NOBULL: RE: Is Fracking Contaminating US Livestock? — The war that has been waged on energy by the radical environmentalists…
Thanks Darol for a little common sense approach to this whole thing. I have lived next to those coal generating plants up here in North and South Dakota and I can tell you that I have managed to enjoy some very cheap and clean and dependable electricity. I have never experienced any discomfort, from their emissions. The EPA has shut down well over a 100 coal generating plants across there United States. There is a vow made in Washington that there will never be another one built in this county because they will see to it that it will go broke because of the regulations that the EPA will place on it. We only have to look at Japan to see how safe Nuclear energy is. The war that has been waged on energy by the radical environmentalists has done nothing but made life more difficult for the average American who is simply out there trying to get the job done. The UN and "Agenda 21" can be thanked for a good deal of what is going on. Go ahead and look up Agenda 21 on your computer, it is all there.
Charlie Clark
Mike:
The UN? Agenda 21?
Is this Mike Callicrate’s listserve or Rush Limbaugh’s hateful, no-source “entertainment”?
AG
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Mike,
I, like Darol, don’t want to make anybody mad, and don’t wish to twist anybody’s words. Frankly, I think our biggest problem is that too many people too often and too quickly resort to name calling from both sides. Perhaps the most important thing we can all do is listen to each others perspectives respectfully, agree on what can, and agree to disagree respectfully when we can’t.
That said, I want to respond to Darol’s points as respectfully as I can:
1) there are some ruthless laws enforced on drilling companies if they ever contaminate an area. They are forced to pay damages, if proven.
Yes, there are laws on the books that are supposed to protect landowners from water contamination–“IF PROVEN”. But unless you have spent a substantial amount of your own time, effort and money meticulously documenting your own baseline water quality and quantity for at least several years before the fracking beginss, and unless you have deep enough pockets to hire a hydrologist and a lawyer to go up against multinational oil companies in court even if you have documented your water baseline, good luck trying to prove that your water was disrupted or contaminated by a specific multinational fracking company. As most people acknowledge, these companies have unlimited resources to drag out such a legal battles indefinitely. They can wait until most individuals go broke trying; and, in the end, they often have already corrupted the judges enough to win anyway. Mike, you know what’s this is like having sued IBP for damages for manipulating cattle prices for nearly a decade; winning the case before a jury of your peers; only to have the US Supreme Court allow your jury verdict to be overturned by a corrupt judge. Suing a multinational oil and gas company over contaminating your water well is pretty much like that. The laws that protect landowners’ water rights are about as “ruthless” (toothless?) as the Packer and Stockyards Act is now that the courts have thoroughly eviscerated what was once a strong and admirable law of the land.
2) “Surface owner consent” is attached to mineral ownership and would be a rare occasion that anyone would buy minerals without the right to mine — that would be crazy — minerals would be worthless.
It is not at all rare for people to buy land without mineral rights, especially in the West where mineral rights were severed from the surface rights for a variety of reasons over the years. For example, the federal government started reserving mineral rights when granting individual homesteads after the Mineral Leasing Act was passed in 1920. Additionally, the federal gave away millions of acres of public lands (and the minerals beneath them) to the railroads on every other section of land on 80 miles of either side of the railroad tracks (about 1/16th of Montana alone). So there are now in fact many landowners who own the surface, but have another person, or corporation, or government, who owns the minerals underneath their lands. It was for these reasons in that ranchers in the 1970s fought hard for, and convinced Congress to include, surface owner consent in the federal Surface Mining Act. It was a huge victory for individual landowners’ private property rights. It was in fact an agrarian conservative assertion of individual private property rights against the historical corporate abuses of mining companies to use the power of the state to condemn peoples’ land for their own private profit.
3) Your RDO guy twisted my info. People aren’t leaving a Marcellus drilling area because it is contaminated. It is because they have the money to pick and choose an area of their choice, that could be their dream place, with the money received from mineral leases or sales. With respect, Darol Dickinson
Darol, with all due respect, if you read my post regarding this issue, you will see that my concern wasn’t with the landowners, who by chance were lucky enough to have viable deposits to lease their lands, and thereby were able to buy their dream place and leave behind the problems that they had helped create in the first place. No, my concern was for those landowners who weren’t lucky enough to have minerals to lease in the first place, who didn’t want to leave, and who were left behind and forced to deal with disruption and contamination inflicted on them by their lucky neighbors and the multinational fracking corporations who profited handsomely from their demise.
Why is it that some people think that they should have the unlimited “freedom” to destroy the water, land, and air and property rights of their neighbors, but somehow don’t think that they should be held accountable for these negative impacts that their actions have had on their neighbors? What about their neighbors’ fundamental right to due process of law before their property is unjustly taken from them; e.g., their water well destroyed, their cattle poisoned, their land and home devalued?
Why not have regulations that would require the fracking companies to conduct adequate baseline studies of the neighbors water rights before the fracking begins? This would at least give the landowner a fighting chance to make his case in a court of law should his water rights be contaminated or otherwise disrupted. Why should it always be left up to the individual landowner alone to try fend off such rapacious assaults on his fundamental right to enjoy and bear the fruits of his own property?
RDO