Alta Mesa Services plans to drill/frack for natural gas in Birding Island, near the Payette River Wildlife Management Area in Payette County, Idaho (Alma Hasse photo).

On Friday, June 7, at 3 pm, southwestern Idaho fractivists are meeting at the Idaho Department of Lands unit that houses the director and the lands, minerals, and range division, at 300 North Sixth Street near the state capitol in downtown Boise.

With the Thursday, May 30, disclosure by the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) that Snake River Oil and Gas and Alta Mesa Services could implement “small frac jobs” on half of the eleven already drilled gas wells in Idaho, our protesting and organizing this week carries more urgency and significance [1].  Similar but smaller-scale than the risky hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) of shale that has poisoned places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania, this dangerous blasting of porous gas reservoir rocks would permanently withdraw and pollute thousands of gallons of water from the Payette River basin.  IDL’s press release countering our media release that rallied public comments and protests also revealed that the two profiteering companies have leased tracts from IDL in the Payette River Wildlife Management Area (WMA), near the original target of our resistance, the proposed Smoke Ranch gas well on Birding Island, within the Big Willow Creek/Payette River confluence, floodplain, and wetlands.  Its well pad on private land, constructed before the public comment period closed, could provide an entry point for directional drilling into gas fields beneath the wildlife refuge, where the WMA lease prohibits surface disruption from drilling, and set a precedent for exploitation of other leased state lands along the river.

If you think that impending – and now verified – fracking in Idaho should only concern residents of Payette and surrounding counties, consider that oil and gas drilling could also soon be invading the Grangeville area and the 7,356 Bureau of Land Management acres leased near Bear Lake and Grays Lake in southeastern Idaho [2, 3].  Along with commenting against IDL permitting of the poorly-placed Smoke Ranch well, on behalf of our nearly 2000 members, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and our allies are coordinating protests at IDL offices throughout the state, during the Stop the Frack Attack Week of Action on June 3 to 9 [4, 5, 6, 7].  We are staging Stop the Frack Attack, Idaho! demonstrations and a strategy meeting on Tuesday through Friday, June 4 to 7, in northern, north-central, and southwestern Idaho [8].  Please bring your friends, family, and neighbors and fracking/drilling protest signs, banners, and chants, join fellow concerned citizens at these statewide demonstrations, and take plenty of photos and videos to later share with IDL!  If participating from Moscow, meet at the WIRT Activist House.  Please contact WIRT for further information about the following schedule. Continue reading →