Yukoners Concerned is trapped in 21 recommendations (Whse Star Comment Oct. 14, 2016)

Almost two years from the release of the legislature’s fracking committee’s report, Don Roberts continues to misread its 21 recommendations on their face value; green-washing recommendation which converge onto a one-way frack-lane.

In his otherwise mostly acceptable letter to the Star on Oct. 12, Mr. Roberts again asked the Yukon government to fulfil or apply these 21 recommendations, as if they advocated honest environmental protections.

Unlike Mr. Roberts, I have repeatedly questioned the frack report and have not bought into it, thereby also avoiding lending false legitimacy for fracking, which was the purpose of the report to begin with:

“The committee did agree that the following [21] recommendations should be addressed before hydraulic fracturing is considered.”

Recommendation 6, full text: “THAT baseline ground and surface water data be collected for an appropriate period of time, in order to ensure that comprehensive data is available.”

It’s B.C.-style soft legalese as part of Frack while Talk procedures, but no trust building, as in comprehensive baseline work must be carried out and completed. 

Recommendation 6 inevitably brings on especially B.C. best practices, as announced and complied with by the Yukon government. Those nowhere and never have included comprehensively concluded baseline water testing.

There is reason and logic to it. Alberta, Pennsylvania, British Columbia are examples, which will include the Yukon with frack procedures already permitted and initiated.

Industry-controlled regulators claim especially high levels of methane toxicity in the water of fracked regions are supposedly naturally occurring and pre-existing. 

Recommendation 10 recommends requiring to make public the frack chemicals. 

The entire 25-page frack report hides Fracfocus by making no single mention of this centrepiece of best practice regulations.

There is no excuse. Duty of care aside, on several occasions I had made sure all the committee members and legislature audience regulars are aware.

It is almost certain that the Fracfocus chemical disclosure registry will in time be implemented, as it is in place across North America, including in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Fracfocus is a Kafkaesk masterpiece of deception and nihilism.

It requires disclosure reports, but not until 30 days after frack operations have ended and all specific individual compound disclosures are voluntary.

Medical associations complain that Fracfocus pushes back even those patients’ rights, disclosure obligations, legal remedies and helpful liabilities that existed before Fracfocus.

Herding everybody into establishing a narrow single-issue regulatory focus of water management really manages control of communities that in truth face broad destructive impacts (the Yukon government calls it Yukon Water Strategy, 2014).

It does so by diluting effective resistance against destroying the fullness of natural and economic life support systems.

Yukoners Concerned about Oil and Gas Exploration/Development, but especially Don Roberts, accommodated this government strategy by overplaying the message track: “It’s all about the water.”

Mr. Roberts never exposed or rejected Fracfocus.

Recommendation 11, full text: “THAT research be conducted to demonstrate whether well integrity can prevent migration of liquids or gases in the long term.”

Such research is not available. Supporting these recommendations retells government’s misleading statements, which can only get us fracked.

During the January 2014 Yukon legislature presentations/hearings, University of Alberta Prof. Bernhard Mayer had expressed doubt on industry claims regarding well integrity.

The Merchants of Doubt chutzpah by which his talk hid reality and statistics of the rate of well failures was remarkable.

The author of Sustainable Fossil Fuel, Mark Jaccard, a former advisor to former prime minister Stephen Harper, together with Rick Chalaturnyk, Royal Dutch Shell’s face for leaky carbon storage drilling, led the Merchants of (false) Doubt charge during the hearings.

Guaranteed frack harms were hidden consistently behind fixable or to-be-regulated “risks” by silver-tongued charmers with mediocre science credentials throughout the hearing.

There was frequent applause from all MLAs and the NGO crowd that had included Yukoners Concerned executives.

Synergy Alberta frack recruiting methods were explained and anticipated by short video docs on world-leading fracture engineer Tony Ingraffea that I had embedded into a PPT (http:// goo.gl/Oy8CtZ ).

During this Yukoners Concerned PPT presentation to the committee in October 2013, I had alerted the fracking committee members specifically to the Mayer/Jaccard type sleight-of-hand by carefully unpacking it.

In the PPT video material, fracture engineer Dr. Ingraffea strongly emphasized that engineers never use the word “prevent” when it comes to well failures, especially of frack wells.

His professional and poignant advice was critical, yet was totally suppressed and censored out from the report that Yukoners Concerned unfortunately endorses.

Recommendation #12 deals with air quality baseline testing as fraudulently as #6 does to water.

Merchants of Doubt piece #13 recommends research on greenhouse gases’ impact but ignores the U. of Colorado report with total mass measurement data of fugitive emissions of about nine per cent in a Utah frack field I had referred to and linked to in the Yukoners Concerned PPT.

I had pointed out how essential it is to include research such as the one of the U. of Colorado in the face of frack PR that to this day paints as outlier a well-known Cornell University study on the climate impact of methane emissions.

The remaining 16 frack implementations are mostly filler and fluff that provide a false sense of security while being screwed, diverting attention from the killer portion that has holes big enough to literally drive through frack truck loads by the millions.

Mr. Roberts’ letter is somewhat compromised in its credibility by letting off the hook the opposition parties which have underwritten the report and its 21 pro-frack recommendations.

It is what led to a highly deceptive Yukon Oil and Gas Act (2015 amended Yukon Oil and Gas Act) voted for by all parties, with the NDP failing its responsibility as official Opposition caucus that commanded resources to at least know and express what is going on.

What kind of silliness is at play trying to stop a wrong, while giving assistance to all its surrounding support limbs? After five years of fracking danger, the word disobedience, in civil disobedience, has not yet been learned.

Peter Becker is a Whitehorse energy consultant.