Brief by Central Staff
Environment – September 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
One event often credited with starting the environmental movement happened on June 22, 1969. The Cuyahoga River, which flows in Ohio and empties into Lake Erie, caught fire near downtown Cleveland. More precisely, a floating oil slick ignited, sending flames 50 feet high and damaging two railroad trestles.
It wasn’t a novelty there, since the first such fire happened in 1936 and several happened in the intervening years. This one, however, caught the attention of Time magazine: “Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows.” The article went on to note that “The lower Cuyahoga has no visible life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.”
Today the river is clean enough to support 27 varieties of fish, and Clevelanders are tired of hearing about the fire.
The joke may be on Colorado in future years, as there’s a flammable stream in the state. It’s West Divide Creek in Garfield County, according to the Western Colorado Congress Clarion, the bimonthly newsletter of the Western Slope environmental group.
In its July/August edition, DeAnna Wolston reported that “At the beginning of April, landowners in the area discovered methane gas actively bubbling in the creek. They determined the bubbles contained methane gas when they found they were able to light the effervescing West Divide Creek on fire.”
The methane (which is one constituent of natural gas) apparently came from a gas well drilled in the area by EnCana, a natural-gas company based in Canada.
Gas wells are supposed to be lined with cement, so as to prevent substances like methane and benzene from escaping into aquifers and streams. However, a state investigation found that one well had faulty cementing, and further, the company had failed to report the problem.
EnCana was cited for unsafe drilling practices and endangering a water source, and “More than 20 homes are now receiving bottled water from EnCana for fear that the gas could also migrate into nearby domestic wells.”
Western Colorado Congress (www.wccongress.org) has filed suit under the federal Clean Water Act, charging that EnCana lacks the required permit for discharging pollutants into surface waters, and also that the state’s relevant regulator, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, failed to protect the public health.
