Driving Out of Greeley is Depressing!!!

Leaving Greeley from any road these days is depressing! No matter if you go north, south, east, or west you see gas wells with tanks, separators, and flares that visually pollute the farm fields. Today my son took me via a scenic road south to Denver to visit the zoo with his son, my 2-1/2 year-old grandson. The country side south of 49th street was lush, and green with acres of corn stalks. Simply beautiful, as long as you tell yourself to ignore all the gas wells and tanks, left and right....and that is hard to do.

Once we were headed south on U.S. 85 we saw many more oil condensate tanks, but also new sites in the making, with drill rigs, and others where fracking operations are in full swing; you can tell when you see a field full of semi truck sized compressors that are needed to pressurize the water as it gets pumped into the well.

Clearly not a pretty sight, but appalling and stressful, really! I thought visiting the zoo with my grandson would give me a reprieve from the concerns of fracking, and it did once we got there. But oblivion was not to last very long as I noticed with dismay that some exhibits are named after corporate sponsors!  There's the Toyota Elephant Passage, the Gates Wildlife Conservation Education Center, the Janus Gateway center, the Conoco Zoo Gardens., and ....shocker of them all?

On the Denver Zoo website it says that

"Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has supported Denver Zoo through Do At The Zoo and Brew At The Zoo sponsorships since 2008. Beginning in 2013, Anadarko greatly expanded their involvement by presenting Denver Zoo's 2013 Do At The Zoo event in addition to providing educational, live animal community outreach programming in Weld County."

They also state:

"A special thank you to these Corporations [Encana is one of them too!] for their significant contributions...Corporate sponsor dollars are critical to Denver Zoo. These dollars are used to assist in the direct care and support of Denver Zoo’s animals and allows Denver Zoo to further its mission. Through these sponsorships, Denver Zoo continues to thrive and to carry out wildlife conservation and education for our community [while on the outside petroleum corporations like Anadarko and Encana are destroying our countryside and poisoning the air we breathe]"

Thankfully Greeley is getting more and more negative press. Perhaps because of that there's a glimmer of hope, as,

"The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission said neighbors’ concerns are one reason it hasn’t approved the wells yet."

See the CBS 4 News report with video interview with Sara Barwinski in which they say, "The city of Greeley is widely known as an oil and gas town." 

Will the sun set for good over the Sheep Draw?

Sunset over the Sheep  Draw

Last evening I ran into a man walking his dog on the beautiful Sheep Draw trail, beside which 12 horizontally drilled gas wells are planned. He said he'd just watched a scary movie on HBO and mentioned 'water catching on fire', so I asked "Gasland 2?" Yes, he said.

The trail near Northridge HS, north of 4th Street.

South of the trail is Hunter's Cove subdivsion.

More than before, he now has concerns about air quality because he lives closest to the already existing 6 vertical wells across the stream. The well pad with six oil tanks, located higher up on a natural bank, borders the beautiful, snaking stream with marshland in which cat tails and other riparian plants thrive and form habitat for red winged black birds.

View of the site from the trail. Take a look with Google maps. Click  here.

The six existing oil tanks. Note venting tubes on top and housing nearby.

Old trees are a nesting place for hawks and eagles. The area is so serene that you will only hear the rustling of tall grasses and reeds in the breeze, and the song of the red-winged blackbirds, or an occasional shriek from a raptor. After sunset the fire flies dance among the reeds, and much later owls may be heard.

Unfortunately there is danger lurking in this pastoral scene. The man said he can smell the fumes from where he lives, and I believe him as walking the trail with my daughter, we caught whiffs of emissions that were not marsh smells. Clearly it comes from the two big flares and the four separators. The new plan, if approved, will add 13 more separators, and 19 more oil tanks which also vent fumes.

Visible from the trail, the separators and flares, fuming 24/7 

A decision to permit more drilling on the site should not be made before the planning commissioners or city council members have actually visited this place. It deserves their respect. If they were to see and experience it,  for these photos do not do it justice, all would be in awe. That is, unless as children they were never encouraged to see and enjoy the beauty of the natural world, as that would have instilled respect in them, and a commitment to care for it and protect it.

We in Greeley must help preserve that beautiful stretch of wetland and keep it from being ruined by the drilling of more wells, with additional separators, flares and oil or condensate tanks that give off toxic VOCs!

Contact Weld Air and Water to help prevent it.
Check out Frack Files on Facebook and the Facebook group Plains Alliance for Clean Air and Water

Video Introduction to Dangers and Health Effects of Fracking

This half hour video presentation tells the story of a Texas couple whose property is surrounded by over 62 gas wells within a 2 mile radius. Is it any wonder these people are suffering health effects from such concentration of air pollutants?

Click on the title of the video: Fracking - Dangerous Contamination

If you want to get a real idea of the devastation caused by gas exploration, take a drive along Weld County Rd 49 from Kersey to Hudson! We always take that road for a speedy trip to DIA via E-470.

This morning, still dark, we could see some drill rigs in the distance, lit up by extremely bright, Klieg lights. In some areas along the way, likely because of the cool temperatures, we could catch whiffs of petroleum coming into the car. Some of the gas wells, with tanks, and flares, sit extremely close to homes! What must it be like to live there?

Bad as it is to have drilling going on, the worst is yet to

come in the form of  fumes that are constantly emitted once

 the well is in production. No landscaping can hide that!

The tall flare and the three black  'chimneys' of the
separators emit harmful VOCs and contribute to rising ozone
levels in a county that already exceeds the threshold for it!

 Look at this 'battery' of 28 oil storage tanks. Greeley- Evans
 residents near Walmart will get a similar view with 32 tanks!

Below is the proposed site for the 67 gas wells. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission issued permits for them on May, 31st, but Mineral Resources, Inc., the mining company that will drill the wells, still needs to get permission from the Greeley Planning Commission. Since health or environmental concerns are not taken into consideration the project will most certainly get the green light....unless it is massively protested! 

Zoom in here. "A" shows the location where the drill rig will be put up behind Walmart and Frontier Academy (grades K-6). Note the field on left that already has eight gas wells and tanks. On the south of 32nd street are several apartment buildings.

Here you see the schematic of where the 32 oil storage tanks (red dots), and 30 gas separators (yellow stripes) will be placed. Note the proximity of Frontier's playground in the upper left corner, a mere tenth of a mile away from any VOCs escaping from the separators. 

A study by the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado showed that,

"residents living less than 1/2 mile from wells are at greater risk for health effects from natural gas development (NGD) than are residents living farther than one half mile away." 

See Human health risk assessment of air emissions from development of unconventional natural gas resources.

Aims Drill Site

Aims leases to Synergy Resources; receives $13,000 a month 

"It's another revenue source that will help keep us solvent,.. the kind of outside-the-box thinking that helps provide a safety net in the face of dramatic decreases in college funding from the state. " said Aims Community College president Marsi Liddell. ..The University of Northern Colorado and Weld County School District 6 in Greeley also have inked deals with energy companies." See: Weld County schools use oil, gas leases to tap into revenue streams - The Denver Post 

The drill rig at Aims Community College, located at the intersection of College Drive and Aims Blvd.

What was once arable land like this,

unfortunately changed into this. Zoom in to the green arrow to see the change!

These are the nine storage tanks for crude oil. They each hold 300 barrels, which is the equivalent of 12,600 gallons.

The crude oil is collected and transported off site by truck

Resembling a slim pot belly stove this is one of four flares that burns off excess gas 24/7.

You cannot see with the naked eye, that these flares emit noxious fumes and VOCs,

 but you can when you video record with zoom lens. Watch the video clip below. 

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