Neighbors of Wells Note Multiple Maladies, Little Aid From the Authorities

By Nancy Lofholm The Denver Post

SILT, Colo. — Dee Hoffmeister awoke at 3 a.m. one night in early March with her head spinning. The oversize red numbers on the alarm clock were a blur. She couldn’t get out of bed without her husband’s help.

It was a familiar feeling.

A gas well a stone’s throw from the Hoffmeisters’ retirement home south of Silt on Colorado’s Western Slope was on fire and the area was filled with oily smoke. Hoffmeister, 69, who has suffered intermittent mysterious ailments since that well was drilled in 2005, ended up at the emergency room.

Hoffmeister, and hundreds of others, believe their aches and pains — and more serious ailments — are directly related to some of the 31,522 wells that dot vast stretches of the Piceance Basin where they live and other oil-rich areas of Colorado.

So do some doctors who treat them. But in this state and others, there are no studies proving a connection. And no agency has been charged with documenting all health concerns, leaving sick residents in limbo.

Some energy companies have

been willing to help — without acknowledging a connection between illnesses and wells.

Bill Barrett Corp., an oil and gas exploration company, offered to pay for Hoffmeister to stay in a motel or apartment for six months. It also added controls to minimize emissions. Hoffmeister’s condition improved.

“We’re trying to be as responsive to issues that people perceive as we can,” said Jim Felton, a manager with Bill Barrett. He said the company spends several thousand dollars per well to lessen emissions near homes.

But industry representatives generally downplay residents’ tales of vertigo, bloody noses, tumors, burning lungs and aching joints as well as the more exotic illnesses — rare adrenal tumors, nerve damage and a neurological condition that makes sufferers speak in foreign accents.

Chemicals like toluene and benzene, two of many toxins used and released in the drilling process, are known to be toxic in high concentrations, but there is no proof that long-term exposure to low levels is harmful.

Even more problematic, energy companies are not required to reveal which chemicals they use because it is considered proprietary information. Therefore, it’s impossible to positively connect symptoms and illnesses.

Dr. Kendall Gerdes, a Denver physician who specializes in internal and environmental medicine, said little medical data exist on the effects of certain chemicals or mixes of chemicals on vulnerable individuals. There also is little proof that certain chemicals cause certain illnesses, and that makes physicians reluctant to link the two.

“The prevailing attitude is: ‘It’s all in your head and you should go get your head on straight,”‘ Gerdes said.

But he believes there is a connection. He has seen the same symptoms over and over in patients who have no psychological bent toward hypochondria and nothing to gain from imagined illnesses.

He contrasts chemical exposure in oil fields with occupational asthma. Asthma caused by chemical exposure can be measured by decreased lung function and is recognized as a true malady. But no measurement exists for vertigo, muscle aches, blacking out and headaches.

“It would make sense for the governors in oil and gas states to get together and get their health departments together to take a look at this. The health departments could do a coordinated study and share experiences and knowledge,” said Lance Astrella, a Denver attorney who once worked for the oil and gas industry but now represents those across the country who have been wronged by the industry.

He doesn’t have cases pending in the Piceance Basin, and says cases such as Hoffmeister’s are nearly impossible to prove in court.

The anecdotal litany of complaints grows with the number of wells drilled. But state and federal agencies largely have taken a hands- off approach.

The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t regulate individual oil and gas-well emissions because, unlike power plants and factories, wells are considered small sources of pollution.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has oversight of emissions but has no comprehensive method for sampling air around individual wells. The chemicals evaporating off ponds of chemical-laden production water aren’t measured. And there is no standard for the diesel exhaust from idling trucks and rig motors.

Sorting out the noxious chemicals that might be in the air from all sources — be it a rig or a neighbor’s fireplace — would be nearly impossible, said Mike Silverstein, deputy director of the health department’s air-quality-control division.

When residents near oil fields complain about problems that often originate with wells on neighboring properties, they have called Silverstein as well as law enforcement, senators, energy companies and local officials — often without satisfactory results.

