--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Happy Halloween. You know what can be kind of scary? Fracking. For those of you who don't know, fracking is the pet name for hydraulic fracturing. It's one way to get natural gas out of the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in America, it's become the way. What you do is you inject a mixture of water, sand, and a whole cocktail of chemicals into underground rocks at super high pressure. You blast the stuff open and natural gas comes out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fracking's been around for a while. Halliburton started using the technique in the late 1940s, but that was fracking with vertical drilling. In the past 10 or 15 years, fracking has been combined with horizontal drilling, where you can go for miles and miles underground and... Boom! The United States is now the biggest producer of natural gas in the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that means jobs. Lots of good-paying jobs. But then there's the scary side of it. With pumping chemicals into the ground comes the risk of spilling chemicals into water sources. With all those high-pressure drilling machines comes methane gas being pumped into the atmosphere. And like any work with gas and oil, you've got the risk of deadly explosions. Deadly explosions close to residential neighborhoods.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Some of this drilling's happening really close to communities, sometimes as close as 500 feet. Colorado's one of the biggest oil and gas producers in the country. But it's also a total babe. People are leaving places like California and Texas to live in Colorado, surrounded by rocky mountains and trees and legal marijuana, not oil and gas wells.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's why right now in Colorado, there's a super impassioned, divisive debate about drilling unlike any the country's seen before. Fracking is on the ballot. Politics campaign 2018 has been a slugfest and one of the most divisive issues is the future of fracking in our state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Supporters say it's about health and safety. Opponents say it will cripple Colorado's economy. And the oil and gas industry is spending tens of millions of dollars to fight it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so many of you reached out asking for more facts before you vote. Well, I cannot remember the last story that I covered where I got so many emails.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Grace Hood has been reporting on a very divisive ballot initiative for Colorado Public Radio. People are really following the coverage very closely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think with all the TV commercials that we have right now, the oil and gas industry has millions and millions that they're spending to beat this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For the average voter, it can be very confusing about what to believe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what would Proposition 112 do exactly? Proposition 112 would increase what's called a setback distance. That's really just the distance between a well and a home or a larger occupied structure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So right now that distance is 500 feet, and the new proposed distance would be 2,500 feet. That's about a half mile.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What that means is it would put a lot of future oil and gas development off limits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned the emails you're getting, Grace. What are they like?
--:-- Grace Hood: You know, I saw this TV ad. I don't know what to believe. This TV ad touts the economic benefits of the oil and gas industry, but can you help me figure out some other numbers or metrics to use to measure the value of the oil and gas industry?
--:-- Grace Hood: I think people are trying to think independently, away from the ads, but they don't really know where to turn to. It's difficult.
--:-- Grace Hood: What are the ads like?
--:-- Grace Hood: The ads mostly focus on economic benefits of the oil and gas industry to the state. Proposition 112 is effectively a ban on oil and natural gas in Colorado.
--:-- Grace Hood: A Colorado ban could cost the state 68,000 good jobs. It will take billions out of support for public schools, impacting teachers and students directly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wonder who's driving the conversation about fracking in Colorado?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I hereby open this meeting of the Flat Earth Discussion Group.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last week's meeting on whether or not the moon is actually made of cheese was very unlikely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coloradans should listen to the experts, not radical activists.
--:-- Grace Hood: Are there opposing ads from environmental types?
--:-- Grace Hood: There aren't any on TV. There's a few Internet ads, but the outspending is it's very lopsided.
--:-- Grace Hood: How bad? 40 to 1.
--:-- Grace Hood: A political group called Protect Colorado has already raised more than 30 million dollars.
--:-- Grace Hood: Anadarko, Noble Energy and Extraction Oil and Gas are among the top contributors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More than 30 million dollars just to basically keep the status quo for themselves in the state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, the one report that I keep going back to was put out by our state regulators, and it said that 85 percent of oil and gas development in the future, you know, 85 percent of the land could potentially be off limits in the future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, that's very significant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When I'm talking to people on both sides, I mean, I very much understand that the stakes are high for the industry. They stand to lose a lot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are the arguments each side is really making?
--:-- Grace Hood: So environmental groups are really touting kind of two things.
--:-- Grace Hood: The first is health and safety and the health reasons. I mean they are really citing this one University of Colorado study that found that people living within a half mile of a well had a greater risk of health effects.
