During the last two Idaho legislative sessions, a majority of our state senators and representatives succumbed to the mercenary ambitions of the oil and natural gas industry and the state of Idaho.  They passed state laws, rules, and regulations allowing hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” that pollutes surface and ground water, sanctioning associated waste injection wells that leak or re-use water wells, permitting seismic testing and gas flaring that jeopardize geologic stability and air quality, granting corporate hegemony over local jurisdictions that undermines democratic oversight of oil and gas facilities, and consenting to drilling on state lands and near or under rivers, wetlands, and wildlife refuges that sustain drinking water, agriculture, and native species [1, 2].

Despite ongoing outcry from thousands of citizens and diligent input from scientists, attorneys, elected officials, and conservation organizations, our delegates have negligently accommodated oil and gas exploration, production, and transportation in Idaho, especially where the state owns the subsurface mineral rights, at the likely expense of their constituents’ health, safety, livelihoods, and self-governance.  In the wake of increasingly erratic weather and horrific oil and gas spills in the flooded South Platte River bottomlands of Colorado, honest, hard-working Idahoans dread the impacts of similar probable scenarios on their families and communities, homes and businesses, and resources and recreation in the Payette River floodplains, where drilling resumed this summer, and in the wild, downstream Snake River canyons [3, 4]. Continue reading →

As oil and gas drilling resumed in Payette County this month after a few years, Alta Mesa Services raised a derrick at the Smoke Ranch natural gas well on June 9 [1].  This directionally drilled well – the focus of the intensive Stop the Frack Attack! campaign of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE) during June – embodies the myriad infringements of environmental and human health that conventionally-drilled and hydraulically-fractured (“fracked”) oil and gas wells famously impose [2].  The Smoke Ranch well occupies a floodplain, where operators pumped standing water from the well pad before drilling between the Payette River and Big Willow Creek, within a half-mile of a riparian area/wetland wildlife refuge, and only a few miles upstream from the City of Fruitland municipal water intake and the Payette/Snake River confluence.  Its ultimate outcomes could set a precedent for looming drilling/fracking on and under nearby state lands and waters already leased by Alta Mesa and Snake River Oil and Gas.  IRAGE activists have been monitoring the site daily and, along with other information sources in the southwest Idaho region, have observed multitudes of hidden equipment, transport trailers, drill pipes, and well pads awaiting likely escalating utilization, as well as water for Smoke Ranch operations withdrawn from irrigation canals.  They have recently taken unreleased pictures and videos of several Schlumberger tank trucks covered with radioactive warning placards. Continue reading →

In the wake of the Stop the Frack Attack, Idaho! Week and Month of Actions, Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE), Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), and United Vision for Idaho (UVI) are launching the Stop the Frack Attack, Idaho! Weekend to conclude an undeniably successful June full of citizen resistance to oil and gas drilling and impending fracking in Idaho [1, 2, 3].  As mercenary natural gas development companies and the colluded state government accelerate pillage of public resources, Idahoans are increasingly confronting politicians and profiteers through actions to protect shared surface, ground, and irrigation waters, wildlife, agriculture, and recreation, air quality and climate, and the subsequent health of current and future generations.

From Coeur d’Alene to Boise, we started the month with statewide protests at six offices of the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL), the agency charged with permitting oil and gas exploration, extraction, and production in Idaho.  Initially through these WIRT actions and comments, we voiced opposition to IDL leasing of state lands along and under the Payette River for drilling and rallied against an IDL permit sought by Alta Mesa Services (AMS) to drill the Smoke Ranch well in a Payette River island floodplain near a confluence and wildlife refuge, wetlands, prior Native lands, and downstream city water intake.  In response, IDL issued a media counter-release that disclosed that IDL had leased the Payette River Wildlife Management Area for drilling and that it anticipated “small frac jobs” on half of the previously established eleven wells in Payette County.  IDL also inexplicably disregarded and refused to post WIRT’s extensive comments on the AMS permit application, despite their relevance.  Twenty-plus participants in the June 7 protest outside the main IDL office and minerals division during afternoon rush-hour traffic in downtown Boise waved signs and banners, chalked sidewalk notes, and engaged IDL director Tom Schultz in a brief conversation.  Several widely circulated press releases and the WIRT rebuttal to IDL’s counter-release motivated Boise Weekly, Earthworks Earthblog, EcoWatch, and KRFP Radio Free Moscow to cover our extensive demonstrations. Continue reading →