This is an incredible story of what it's like to live near gas wells in Garfield County, Colorado. What makes it even more unreal is that the people interviewed mostly 1. Think the government will save them and 2. Except for one couple, gave lame excuses for not moving away from the area. Some of those interviewed seemed like "homesteader types."
I also found it strange that the writer failed to quote anyone from the government or oil/gas industry.
Nevertheless, I'm thankful I don't live near this place.
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/...en-Voices.html
An excerpt:
Deb Meader, 48, is a nurse, a mother of three girls, and a new grandmother. She lives in the town of Parachute, approximately two hundred yards from five gas wells.
"You can't live next to a gas well and not get sick. We look around on the mesa and everyone's got something. The guy below us had a real bad heart attack. The guy that owns the orchard has prostate cancer. I have headaches. Tom, my husband, has high blood pressure and gets headaches. Regina, my daughter, she had burning like you have a bladder infection. I did some research and found out that's a symptom of exposure to the chemicals in the air. My other neighbor, she's been sensitized to what's in the air because a gas well burped while she was irrigating. That's when gas builds up and they don't have the proper lids and filters on the top and it burps up and the gases come out. If she goes outside without a respirator on, she gets vomiting and diarrhea and her eyes will burn.
"Last summer, they were doing a lot of flaring up here, and my neighbor and I both woke up in the middle of the night, throwing up, with diarrhea and muscle pain. We called the sheriff's department and the EPA and then found out that there was a couple wells flared during the night. It's just a big revelation for me that it's okay to assault people and no one's held accountable for what they've done. We're not protected by the government or the law. This isn't the country that I thought I grew up in."