The state agency officially charged with overseeing such complaints — the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — must respond to calls, but the commission has no health experts on staff.

Tricia Beaver, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the commission is doing what it is mandated to do in investigating complaints and has been consulting more with health officials in the past year.

The commission, in recently updated data, lists only 13 health complaints out of a total of about 1,500 complaints in the past five years. Garfield County, where Hoffmeister lives, has logged 13 health complaints out of 360 complaints since 2003. But spokespersons for both entities say complaints with a health component often are logged under another category such as “odors” or “environmental.”

“Someone might call and say ‘every time I smell this odor I get fatigued or a headache or it burns my eyes,’” said Jim Rada, environmental health manager with Garfield County. “There is no medical information to support that.” So it is catalogued under an odor complaint.

Astrella, the lawyer, said the numbers of ill energy field residents are much higher than listed. Many people don’t know where to go with concerns. And they run into disbelief.

“I’m dealing with sick people all over the country,” Astrella said. “There has been very little done to show the effects of long- term, relatively low-dosage exposure. But there is no doubt in anybody’s mind who works with citizens that these things are happening. “

Residents can tick off dozens of friends and neighbors who believe they have been sickened by wells. Tara Meixel, a Silt resident who has been cataloging health complaints for a book, listed five other families with serious health concerns in Hoffmeister’s neighborhood and dozens more in nearby areas of heavy drilling.

Silverstein said he has listened to more than 100 citizen complaints in the past few years. But no logs have been kept, and in a majority of cases — particularly air quality — no corrective action has been taken. Gases can dissipate quickly, and levels of chemicals that residents say make them sick may not be above what federal standards consider safe.

“I know 11 former close neighbors I still speak to who all have the symptoms,” said Susan Haire, a 57-year-old rancher who sold her home near Parachute last year after suffering from gas exposure.

Haire made repeated calls to the oil and gas commission in 2005 after she collapsed while irrigating about 50 feet from two uncovered gas tanks. She said a commission representative came out but said he didn’t smell anything. It wasn’t until a month later — after she spoke up in a public commission meeting — that caps were put on the tanks. Her physician believes those tanks leaked deadly hydrogen sulfide gas.

Theo Colborn, a researcher who has been studying energy field chemicals from her Endocrine Disruption Exchange Inc. office in Paonia, has been trying to make a scientific link to health woes in the energy fields and the chemicals being used.

She has compiled a list of more than 900 products used in fracing, a process that breaks apart underground formations with a chemical stew to release the trapped gas. She also has compiled a list of health effects, including cancer and toxic damage to internal organs and skin.

She noted the handling of many of the chemicals calls for respirators, goggles and gloves, but makes no mention of what might happen to those living nearby.

The medical community suffers from the same deficit of research about what energy-field chemicals can do.

In Hoffmeister’s most recent bout of debilitating illness, X- rays, MRIs and blood tests showed nothing. Neither did a visit to an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist. During her worst bouts, she has been prescribed antibiotics, the anti-anxiety drug Valium and Dramamine, which is used to treat dizziness. None of the medications helped.

Meanwhile, in rocky, scrub-covered, gas-rich area of Dry Hollow, south of Silt, numerous “For Sale” signs are posted alongside mailboxes on the Hoffmeister’s road. Many have given up, moving from a hollow where compounds from wells tend to settle.

Garfield County has hired two oil and gas liaisons and an energy health and environment manager, whose jobs include fielding health or environmental complaints from residents.

“We listen very carefully to what they’re saying. If it’s something we can get out and measure and monitor we do,” said liaison Jesse Smith.

Since Bill Barrett Corp. put extra emission-controls on the well near the Hoffmeister property, Dee has improved. But she still suffers when the tank valves are opened, or a problem like the fire releases gases. She said she lives in fear of these events in a home that whirrs with air purifiers and where she walks with a cane because she can no longer trust her balance.

“I’ve been made to feel like a hypochondriac, a liar,” Hoffmeister said. “I now know you have no rights and no help.”

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.