Environment

The Marcellus Shale lies are unraveling daily right before our eyes. T. Boone Pickens, for example, was on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show on Thurs. Jan. 27 to hype up the Pickens Plan. Yet, this is what the Pickens Plan will get us on a weekly, if not daily basis. The New York Times reports:

Drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground as part of a controversial drilling technique, a Democratic congressional investigation has found. Injecting diesel as part of hydraulic fracturing is supposed to be regulated by U.S. EPA. But an agency official told congressional investigators that EPA had assumed that the use of diesel had stopped seven years ago ...The letter said they had not been able to determine whether the diesel injections threatened groundwater. The service companies told Waxman's staff they did not know how close their frack jobs were to sources of drinking water, saying their clients, the well operators, would have that information. Of the total figure, 10 million gallons was 'straight diesel fuel,' according to the letter, while another 22 million gallons was products containing at least 30 percent diesel.

Back in July, 2010 PRWatch noted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ignorance about the potential for ecological damage from BP dumping millions of gallons of oil dispersants into the Gulf to try to limit damage from the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. Yesterday, scientists released a report that re-confirmed the EPA's voluntary ignorance.

Acquiring "clean natural gas" and "getting off of foreign oil" are pitched as reasons to continue natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. And yet, beyond all the problems associated with fracking, Pro Publica's Abrahm Lustgarten revealed in a January 25, 2011 article that "clean natural gas" isn't all that clean after all. Lustgarten writes,

The United States is poised to bet its energy future on natural gas as a clean, plentiful fuel that can supplant coal and oil. But new research by the Environmental Protection Agency … is casting doubt on the assumption that gas offers a quick and easy solution to climate change … Advocates for natural gas routinely assert that it produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal and is a significant step toward a greener energy future …The EPA now reports that emissions from conventional hydraulic fracturing are 35 times higher than the agency had previously estimated. It also reports that emissions from the type of hydraulic fracturing being used in the nation’s bountiful new shale gas reserves, like the Marcellus, are almost 9,000 times higher than it had previously calculated …"

Environmental groups say we should be certain of the factual data about emissions and environmental effects of shale gas drilling before making major policy decisions that push the nation into dependence on methane gas obtained through drilling.

The Fiji bottled water company is stomping out of Fiji in protest after the country's government increased a tax it charges on the water from one-third of a Fiji cent to 15 cents per liter. Half of Fijians lack access to safe water while the Fiji Water company exports clean bottled water to the U.S., where Americans shell out 3,300 times what tap water costs to buy it. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans pay around .002 to .003 cents per gallon for tap water, while one liter of Fiji water (less than a quarter of a gallon) costs about $2.19. Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food and Water Watch says, "Like oil in the 20th Century, water has become increasingly managed by corporate cartels that move it around the globe, where it flows out of communities towards money ... Water must be managed as a common resource, not a market commodity." Ironically, Fiji Water, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo -- beverage companies that also extract water from developing countries facing water scarcity -- have been named finalists for the U.S. Secretary of State's 2010 Award for Corporate Excellence.