--:-- Grace Hood: That's the challenging thing, though. The research is still emerging.
--:-- Grace Hood: I mean, the oil and gas industry has another report that they point to that says, hey, the risk is low for residents living near oil gas.
--:-- Grace Hood: So that's a tricky argument to sort out.
--:-- Grace Hood: Where I think the environmentalists have a stronger argument is around explosions.
--:-- Grace Hood: They say future wells should be further away from homes because there's a risk of explosions.
--:-- Grace Hood: And we saw a couple of those last year in Colorado.
--:-- Grace Hood: One resulted in a worker death.
--:-- Grace Hood: And then there was another one that happened in this town north of Denver called Firestone.
--:-- Grace Hood: And that's where two residents died because there was a well that leaked kind of raw unscented natural gas into the soil and they were changing like a hot water heater and the house went up in flames.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Denver 7 has learned the remains of two people have been pulled from the rubble of this house explosion and firestone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Two other people inside that same home, they're in the hospital right now and tonight we know one of the victims is a teacher at Mountain Range High in Westminster.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that environmental groups have a pretty strong argument that placing future wells 2,500 feet from homes, that would presumably make things safer if there was any kind of explosion or fire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the other side?
--:-- Grace Hood: So it really comes down to economics, to jobs.
--:-- Grace Hood: You have more than 29,000 oil and gas industry jobs.
--:-- Grace Hood: They're high paying compared to other jobs across the state, large contributor to state GDP.
--:-- Grace Hood: And when you have such a dramatic reduction in oil and gas production, you could see layoffs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Have you heard from people who might lose their jobs?
--:-- Grace Hood: Absolutely.
--:-- Grace Hood: I mean, I was out with canvassers a couple of weekends ago.
--:-- Grace Hood: These canvassers were trying to get Proposition 112 passed.
--:-- Grace Hood: But one of the most fascinating conversations I heard was with a proponent of 112 talking to somebody who worked for the oil and gas industry.
--:-- Grace Hood: And the person who was supporting 112 wasn't somebody who lived in Denver and knew nothing about oil and gas development.
--:-- Grace Hood: They actually lived right in the epicenter of where it's all happening in this place called Greeley, Colorado.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what if this were to pass?
--:-- Grace Hood: Well, certainly I would lose hours and pay, and the clientele would shrink.
--:-- Grace Hood: Do you have another skill set besides surveying that you would?
--:-- Grace Hood: Yeah, playing base, but it doesn't pay very much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's on the low scale.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's good for the soul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you'd be employed. You'd still be employed.
--:-- Grace Hood: Well, I moved to Colorado because of the oil and gas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, okay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I gotcha.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I gotcha.
--:-- Grace Hood: I had to leave where I was at because they didn't want oil and gas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, so you surveyed four oil and gas.
--:-- Grace Hood: Yes, I've surveyed in eight states.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what state were you in before that you said didn't want oil?
--:-- Grace Hood: Florida.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 2008, we all know how good the economy was.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I had to leave in roughly 2014.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just no work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I came to Colorado because there is work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There is jobs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I mean, it was a really civil exchange.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think at the end, they were sort of like agreeing to disagree.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Therese, the woman I was following, was saying, well, hey, you know, the economy is great right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Three percent unemployment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find another job somewhere else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But this guy was saying, well, I like my job right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't want to find a job somewhere else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he had like a no on 112 sign in his yard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the energy revolution, I mean, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has really kind of woken up what was a sleepy industry here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is this happening in Colorado?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you don't see oil and gas ballot initiatives all over the country this election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is this happening there?
--:-- Grace Hood: This is a debate that's been simmering for a while.
--:-- Grace Hood: And the debate is how close is too close when it comes to oil and gas development near homes.
--:-- Grace Hood: The debate in terms of my following, it goes all the way back to 2012 when the city north of Denver, it's called Longmont, Colorado, band fracking.
--:-- Grace Hood: And that case actually worked its way all the way to the state Supreme Court.
--:-- Grace Hood: It was struck down a couple of years ago.
--:-- Grace Hood: And you just have some cities north of Denver where a lot of development happens.
--:-- Grace Hood: They're struggling with how to manage drilling near homes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, I'll point out the oil and gas industry has done a lot with technology to mitigate noise, truck traffic, make drilling rigs quieter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think for people on the environmental side of the debate, they just don't see action happening at the statehouse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the ballot initiative process was what they saw as their best chance to push more change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder, does this come down to like pretty clear cultural lines or are there some interesting cultural bedfellows being made right now in this debate?
