Colorado’s Governor Goes Off the Deep End: Drinks Fracking Fluid and Threatens Local Communities

I haven’t taken a strong stance for or against fracking because, despite my background as an energy analyst, I just don’t feel like I have enough understanding to take an aggressive posture either way.  Fracking could very well be one of those complex issues where the truth lies somewhere in between both sides’ arguments.  In any event, one thing that I can say I am completely and totally appalled by and opposed to is the approach of the Governor of my adopted state of Colorado, John Hickenlooper.

It seems as if Governor Hickenlooper is taking a page out of the federal playbook in thinking he is a mini-dictator.  The fact that my governor’s strategy to deal with reasonable concerns about fracking in our communities is to threaten them with lawsuits is entirely unacceptable.  Looks like I need to spend a bit more time on local issues going forward.  From the Huffington Post:

In a recent interview with CBS4, Hickenlooper told Shaun Boyd in no uncertain terms that the state will sue any city that bans hydraulic fracturing within their borders.

When the controversial natural gas drilling technique also known as “fracking” was banned in Longmont in 2012, the state sued the town claiming that the city’s oil and gas regulations illegally overstepped the state’s authority to regulate the industry.

And just this month, the city of Fort Collins gave initial approval to a ban of most oil and natural gas exploration including hydraulic fracturing within the city limits and Hickenlooper says that the state is prepared to sue Fort Collins. A day after the city announced the initial approval, the oil industry also suggested that it may take legal action against the city if the ban goes into effect, The Coloradoan reported last week.

Hickenlooper’s charge comes less than three weeks after greenish-brown fracking fluids leaked from a well in Windsor, just east of Fort Collins, for 30 hours before finally being capped off. And just today The Coloradoan reported that the leak is being called a “blowout” and was directly related to fracking.

Hickenlooper has made no secret of his support for hydraulic fracturing, but earlier this month he took one big step further and testified that he actually drank fracking fluid.

“You can drink it. We did drink it around the table, almost ritual-like, in a funny way,” Hickenlooper said before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Yes, this is my governor.

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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7 thoughts on “Colorado’s Governor Goes Off the Deep End: Drinks Fracking Fluid and Threatens Local Communities”

  1. A few more cities needs to ban fracking. Slam the governor with overwhelming resistance. He will back down regardless of how much money he collected from the oil and gas companies. If not, he won’t be too popular for too much longer and will be out of a job when this term finishes.

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  2. I used to call him Hoppintaxer b/c he jumped out of an airplane and the voters decided that was cute and let’s give him a few billion more in taxes. (Democrats love that kind of thing.)

    Maybe now I can call him Frackentaxer.

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  3. Mr Hickenlooper drank fracking fluid? yeah of course he did.
    There’s a name for people such as this, in fact there’s quite a few.

    So, if the citizens of cities and towns ban fracking, the snake oil companies will just disregard a democratic decision based on fact/former experience/expert opinion and move against those citizens with lies/threats and paid for gimps.

    There is only one option left in such circumstances. The Irish have a neat trick. They barracade all the roads to their communities and nothing moves in and out without them knowing about it.

    Educate your neighbours, friends, townsfolk. Download the excellent “Gasland” by Josh Fox, show it to your communities and keep showing it until everybody has seen it and understands the havoc it will cause.

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  4. If he really drank frack fluid his brain would look like that globe up top. I’m sorry but that is just loony to do something like that.

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  5. This makes me so angry. The frack fluid at a plant in Waxahatchie Texas killed the fish in the nearby tributaries and creeks. It turned the water a slimy color. It is not only about the fracking fluid. It is about the drilling inside city limits and under houses and parks and the potential for pollution, carbon monoxide, asphyxiation and cell death. Too much atmospheric gas will upset the already overtaxed ecosystem, and this, in turn, has the potential to create conditions similar to the ice age. Google it. We are messing with nature on a huge scale. It is not ok. This man just trivialized something that could potentially waste our planet. Circunstances similar to the extraction of shale gas are what caused the ice age. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the ‘London Fog’ was smog which was created by and it killed hundreds of thousands of people before they addressed the problem. I can’t believe he did that. Seriously. He is trivializing the impacts it could have on the world. So many people are banning it. They know. They just don’t care. We need to get these people out of office. I would like to ask a scientist if he would consider drinking frack fluid, either, before of after the process. I might take them more seriously. Frack fluid contains methane, natural gas, chemicals, detergents, solvents, toxins, corrosive materials, explosives, benzene, you name it. That is just a partial list. He has got to be making this up. I KNOW he is making this up. What a media hound!

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  6. hickenlooper is NOTHING more than cheap, ignorant, LYING scumbag of a bought and paid for corporate whore. he has NO integrity and will spout anything his corporate “handlers” tell him to… in short, he’s a politician.

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