DISQUS

janeinaspen · 3 years ago

Oil Shale in western CO I live in the area, and my big concern is two fold:

I) What about the 1969 nuclear bomb that was exploded underground just a few miles away from there, and

II) What about the Colorado River, just 50% of the US water supply being contaminated by these companies working there?

Can anyone clue me into any info they have about this?
Leslie Robinson · 3 years ago

Some answers The "Rulison Project" is the atomic bomb experiment that the federal government sponsored in hopes of extracting gas out of the tight sand formation, way long before Halliburton's current new fracing (pronounced "frak-king) advances. The problems were first, the gas was radioactive and unusable (like duh) and second, the process didn't work very well.

Currently, the Garfield County commissioners have some say-so on gas drilling within the moratorium area and drilling is already approved in areas about two miles away, I believe. The gas industry thinks the gas is no longer radioactive, but no one knows for sure. The Post Independent (www.postindependent.com) has done a great job covering this issue from time to time.

I have not heard of any contamination from oil and gas activities to the Colorado River (don't know who's checking either), but some local water wells around Silt and Rifle have been affected. The City of Rifle has about 80 gas wells drilled in their Mamm Creek watershed and so far, no problems.