WIRT’s Stop the Frack Attack protests are scheduled for outside of offices of the Idaho Department of Lands across the Gem State (Boise Weekly/Adam Rosenlund image).

In response to what it says is the certain prospect of “fracking” – the controversial process of shooting high-pressured liquids and solids into the earth’s core to enhance gas flows – in Idaho, the environmental activist group Wild Idaho Rising Tide is launching what it calls a “frack attack” of its own.

WIRT members will take their concerns to Boise’s North Sixth Street on Friday, June 7, when they’ll protest outside the offices of the Idaho Department of Lands – one in a series of statewide demonstrations outside IDL offices slated for June 3 to 9.

“It’s a way to show our state government that plenty of citizens aren’t pleased with how state lands could potentially be used, and also how our state water would be impacted by this drilling,” WIRT spokeswoman Helen Yost told Boise Weekly.

Read more: Fracking With Idaho: Activists Push Back Against State, Gas Explorers

(By Skylar Barsanti, Boise Weekly)

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) organized several upcoming statewide protests and commented against Alta Mesa Services’ (AMS) plans to drill the Smoke Ranch natural gas well on private land in Birding Island, Payette County.  In response to nationwide WIRT publicity of this gas extraction scheme, the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL), the administrative arm of the Idaho Land Board and Oil and Gas Conservation Commission authorized to both lease lands and consider and permit such drilling on them (conflicting roles?), released a Fact Sheet for Media with information that counters WIRT assertions and displays alarming duplicity.

No Fracking?

Even though IDL states that “oil and gas resources in Idaho generally do not have the [fracking?] issues with extraction that have been reported over the last few years in other states,” they likely will experience these problems, considering the mercenary objectives of oil and gas companies and the state’s conflict of public interest as the major holder of subsurface mineral rights in the target region.  State rules “include the requirement that an operator must disclose all materials used for well treatments and fracking [if they are not proprietary brews], and to inform the state of where it will dispose of fracking fluid.  Disposal could include the recycle and reuse of the fluid for the fracking process.”  If Idaho resources do not require fracking, why has the state established rules about it?

“Small Frac Jobs”?

“The IDL has received no applications to date for hydraulic fracturing.  However, approximately half of the currently completed [eleven] wells in Idaho will need a SMALL FRAC JOB to clear the drilling mud from the POROUS reservoir rocks.  This frac job is estimated to be only about three percent of the size of frac jobs performed to extract oil or gas from shale, as is currently being done in North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and other places outside Idaho.  This means they would only be using thousands of gallons of water and not millions…”  This IDL statement represents written proof that Idaho is about to be fracked in a similar although smaller way as the places most poisoned by this risky extraction method. Continue reading →