--:-- Grace Hood: You know, I don't think that this exactly falls along party lines because you have Democrats who work in the oil and gas industry and you also have Republicans who maybe live in a town where they learned that a well is going to be drilled 500 feet from their home and they don't want that.
--:-- Grace Hood: So I think there are very strong environmental and industry camps, but I don't think it cuts very super neatly along party lines.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you have any idea how this is polling right now?
--:-- Grace Hood: How does Colorado break down on this ballot initiative?
--:-- Grace Hood: The one poll that I seen is basically it too close to call.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that the other thing that I think is fascinating here is that we really just don't know which way it's going to go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What voters are going to decide?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are the ads, all the TV ads and the mailers, are those going to have a huge impact and sway voters?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or are we going to see, you know, environmental groups going to their grassroots, using volunteers to knock on doors?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is that going to have more of a sway with voters?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We really just don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's going to be pretty exciting to watch on Election Day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Grace Hood is an energy and environment reporter for Colorado Public Radio.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Up next, I'm going to talk to a real-life fracker.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know what you're planning on dressing up as tonight for Halloween, but I'm thinking about going as Susan Sarandon's character from the movie Viper Club.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She plays Helen, a veteran emergency room nurse secretly struggling to free her grown son, a journalist, from capture by a terrorist group.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After running into roadblocks with government agencies, she discovers a clandestine community of journalists and advocates who might be able to help her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Viper Club is showing right now in New York and Los Angeles, and it'll be in theaters nationwide this Friday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It also stars Edie Falco from The Sopranos, maybe the greatest television show of all time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Cody Doan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm in Colorado. Currently live in the town of Erie.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are on the Front Range.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's kind of one of those towns that has a strong division in the hydraulic fracturing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I work for Halliburton, one of the nation's largest service providers in the oil and gas industry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how do you like working for Halliburton?
--:-- Cody Doan: I love what I do.
--:-- Cody Doan: I'm very happy with what they've done for my family.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've helped me actually create a family.
--:-- Cody Doan: What exactly do you do, Cody?
--:-- Cody Doan: We do well stimulation, which is probably more commonly known as fracking or hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when you say working for Halliburton and this work that you do, fracking has sort of allowed you to have a family, what exactly do you mean?
--:-- Cody Doan: So five years ago when I started with Halliburton, my wife and I had been struggling with fertility issues for a couple years.
--:-- Cody Doan: We weren't really sure what the problem was, but we knew we needed some really good benefits and probably some substantial income to help with that fertility issue.
--:-- Cody Doan: We had a lot of testing done, and once I started with Halliburton, realized what it was we needed to do.
--:-- Cody Doan: The medical benefits with Halliburton are amazing.
--:-- Cody Doan: And that helped us through the fertility process and the birth of our twins, boy-girl twins, who are now three years old.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Their middle names are actually Hallie and Burton.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was a tongue-in-cheek comment the day I hired on with Halliburton.
--:-- Cody Doan: I made a phone call to my wife and said, hey, we're going to have those babies.
--:-- Cody Doan: We're going to get through our fertility treatments.
--:-- Cody Doan: And I'm going to name them after the company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fast forward a few years and all of a sudden that's the way it worked out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Was your wife on board?
--:-- Cody Doan: She was.
--:-- Cody Doan: I guess my wife and I had, there was a lot of pain.
--:-- Cody Doan: There was a lot of struggle not having children.
--:-- Cody Doan: And it was a moment where there was so much hope in that one day of changing careers and knowing that this was the path to having children.
--:-- Cody Doan: I think there was so much emotion wrapped up in that moment of me committing to this new career with Halliburton that it just worked out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My son's name is Adler Burton.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My daughter is Everly Halley.
--:-- Cody Doan: And everybody just loves the way the story has played out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm guessing you're voting no on Proposition 112 next Tuesday.
--:-- Cody Doan: It is a strong no, yes.
--:-- Cody Doan: We've got our ballots completed.
--:-- Cody Doan: And they are no votes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You said you lived in a deeply divided town, Erie, Colorado.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm not that familiar with it, but how's that looking right now?
--:-- Cody Doan: So the town is divided by Boulder County, which is a very strong anti-oil and gas county.
