Experts deliver dire warnings about fracking impacts

Hundreds of people packed a lecture hall at Ohio University Saturday to hear some fairly dire warnings on what could happen to Athens County if the oil-and-gas industry begins to drill into deep underground shale beds here using the horizontal hydraulic fracturing method ("fracking").

Calvin Tillman, former mayor of a town that has been through the process, said his town of Dish, Texas – which has seen fracking conducted nearby by multiple big companies – has suffered massive impacts, including noise, odors and unhealthy chemical contamination.

Tillman, who said his north Texas town has become "kind of Grand Central Station" for a number of facilities involved in drilling for, drying and odorizing natural gas, appeared in the controversial documentary film "Gasland," which has played a major part in stirring up opposition to fracking.

He told a packed house in OU's Morton Hall that he decided to move from Dish, after his children began to suffer nosebleeds that he believes were linked to pollution by chemicals such as benzene.

"Since we have moved… my children have not had any nosebleeds in the middle of the night," Tillman said. He acknowledged that he sometimes feels guilty, as though he abandoned his town, but noted that he is not the only homeowner who has been forced to make this decision.

"I didn't want to be sitting before a doctor one day, having that conversation about my children," he said.

Most in the audience seemed highly receptive to Tillman's concerns about fracking, though the event was also attended by about 16 members of a union that represents workers who do infrastructure work in oil and gas development. The members of Local 18 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, who stand to gain jobs from a fracking boom, expressed skepticism about Tillman's claims, and those of another speaker, chemist S. Thomas Bond.

Union member Primo Panzarello complained that any type of proposed energy source – even windmills – seems to generate protest. Another union member, who would not give her name, added that those who oppose fracking seem not to understand that modern society has huge and growing energy needs.

"Are we going to go back to pre-industrial America?" she asked. "Can we become a nation of sheepherders?" Yet another suggested that anti-fracking protesters seem to believe our nation's energy can come from "unicorn farts and glitter."

TILLMAN SAID HE BELIEVES the oil-and-gas industry, as well as landowners and other citizens, would benefit from tighter regulation and more transparency in the drilling process. He said when citizens of the tiny town of Dish first started complaining about smells, noise and other nuisances related to the fracking operations, "I complained to everyone that would listen to me" in state government. "There were hundreds of complaints filed."

Though regulatory agencies did sampling for contamination, he said, the amounts of chemicals they found were contradicted by studies the town paid for itself.

Another skeptic in the audience was Daniel  Alfaro of Energy In Depth, a group that describes itself as "a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the facts out about the promise and potential of responsibly developing America's onshore energy resource."

Alfaro handed out summaries of a report issued in May 2010 by the Texas Department of State Health Services, which found that Dish residents had levels of volatile organic compounds in their blood that were "similar to (the) general population," and were "not consistent with community-wide exposure." (The summary also stated, however, that the agency "cannot state the exact nature of the exposures.")

Tillman, however, insisted that independent studies paid for by the town show higher contamination levels than the state found. "I carry all these studies around, because some people may insinuate that I'm being untruthful," he said.

He also warned that acceptable exposure levels are based on healthy adult males, and may be more dangerous for children or pregnant women.

Showing a map indicating the large number of drilling and related facilities surrounding Dish, Tillman predicted that if the industry comes here, "that is what Athens is going to look like in 15 years… Eventually, you'll be there."

While some tout the job-creating potential of fracking, Tillman said he believes such jobs in Athens County will employ experienced workers, and mainly for companies from Oklahoma and Texas. "They're probably not going to be from Ohio," he predicted.

He stressed that he's not telling local people to support or oppose fracking, but to learn the facts and decide their priorities.

"Is 1 part per billion of benzene (in your air, soil or water) too much? That's for you to decide," he said. "There is going to be some impact… You just have to decide, is the juice worth the squeeze."

Bond, a retired teacher from West Virginia with a doctorate in inorganic chemistry, was scathing about the oil-and-gas industry and those who regulate it, suggesting that whenever a drilling operation fouls someone's land, there is a "presumption of innocence" that puts the nearly impossible burden of proof on the landowner.

He advised landowners to get testing done on their water supplies to establish baseline conditions, so that contamination can be more easily demonstrated. "You need professional help, which may be expensive," he added.

Bond also expressed deep skepticism about the wild economic growth claims being made for shale drilling.

In what he called an "expensive, very highly speculative investment," Bond said, companies are acting simply to lock up as much potential reserves as they can. At this point, he suggested, horizontal hydro-fracking is an "immature, very dirty process," and will be used in an inefficient way that won't even fully extract the oil and gas in shale beds.

"It is in the nature of resource extraction that easy pickings are taken first," he said.

Bond said oil companies are pouring vastly more speculative money into the frack-leasing boom than went into the now-collapsed U.S. housing boom, and are also spending enormous sums to sway the political and regulatory process.

"It is your property against one of the greatest concentrations of wealth ever known," he warned. "Stick your head in the sand, and they will cover up the other end."

While oil and gas companies have been locking up mineral rights in Athens County, no permit applications have been filed with the state agency that reviews and approves permits.