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Our Watershed
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For many of us participating in the Thompson Divide Coalition, water quality is the paramount concern.
The Thompson Divide is an extraordinary headwaters. Despite its relatively low elevation, it’s the source of numerous creeks radiating in all directions: Thompson, Fourmile and Coal creeks flow east and north to the Roaring Fork; Muddy Creek is a tributary of the Gunnison, to the south; and Divide and Willow creeks flow north and west to the Colorado. Area residents rely on this water for drinking; ranches, farms and households irrigate with it; our recreation-based economy depends on it; and a host of wildlife species can’t survive without it.
Gas drilling would cause unacceptable impacts to our water. To release the natural gas locked in the tight-sands formations of our region, drillers typically use a method called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which entails injecting a cocktail of water and chemicals into the well at high pressure. Many of these chemicals are highly toxic. The fact that drilling companies recover most of their fracking fluids is cold comfort, because having been brought back to the surface the fluids are often spilled (where they can make their way into groundwater), pumped into evaporation ponds (where they pollute the air), and/or trucked off-site (leading to the occasional rollover and spill, again contaminating our groundwater).
In the communities along the I-70 corridor, where the gas boom has been under way for nearly a decade, there have been anecdotal reports of contaminated wells, unusual cancers and high rates of livestock abnormalities. Whether fracking chemicals are to blame remains to be seen, because little scientific investigation has been done, and the EPA is actually barred from regulating the chemicals.
We’re not comfortable with the idea of toxic chemicals being allowed to contaminate our ground and surface water, perhaps for hundreds of years to come. We don’t accept that the health of our watershed should be sacrificed for the sake of a few days’ worth of natural gas.
