Author: livingwithoilandgas
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Pavillion Community Still Waiting on a Solution for Clean Drinking Water
Residents impacted by leaking wells look to Encana and the state of Wyoming for a solution. Evelyn stood on her deck overlooking a patchwork of green farmland and brown pastures stretching out to the low, dry hills on the horizon. Beyond them, mountains rose above the dusty brown foothills. Dozens of natural gas wells and…
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Bonding Crisis Looms in Colorado as Gas Prices Tip Into the Red
Residents of Battlement Mesa and Rifle, Colorado, are on the verge of seeing gas companies abandoning their wells and leaving taxpayers to clean up the mess. Leslie Robinson lives in Rifle, Colorado, a town nestled on the banks of the Colorado River. Dave Devanney lives 20 minutes to the west, downriver, in Battlement Mesa, Colorado.…
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Lax Permitting, Poor Construction Lead to Groundwater Contamination
Thirty years after faulty gas wells and unlined holding ponds began contaminating groundwater, residents of Pavillion, Wyoming, still can’t drink the water. Sue Spencer, a hydrogeologist based in Laramie, Wyo, looks down from a sandy bluff on a two-football-field-sized swath of cleared land that designates a capped natural gas well. Two men in unmarked blue…
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Fighting for Clean Air in North Dakota
Joletta Bird Bear and Fort Berthold POWER Still Have a Long Way to Go to Get Clean Air on the Reservation. Flares danced all the way out to the horizon in every direction among the rolling hills of North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Reservation. The six closest flares were clumped only a few hundred feet away,…
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North Dakota farmers fear more than just oil spills
Daryl and Christine Peterson have lost over $1 million in farmland value from produced water spills. On a bright July day, Daryl Peterson stood four feet deep in his farm field. Wheat stalks waved in the breeze near his head as he held a yard stick showing the depth of a pit an oil company…
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Dawn Stein – Even Being Deaf Doesn’t Block Out the Noise of Drilling
Dawn Stein stood in her front yard, shaded by a canopy of rustling, century-old cottonwood trees. A well-manicured lawn surrounded her tidy white house. On Dawn’s front porch, a low table and chairs beckoned a relaxing summer afternoon of gazing out over her Greeley, Colorado neighborhood. A massive sound wall blocked the view, however, and…