Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumNorth Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity
According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.
State officials say most of the releases are small. But in several cases, spills turned out to be far larger than initially thought, totaling millions of gallons. Releases of brine, which is often laced with carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals, have wiped out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland. The effects on land can last for years, or even decades.
Compounding such problems, state regulators have often been unable or unwilling to compel energy companies to clean up their mess, our reporting showed.
[link:http://www.propublica.org/article/the-other-fracking-north-dakotas-oil-boom-brings-damage-along-with-prosperi|
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,678 posts)The damage will go on until people finally get it through their heads that those activities are unsustainable.
Or until we kill the earth.
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)Like West Texas in about 1982.
North Dakota will get its turn too.
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)'drill baby drill' and ain't this great! Unemployment? Ha...
jobs everywhere....of course there was no place to live and
then towns directly effected couldn't handle the sewage, etc.
That beautiful land...scarred to me. I'm going back in August
for a wedding. Of course, I can't afford to fly there anymore.
The cost of the flight between Minneapolis and Minot is
outrageous....well, the oil people pay it so the rest of us
have to do the same! So, 3 of us will drive from Minneapolis
and save a bundle but..............someday these folks will
take a good look at their farmlands, hunting lands and fishing
lakes and streams and figure out what some of us know now.
How contamination is worth oil I'll never understand.