Fracking criticism spreads, even in Alberta and Texas

"It was beautiful up until fracking started," said Nielle Hawkwood.

Nielle and Howard Hawkwoodsay their ranch outside Cochrane, Alta.,northwest of Calgary,hasn't been the same since2009, when fracking began.

Water started tasting strangeand cows began to die off in largenumbers.Instead of an average of two to three cows per year, they were losing closer to 20. Bythe spring of 2011, Nielle Hawkwood noticed her hair falling out in clumps every spring.

They had their soil tested and found a three-fold increase in the amount of chlorine, nitrogenand phosphorus. The testing also showed a large increase in the concentration of strontium anduranium.

The Hawkwoodsblame fracking.

Short for hydraulic fracturing, frackingis the process that pushes a mixtureof chemicals andwater into shale rock deep beneath Earth's surface, triggering fractures or cracksin shale in order to extract oil or gas. This chemical mixture is returned after the rock has beenfractured.

• How fracking works

In a March 2015 studyin the Journal of Environmental Science and Health,researchers took six-hour averagemeasurements ofair pollution instead of the traditional 24-houraverages. They found pollution levels tend to spike at certain times of the day and undercertain weather conditions, which previous studies had ignored.

The study found that the closer people live to drilling sites and other gas production facilities, themore likely they are to exhibit symptoms of toxic exposure.

The study was based on observed conditions in Washington County, Pa., population 28,000, using emissions reports from nearby fracking sites and weather conditions over 14 months.The researchers alsocompared illness reports to the weather conditions and time of day.

Theyfound that residents living in the area would have 300 toxic-level exposures, morethan enough to account for the reported illnesses.

The most common health effects reported for residents living near fracking sites includeshortness of breath, coughing, chronic fatigue and skin burning.

Anotherreport last year by theCouncil of Canadian Academieson the environmental impacts ofshale gas developmentstates that the human health impacts have not beenwell studied.Frackingmay "adversely affect water and air quality andcommunity well-being," it says.

Regulator defends fracking

The Alberta Energy Regulator, which is responsible for enforcing industry policies, rejectsclaims that fracking affects human or animal health. The AER says hydraulic fracturing, in use in Alberta since the1950s,isone of several well-established methodsof recovering oil and gas.

But even in Texas, where Big Oil reigns supreme, there are concerns.

Last year, the Lubbock Boardof Health released a report focusing on the human health impacts of air and water pollution as aresult of fracking. It found that volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, associated with frackingcould be linked to increased rates of leukemia and possible fetal abnormalities.

VOCs,chemicalsfound naturally in oil and gas, are also used to fracture wells.They includebenzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene.

The report found atsix sites, 15 of 17 measurements of benzene alone were exceeding the allowablelimit of onepart per million for 15 minutes of exposure. The wells were giving off 200times that.

Through examining more than 100,000 births between 1996 and2009 in ruralColorado, the report concluded that babies born within a high concentration of wells saw a 30per cent increase incongenital heart disease.

Opposing fracking is costly

But even with such mounting scientific evidence, whistleblowers are made to pay, with time as well as money.

Jessica Ernst spent 30 years working in the oil and gas industry as an environmental specialist. In 2004, she documented what she calls non-compliance by Encana Corp., one of her former clients, with Alberta environmental regulations. She believes Encana knowingly injected chemicals into the drinking water in Rosebud, Alta., about 100 km northeast of Calgary.

Alberta regulators then sent a cease-and-desist letter to Ernst, accused her of making criminal threats against the regulator. She filed a lawsuit for what she alleges was a violation of her freedom-of-expression rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Now,Ernstis asking the Supreme Court of Canada to rulethat the Alberta Court of Appeal was wrong last year when it found thatthe province's energy regulator is allowed toviolate a citizen's fundamental freedoms. The Alberta government is opposing her.

Ernst says she has paid a heavy price to fight industry, using her retirement savings to paylegal bills that have soaredpast $300,000.

In Cochrane, Alta., the Hawkwoods continue to fight against fracking. They have writtenletters to all levels of government, joinedcommunity and provincial groups to educate peopleon fracking and met industry representatives.

But they say their efforts may be too late. Nobody, they say, knows whatlong-termdamage fracking mightdo.

Michelle Leslie is a Munk Institute fellow in global journalism.