are coming in — show a need for public health officials to investigate.

“It’s critical to identify the health impacts and track them over time,” Subra said.

A spokesman for Encana Oil & Gas, the company that’s been developing gas in the Pavillion area, pointed out that the survey isn’t comprehensive.

“It is a survey, not really a study,” Doug Hock said. “Sixteen people, total.”

Earthworks suggested in a news release that the respiratory ailments result from exposure while people shower or wash dishes with contaminated water. Subra said in her report that the various ailments residents reported are associated with contaminants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified in Pavillion well water.

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