Acreage owners and ranchers northwest of Calgary want a moratorium on multi-stage hydraulic fracturing in their district until the practice is proven safe to aquifers and wetlands.
The Protecting Our Water and Ecological Resources Society (POWERS) is inviting others to share their experiences with fracking.
“We are seeking a moratorium until independent scientists can prove that it is safe, and we don’t think they ever will,” said Patty Pickup, a founder of the group.
Fracking is a process that releases oil and natural gas trapped in rocks far below the Earth’s surface.
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Pickup claims neighbours are having water problems and health concerns and experienced earthquakes last summer, which they think may be linked to fracking.
They also want to know the cumulative environmental effects of well pads located close together, flaring of natural gas and the possibility of earth tremors damaging pump jacks and well casings.
They want base line tests on their water wells and a geological investigation to see whether tremors were present.
Pickup wants to mobilize people who were too trusting of the energy industry in the past.
“It is high time that we try and get the word out. We just ask people who are involved in agriculture to really pay attention to this fracking issue,” she said. “We trusted when we never should have trusted.”
The Lochend Industry Producers Group, a consortium of five regional oil companies, is doing most of the fracking work using a technique called multi stage hydraulic horizontal fracturing.
The fracturing is done in multiple stages because horizontal legs can go down 3,000 metres or more. Mike Dawson of the Canadian Society of Unconventional Resources said there is not enough energy from the pumping equipment at the surface to fracture all of that length of well at one time.
However, the technique alarms rancher Nielle Hawkwood, who lives in the district.
“It is entirely different from the kind of fracking that has been going on in the province for 50 years. It is much more intensive, much more high energy and it is really heavy industry,” she said.
Hawkwood and her husband, Howard, plan to test their wells even though they have never experienced difficulties.
“We are going to have our water tested privately and pay a fair amount to do it, but we want to have a base line to show it hasn’t been contaminated by the activities in the neigh-bourhood,” she said.
She claims horizontal fracking requires more water and chemicals than a normal well, and pollution is possible when natural gas is burned off. Natural gas is a byproduct of the oil.
“It puts all these chemicals under the substructure, under our land.”
The Hawkwoods’ land is on top of the Paskapoo Aquifer, which extends from Rocky Mountain House to south of Calgary.
“We are a watershed for Calgary. If our water is contaminated, water flows and it will be going into the Bow River. Upwards of a million people get their water from there,” she said.
The companies have held an open house with residents and assured them their wells are safe and that the gas would be taken away in a pipeline that has yet to be built.