--:-- Cody Doan: The other side of the line is Weld County, which is Colorado's top producing county in the state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I'm guessing, what, do you have neighbors who are voting yes on 112?
--:-- Cody Doan: Yeah, the second door over, you know, they display their vote yes on 112 sign very proudly.
--:-- Cody Doan: We've got our vote no.
--:-- Cody Doan: We visit, we talk at curbside and wave to each other.
--:-- Cody Doan: But we are both very strong in our opinions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of intense to have that division.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It isn't just like you're choosing different people to be president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's like they're saying, we don't want your industry to be as prominent as it is in our state.
--:-- Cody Doan: How does that make you feel?
--:-- Cody Doan: I would say that I am really an environmentalist myself.
--:-- Cody Doan: My wife and I live a very simple organic lifestyle.
--:-- Cody Doan: We don't have chemical cleaners in it.
--:-- Cody Doan: We don't bring in a lot of processed products.
--:-- Cody Doan: Because there are a lot of toxins in our environment.
--:-- Cody Doan: I feel so strongly with what we do to provide energy for the country.
--:-- Cody Doan: And I believe we do it in the safest way we possibly could.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think that when I'm going to work, I'm polluting the earth at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there's these reports of increased earthquakes due to fracking in Oklahoma.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You see these videos of people lighting their water on fire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because of fracking in Pennsylvania.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's been measures of all this methane that's being released into the air.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, aren't those valid concerns for people like your neighbors?
--:-- Cody Doan: Yeah, and I don't dismiss anyone's feelings or concerns.
--:-- Cody Doan: I think that the industry has led us to a healthier and safer environment.
--:-- Cody Doan: With natural gas, that's one of the primary resources we find here in Colorado.
--:-- Cody Doan: Natural gas is one of the greatest resources we can get out to the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I totally get that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder, though, you seem to, you know, really appreciate the work that Halliburton does and the work of the oil and gas industry in Colorado because it's made way for you to have this family that means so much to you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, there was this story of a town in Colorado, Firestone, where two residents died because there was a well that leaked raw, unscented natural gas into the soil.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was like a hot water heater that was being changed and the house went up in flames.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, God forbid, what if something like that happened at the house next to yours or even your house?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, would you still advocate this particular form of drilling and energy?
--:-- Cody Doan: I would.
--:-- Cody Doan: And my heart aches for the loss of those two brothers and injuries to the one gentleman's wife and child that will stick with that family forever.
--:-- Cody Doan: It had nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing and is a once in a million or maybe once in a billion occurrence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder, Cody, I saw a poll in referred to in the New York Times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It said that yes on 112 is polling at something like 43 percent and no on 112 is polling at 41%.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a neck and neck ballot initiative in Colorado.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are you going to do if Colorado votes yes on 112 and the industry really slows down?
--:-- Cody Doan: It becomes essentially a ban on oil and gas production in the state of Colorado.
--:-- Cody Doan: Because people won't be able to open up new wells and the old wells will dry up?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly.
--:-- Cody Doan: I'm not opposed to doing other work.
--:-- Cody Doan: I've done a lot of different things in my life.
--:-- Cody Doan: I've done environmental cleanup.
--:-- Cody Doan: I've worked in building everything from residential, commercial to civil building.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I really enjoy what I do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I really enjoy working for Halliburton and I would like to continue my years and retire with the company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if that means relocating, then we would, in fact, relocate to an area where they had the work for us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cody, thank you so much for speaking with us, man.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wish you all the best.
--:-- Cody Doan: I thank you very much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sean enjoy your Halloween and keep an eye out on Colorado and this coming election and what what happens with Colorado's future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dylan Matthews, we spoke yesterday of your latest episode of Future Perfect, which actually came out this morning.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's about creating a fake volcano to combat climate change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The technical term is solar geoengineering.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Scientists prefer that to creating a volcano, but you're basically creating a volcano.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it turns out that when volcanoes erupt, they cool the whole planet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the idea is to try to do something like that as a way to stave off global warming.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, if spraying chemicals into the atmosphere sounds like a weird and bad idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is because it is probably a weird and bad idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what we're doing right now is also weird and bad of just spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so a lot of scientists are starting to think, are we going to have to choose between weird and bad ideas for engineering our climate?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we can hear from said scientists on this episode of Future Perfect.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is out now in your feeds, wherever you find your podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Future Perfect.
