During the Stop the Frack Attack Week of Action on June 3 to 9, activists of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE), and United Vision for Idaho coordinated protests at six Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) offices throughout Idaho [1, 2].  Staging Stop the Frack Attack, Idaho! demonstrations and a strategy meeting, citizens expressed their concerns about oil and gas drilling near water bodies, on state lands, and via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Payette and surrounding counties [3, 4].  On Tuesday, June 4, Idaho and Washington participants brought their friends, family, and neighbors and fracking/drilling protest signs to IDL offices in Coeur d’Alene and Saint Maries in northern Idaho.  Fellow concerned citizens demonstrated outside IDL offices in Deary, Kamiah, and Orofino in north-central Idaho on Wednesday, June 5, and took plenty of photos and videos at all six locations to share with IDL and the regional and national media [5].  On Thursday evening, June 6, a dozen highly motivated and energized Idaho activists and attorneys converged for a third strategizing session, to shape our ongoing resistance to oil and gas drilling and fracking over the next year.  At the culminating action outside the main IDL office and minerals division near the state capitol in downtown Boise on Friday, June 7, at least 20 southwestern Idaho fractivists briefly talked with IDL director Tom Schultz, waved signs and banners during afternoon rush-hour traffic, and chalked notes on the adjacent sidewalks [6-9].

With a May 28 press release and event announcements, WIRT and its allies initially instigated these successful protests at IDL offices to rally public comments and opposition to the proposed Smoke Ranch natural gas well on Birding Island [10].  On April 30, Alta Mesa Services (AMS) submitted an application for an IDL permit to drill a gas well among the extensive floodplain and wetlands confluence of the Payette River and Big Willow Creek [11].  Between two nearby units of the Payette River Wildlife Management Area and the traditional lands of the Lenni-Lenape tribe, the AMS well would drill under Highway 52 near New Plymouth, only a few miles upriver from the City of Fruitland water supply intake and the Payette/Snake River convergence [12, 13].  On behalf of our nearly 2000 members, IRAGE and WIRT raised numerous objections to IDL permitting of the poorly-placed Smoke Ranch well that could set a precedent for risky, mercenary, industrial use of state lands and waters along and under the Payette River, leased by AMS and Snake River Oil and Gas [14-18].  The Smoke Ranch well pad on private property, constructed before the public comment period closed, recently flooded and required surface water pumping before drilling with toxic chemicals that has not yet commenced [19].

In response to nationwide WIRT publicity of this gas extraction scheme, the Idaho Department of Lands provoked the escalating urgency and significance of citizen protests of private exploitation of public resources with its May 30 Fact Sheet for Media countering WIRT’s May 28 press release [20, 21].  It disclosed the first written proof of impending fracking in Idaho: “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.”  Similar to, but purportedly smaller than, the risky hydraulic fracturing of shale that has poisoned places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania, dangerous, earthquake-inducing fracking in the fifth most seismically active state could permanently withdraw and pollute millions of gallons of water in the Payette River basin.  As described in WIRT’s rebuttal of IDL’s media release, these deep explosions could induce methane and drilling chemical migration in the punctured, shallower layer of sandstone and gas underlying vulnerable area aquifers and surface waters including irrigation canals [22, 23].  IDL also confirmed the state’s conflict of public interest, as the major holder of subsurface mineral rights in the target region, with its fact sheet revelation that the two profiteering companies had leased tracts from IDL and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in the Payette River WMA, within one half mile of the Smoke Ranch well.  This drill site could provide multiple, underground entry points for directional drilling and fracking of gas fields beneath the wildlife refuge, where the lease prohibits surface disruption from drilling [24]. Continue reading →

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 →

Alta Mesa Services (AMS) of Houston, Texas, submitted an application to the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) on April 30, 2013, for a permit to directionally drill a natural gas well under Highway 52 in Payette County, Idaho (1).  Unlike the eleven wells sunk by Bridge Resources in 2010 and 2011 in the shallower (1400 to 1750 feet), “tight” gas sandstone formation of the Hamilton field under Payette River bottomlands, this well represents the first incursion into the Willow gas field.  This deeper of two potential plays in southwestern Idaho lies beneath the hills and buttes surrounding the agricultural communities of New Plymouth and Fruitland, below the Hamilton sandstone and underlying shale, at depths between 4500 and 5800 feet in sands over basalt.  Idaho activists are concerned that the company could hydraulically fracture (“frack”) rocks almost a mile underground, like drilling practices used to extract hydrocarbon deposits from shale formations, to obtain natural gas and/or oil from this Smoke Ranch lease of mineral rights.

A dangerous method of oil and gas well stimulation, fracking forces millions of gallons of pressurized water and toxic substances down wells to crack subsurface rocks and release small, substandard pockets of oil and natural gas.  In dozens of states across the country, this process has produced hazardous, radioactive wastewater, contaminated air and water, generated cancer-causing pollution, compromised human and environmental health and safety, and released greenhouses gases causing climate change.  Earthquakes triggered by fracking’s explosive charges and wastewater well injections could exacerbate Idaho’s fifth greatest amount of seismic activity in the nation and consequently shatter the mechanical integrity of such inherently toxic oil and gas wells.

The proposed Smoke Ranch well would drill and potentially frack Birding Island, within the extensive wetlands and floodplain confluence of the Payette River and Big Willow Creek, only a few miles upriver from the City of Fruitland drinking water intake and the Payette/Snake River convergence (2).  Under the surrounding landscape full of farms, ranches, livestock, and wildlife dependent on clean surface streams and irrigation canals, aquifers only 660 feet deep perch, without much distance or barriers, over gas-bearing zones in porous layers punctured by drilling activities. Continue reading →