A new group aims to set up in town, and it’s not happy with the oil and gas industry.
Frack Free Montezuma will host its biggest event yet in Cortez tonight when it screens the movie “Dear Governor Hickenlooper.”
Joanie Trussel, Frack Free Montezuma founder, said she and a handful of others decided to start a local group after seeing movies about hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking,” at the Telluride Film Festival.
“I realized how important it was to get this information out to people, in this area in particular,” Trussel said.
Environmental groups are calling on oil and gas companies to stop fracking, a process that uses water and other chemicals to break up shale in order to harvest natural gas.
Trussel has been showing movies in Mancos and took her screenings to Fort Lewis College Thursday night and to Cortez tonight.
“It is happening here. It has been happening here for a long time,” Trussel said. “The potential of harm to our water supply our air and our home is so tremendous. The industry sells it as clean energy, and they don’t talk about the process in making that energy.”
Fracking was also discussed Monday night at the Mt. Lookout Grange Hall in Mancos as nearly 30 people gathered to hear about the local oil and gas industry.
Mike Eisenfeld, New Mexico Energy Coordinator with the San Juan Citizens Alliance, told the group that they had to be ready to get informed.
“They are telling everyone in Northwestern New Mexico that the oil boom is coming,” Eisenfeld said.
He told the crowd that they had to remain vigilant as citizens in areas with the potential for oil and natural gas development, areas that include southwest Colorado and even a large area between Hesperus and Mancos.
“We could end up with our landscape looking like the pin cushion of the earth,” he said, during a presentation that showed photographs of New Mexico oil and gas development with dozens of well pads dotting the landscape.
Eisenfeld said there is a lot of talk about, and that it’s a complicated subject.
“The oil and gas companies say there is no way it can interact with our groundwater, and we call that somewhat dubious,” Eisenfeld said.
It’s important for landowners near activity to test their water and to start talking about the subject.
He also said that natural gas doesn’t come out of the ground clean.
“Natural gas does not come out clean – it has to be processed,” he said.
He added that there are about 300 hydrogen sulfide sites in the Four Corners region, an unexpected byproduct of that process.
Eisenfeld and Pete Dronkers urged Mancos residents and others in Montezuma County to get informed and talk to their neighbors.
“One person can make a difference,” Dronkers said.
Dronkers is a Southwest Circuit Rider with Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project, of Durango.
Dronkers helped form the new group Frack Free Montezuma, a local group the infancy stage, which will host a film screening on Friday and the Montezuma County Annex building at 7 p.m.
“Conventional oil and gas fracking has not happened here in Montezuma County,” Dronkers said, but that it is important that Four Corners residents be informed.
“The whole Canyons of the Ancients area is extremely densely leased to oil and gas companies,” Dronkers said. “The Canyons of the Ancients is the densest leased area in all of Southwest Colorado.”
Dronkers said his group is focusing on education.
“What we are up against is an industry that has an extremely well funded public relations campaign,” he said.
Frack Free Montezuma can be found on Facebook.
