We have much more to do and your continued support is needed now more than ever.
Governor, think of the beer!
Pure Rocky Mountain Spring Water?
The governor, however, has not always been as strong an advocate for Colorado’s surface and ground waters as he has been for quality beer. Perhaps the most prominent example is his oft-debunked claim to drinking “frack fluid.” “Frack fluid” refers to the host of chemical cocktails injected at high pressure into hydrocarbon-bearing geological formations, along with sand and water, to release the oil and gas fueling our latest drilling boom. Yet the brew the governor sampled is an expensive, experimental plant-based variety not actually in commercial use in the state. Real frack fluid contains a soup of chemicals toxic to humans and wildlife. I think this episode displays an unfounded assurance that fracking, and oil and gas development, is risk-free, and that the oil and gas industry can and will self-regulate to ensure that our state’s waters don’t suffer contamination from the rush to extract natural gas.
Germany’s Fracking Brew-Ha-Ha
I couldn’t help but wonder, then, whether the governor might not be persuaded otherwise at last by a new controversy “brewing” in, of all places, Germany. According to an article in Der Spiegel, German breweries have complained that hydraulic fracturing threatens to contaminate drinking water and violate “the beer purity law, or Reinheitsgebot, of 1516.” I was disappointed when research revealed that Colorado has no beer purity law of 1516. The German rule mandates that “German beer still may only be made from malt, hops, yeast and water.” Presumably, carcinogenic frack fluid constituents like benzene and 1,2-Dichloroethane don’t meet that definition.