nature

To the editor:

Peggy Flint, a childhood Lincoln friend whose family is still in Lincoln, just forwarded the “Letter to the editor: gas pipeline concerns” [Lincoln Squirrel, Jan. 23, 2015]. A granddaughter of George Grosvenor Tarbell (1886–1968), I grew up in Lincoln from 1941 to 1958. Peggy Flint and I rode our horses on “the pipeline,” not knowing or caring at the time that it was part of Kinder Morgan’s operations.

Now I’m living in southwest Colorado—Montezuma County, atop the McElmo Dome, which contains the greatest concentration of CO2 in the world (according to Kinder Morgan). For the last 15 years, life in this agricultural area, which also has the highest concentration of ancestral Pueblan archaeological sites in the U.S. (Canyons of the Ancients National Monument), has been very pleasant. Most of the land is publicly owned and managed by the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], and much of the remaining private land has had the mineral rights sold off. To a relatively minor extent, oil, natural gas, uranium, and CO2 exploration and extraction have been going on for decades. But in the last two years, Kinder Morgan [KM] has been conducting subsurface studies to determine optimal locations at which to drill for CO2. There are now half a dozen CO2 wells within a couple of miles of my little house, and, according to whomever one listens to, plans for another two dozen more or less, in the good agricultural fields around me. The CO2 is piped to Texas, where it is injected into old oil wells, in order to extract more oil.

I have asked KM personnel several times why atmospheric CO2 cannot be captured rather than extracting more from below ground. The answer is, as one would expect, “too expensive.” A few years ago when fracking issues first presented in and threatened our community, I asked a KM official about responsible disposal of used (produced) fracking fluids. He told me the technology is available to inject and extract fracking fluids at the drilling site, then recycle it by means of a closed system moveable device/machine, which can travel from well to well. This technology, I was told, is “too expensive,” so open-air settling ponds are the preferred (cheapest) disposal method for used fracking fluids. KM injects their used fracking fluid into deep drilled wells (disposal wells)—probably less worse than settling ponds. They claim it doesn’t affect aquifers and potable water supplies…

My experience with KM until recently has been that they have more respect for the environment, archaeology, agriculture and other aspects of life than other extraction and mining companies. That said, it seems to me that the entirety of the extraction and mining industries, including the transportation of their products, needs ongoing examination, reasoned public input and well-considered regulation. Pipelines themselves aren’t the problem, but rather, extensions of the primary problems.

At least there are new beginnings—people beginning to recognize some of the problems and becoming involved, hopefully toward better solutions.

Sincerely,

Nancy Tarbell Carman
Pleasant View, Colo.

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Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to news@lincolnsquirrrel.com. Letters must be about a Lincoln-specific topic, will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.