The dishonesty in the oil and gas industry is just as murky as the polluted water fracking produces – toxic, unhealthy and unsustainable for people and the environment. Scientists tested the water near Parachute Creek and found in all three samples that the water is contaminated at 5,800 parts per billion (ppb) to 18,000 ppb – between 1,000 and 3,000 times the accepted state health levels of benzene in the water samples.

Benzene is a known cancer-causing agent which the human body cannot tolerate. (Learn more at The Endocrine Disruption Exchange and a year-long peer reviewed study on air pollution from fracked wells by Dr. Theo Colborne.)

How can we trust the oil and gas industry when it claims “there is no evidence that fracking contaminates ground water.” Well folks, here is the evidence: the carcinogen Benzene is polluting the groundwater near Parachute Creek.

I hope the EPA pays attention to this contamination of the public water supply as fracking has no right being excluded from the Clean Water Act. That exemption or the “Halliburton loophole” was coordinated by Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton Industries which had developed a fracking technique. Dick, your dishonesty is as toxic as the waters your technique poisons.

If I understand the Parachute Creek situation correctly, the leak started between two to three weeks ago (the Denver Post article says March 8 in the photo caption and March 15 in the body of the story) and it is STILL LEAKING. If this leak is still polluting the water 20 days later, how much more evidence do we need that fracking is unsafe, accident prone and should be banned? Colorado residents take action to stop fracking so your drinking water doesn’t get filled with toxic chemicals too. Tell your local legislators and Gov. Hickenlooper that in a draught state like Colorado it is not OK to remove water – trillions of gallons of water – permanently from the water cycle using a technique that cannot be done safely.

Here’s how much water we’re talking about being lost because of fracking in Colorado. Fracking uses on average 5 million gallons of water per well (conservative figure, can be up to 9 million gallons per fracked well) X 10 – the number of times an individual well is fracked (conservative figure, a well can be fracked 12 -18 times) X 46,000 wells in Colorado or 2.3 trillion gallons of water (5,000,000 X 10 X 46,000). And that’s with just 46,000 wells.

The oil and gas industry wants to frack 100,000 wells. If allowed to continue, FRACKING COULD PERMANENTLY REMOVE 4.6 TRILLION GALLONS OF WATER FROM COLORADO. That’s water we would no longer have for drinking, cooking, washing clothes, showering, food production, agriculture, livestock, lawns, golf courses, and the many ways that water is part of our daily home and business and recreation life. Water gone permanently. It’s time to stop fracking and protect our water.