Full public inquiry examining health impacts of fracking and LNG in B.C. needed

Published on: November 10, 2017

Prior to last spring’s provincial election, the B.C. NDP promised to appoint a panel to examine the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in B.C., a review that would include an investigation into the natural gas industry’s impacts on water, earthquakes and greenhouse gas emissions.

As an organization concerned about human health and welfare, we believe that such an inquiry, however well intentioned, would be much too limited in scope and should be expanded to a full public inquiry to capture the wide range of concerns British Columbians have.

It must also examine the cumulative effects of fracking on human and environmental health. The evidence is mounting: when fossil fuel companies pump massive amounts of water under incredible pressures deep into the earth to liberate trapped methane gas in the fracking process, problems arise.

A growing number of jurisdictions and countries, most recently Ireland and Scotland, have banned or placed moratoriums on fracking based on evidence of fracking’s cumulative harms to people and ecosystems. While a growing majority of B.C. residents opposed fracking in a 2016 poll, barely half knew that fracking takes place in the province.

A vast majority of studies (86 per cent) published in the last three to five years report negative human health associated with fracking. Much of the research has been carried out in the U.S. While a number of studies are underway in B.C., few have been published.

The studies and reports that have been published, however, give genuine cause for concern.

Currently, most extractive industry projects in northeast B.C. are assessed without regard for other past, present or future impacts. Studies from UNBC and SFU have identified that fracking severely disrupts First Nations communities in the area. The cumulative effects of intense resource extraction, including “two large-scale hydroelectric dams, 11 mines (gold-copper, coal), 8,000 oil and gas well sites, eight wind farms, various support facilities, 10,000 pipelines, numerous power lines, and smaller uses such as agriculture and guide-outfitting” erode Indigenous rights, mental health and traditional ways of life and culture.

In a 2014 report, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society noted how the oil and gas industry fragments and/or destroys some of the best remaining habitat for species at risk, including the iconic woodland caribou and grizzly bear. These massive alterations of natural landscape evoke a powerful sense of solastalgia, a term that connotes a sense of painful loss of one’s home, while still living in it.

In 2014, the Canadian Council of Academies noted: “In most instances, shale gas extraction has proceeded without sufficient environmental baseline data being collected (e.g., nearby groundwater quality, critical wildlife habitat). This makes it difficult to identify and characterize environmental impacts that may be associated with or inappropriately blamed on this development.”

Of the approximately 1,000 chemicals used in fracking, only about one-third are specifically identified. Of those, approximately half are known hormone-disruptors. In a telling study, University of Missouri researchers examining water from areas in heavily fracked regions in Colorado found disturbingly high levels of female and male hormone-disrupting chemicals compared to samples from distant locations.

Similarly, a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives revealed that water from fracked wells, contaminated with heavy metals such as arsenic, barium, cadmium, lithium and lead, had infiltrated groundwater below a waste-water storage site. Those same contaminants were also found to have migrated kilometres away.

Water use for fracking in B.C. is weakly regulated. The Fort Nelson First Nation was compelled to take industry giant Nexen before the Environmental Appeal Board because the company had been granted permits allowing extraction of twice as much water as the watershed ecosystem could sustain in a drought or low water year.

Proposed fracking projects could use up to 22,000 Olympic swimming pools of water. A review of water consumption associated with fracking in B.C. is planned by Geosciences B.C., which has strong ties to the extractive industries. It may be a simple coincidence that the technology it will use also helps locate new gas plays.

Air quality impacts on human and ecosystem health from fracking are also inadequately monitored and assessed. Contaminants include nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, and benzene, a human carcinogen with no safe limit. A paper by environmental scientist Judi Krzyzanowski noted higher lung cancer and respiratory illness mortality rates in northeastern B.C. compared to the Canadian average, and northwest B.C.

Finally, in 2016, an American study found that the majority of fracking wells are sited close to populations of colour and impoverished communities lacking resources to push back against such projects. In B.C., First Nations communities have generally had their concerns over-ridden by governments and industry.

It is shamefully past time for a full, credible examination of all these substantive issues, which is why we have joined with 16 other organizations in calling on the provincial government to appoint a formal public inquiry into all aspects of fracking industry operations in B.C.

Dr. Warren Bell is founding president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment; Amy Lubik is a medical researcher and a member of the association.

[Photo: Darryl Penner, an employee of TRICAN Well Service, takes a break outside of fracking operation at a site near Rosebud, Alberta. TIM FRASER / CALGARY HERALD]