Drill, Baby, Drill. Oh Wait… Pollute, Baby, Pollute!

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Americans want Republicans to control all branches of federal and state government in order to de-regulate business, even though de-regulation would pollute the environment Americans live in! Right? Right?

Oil boom brings wealth and waste to North Dakota

MSNBC 6/8/12

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By Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica
Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller's formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and reviving moribund local businesses.

But Keller, a natural resource manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen a more ominous effect of the boom, too: Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto the region's land and into its waterways with increasing regularity.

Hydraulic fracturing — the controversial process behind the spread of natural gas drilling — is enabling oil companies to reach previously inaccessible reserves in North Dakota, triggering a turnaround not only in the state's fortunes, but also in domestic energy production. North Dakota now ranks second behind only Texas in oil output nationwide.

The downside is waste — lots of it. Companies produce millions of gallons of salty, chemical-infused wastewater, known as brine, as part of drilling and fracking each well. Drillers are supposed to inject this material thousands of feet underground into disposal wells, but some of it isn't making it that far.

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.

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And we trust them to mine too ?!?

Development of Pebble Mine is a huge controversy here in AK. It's a planned copper mine that if it goes through will kill salmon runs - guaranteeed.

35% of the breadbasket of America's seafood comes from AK.

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Environmental Problems with Pebble:

To build the largest open pit mine in North America at the headwaters of the two largest Sockeye Salmon producing rivers on the planet seems preposterous. But that is exactly what two foreign mining companies are proposing in Southwest Alaska at the headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak Rivers.

These rivers have had millions of healthy fish returning year after year for millennia. This area is wild. It is home to grizzlies, wolves, caribou, wolverines, foxes, otters, moose, and much more. All of these animals thrive here in Bristol Bay because of the abundance of clean water. At a time where clean water is becoming more and more rare, it only makes sense to preserve our last remaining supplies. Pebble also sits in a seismically active area. So the promises made of keeping the toxic waste contained are unattainable.

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You know how a salmon knows how it returns to it's birth river ... it literally tastes the water. When they come to spawn they know it's their last trip. They don't eat and just open their mouths to taste their way home.

Fishermen "Floss" the salmon to catch them ... it's a type of fly fishing that you litterally catch them with their mouths open. You can only floss hook them in the mouth any other part of their body you hook you have to release them. I caught my first Silver Salmon that way. What a beauty 8 Lbs. Best tasting salmon I ever ate.

They want to destroy this ... no way. Sorry.

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Hey... no problem... Republicans and owners of mines don't eat salmon. And they would love to hunt the wild animals to extinction.

If Republicans were in the space station, they would sell the station's supply of oxygen!