House for sale boasts a full bank of rooftop solar and not a single commie (thus far)

Our house has been for sale for 16 days and it hasn't sold yet. Our realtor tells us to be patient. "It's a buyer's market," she says. Someone should just step up and buy our house. It would be the neighborly thing to do.

Our house is a small ranch house with four bedrooms and one-and-a-half baths. It has a basement where we wash and dry clothes, seek shelter from summer tornadoes, and cool off on hot days. My son's bedroom is down there. It's the biggest one in the house.

We own a big lot. It always took me an hour to mow that thing with your standard self-propelled lawnmower. Great spot for kids. When we moved in, a tire swing hung from the box elder tree. Our daughter loved playing on it. It fell down one miserable winter night. By then, my daughter had grown and lost interest. We used to host a Fourth of July bocce party. A bocce purist would have found our rules quaint or just plain wrong. Nobody ever got mad at a close call due to the ref being my very intimidating 5-foot-2 wife. When the kids were teens, they inevitably traveled to FireworksLand just south of town. They brought back rockets as big as the Saturn 5 which we let them illegally launch. We hoped they wouldn't burn down our neighbor's shed. They didn't.

We worked all winter and spring whipping the house into shape. I'm partially disabled and use a walker so I could beg off the big projects, ones that involved moving furniture and panting ceilings. I did help my son paint the bathroom, so there's that. I gave a lot of unsolicited advice but it just made my family angry so I stopped when they locked me out of the house.

One thing not mentioned in the real estate ads: we have a full solar array on our roof. It's saved us a lot in the last two years (and it's all paid off). My June bill from Black Hills Energy was 73.62. That all was natural gas, taxes, and fees as we used 194 kWh of electricity and generated 418 kWh. We have 448 available kWh in the bank. We would have a miniscule e-bill if we had an all-electric house which may not have been available in 1960. Each Wyoming Legislative session includes some lamebrain bill to punish solar users. They get defeated. It's a favor to the coal, oil, and gas lobbies who swear that solar will turn us all into communists. I have conducted a non-scientific poll of those who live in this house and no communists thus far. There's only two of us. But still...

I must talk to our realtor on Friday. Why isn't solar advertised with the house's other amenities? I'm curious.

New study links fracking with water contamination

The Wyoming Outdoor Council reposted a long article by ProPublica about a new study on fracking by four researchers at Duke University. This has been a big issue in Wyoming after the E.P.A. discovered methane gas and fracking chemicals in water wells in Fremont County near Pavillion. The E.P.A. still is investigating. That controversy also was featured in the documentary "Gasland" that was screened in Cheyenne a month ago. Our neighborhood in southeast Wyoming is in the Niobrara oil play where fracking will be the rule rather than the exception.

Read the article here: Fracking Linked to Water Contamination

Oil making big "play" in Laramie County

Niobrara Shale -- the blob that ate Laramie County. Map from the Unconventional Gas Center web site.

Cheyenne is not a Wyoming “energy boom town” like Gillette, Rock Springs or Pinedale.

That’s about to change. The oil rush is on in Laramie County. This past spring and summer, I’d read in the paper that leases for the Niobrara Formation were selling like hotcakes. A couple million here, a few million there. Serious money was changing hands – around $90 million -- some of it (and I hope it’s a lot) going into state coffers.

The drilling has begun. Near Carpenter, new high-tech pumping stations stick their straws into the earth, drilling down and then under and over to taste some of that sweet, sweet crude. The oil is sucked out of the ground and put it into storage tanks. You can see them if you drive south on Campstool Road. We’re used to industrial-looking stuff sticking out of the prairie – nuclear missile sites, old-fashioned oil wells, windmills (the new huge wind power kind and the old-fashioned kind), cell towers, etc. But soon, 21st century oil wells will be everywhere.

Last night at the Laramie County Democrats’ meeting at the IBEW Hall, County Commissioner Jeff Ketcham was handing out flyers for the “Southeast Wyoming Oil Shale Seminar.” The first meeting is Tuesday, Aug. 31 (tonight!), 6-8 p.m., at the Laramie County School District No. 1 Administration Building Auditorium in Cheyenne.

“Learn and converse about the Niobrara Oil Play and how it may affect us.”

I meant to ask Jeff to define “oil play” but didn’t get the chance. I was too busy listening to some of the impacts already happening in the county. But here’s what I found out at the Unconventional Gas Center site at http://www.ugcenter.com/:

The Niobrara has the potential to be the industry’s next large oil-shale resource play. Niobrara shales are prevalent throughout the Rocky Mountain region. A thick and continuous Cretaceous source rock, the Niobrara is rich in organics and thermally mature.

I hate to brag, but this sounds like me: “rich in organics and thermally mature.” Maybe I should change my name to Michael Shale.

I still don’t know what a “play” is. More research needed.

Jeff said that there were four voice messages calls waiting for him when he got to work the other day. All were complaining and dust and traffic on the county’s rural roads. And this is just after a few wells. Imagine what it will be like in a few years.

Gary Roadifer, running for the seat in House District 10, said that his town of Pine Bluffs already is home to seven man camps. Man camps, in case you don’t know, are barracks or RV campgrounds that house the people working at the sites. I tried to imagine seven man camps in a small town such as Pine (as the locals call it). That really has to impact a place. Gary quipped that the town’s only café has gone from $3 meals to $16 meals. That’s a whopping increase – you could buy three BK Whopper meals for this price. If there was a BK in PB.

“Discussion highlights” for tonight’s meeting:

• Technical background: geology, technology, and process/time line
• Industry needs: physical and employment
• Environmental concerns
• Planning for socio-economic impact

Big topics all. I’m looking forward to soaking up all the info, including the meaning of “oil play.”

 Q: Can Oil come out and play?
 A: Not today, son – he’s slick in bed.

Get it? Better not tell that one on the Gulf Coast.

Two more of these meetings are scheduled for Torrington and Wheatland, both on Wednesday. More info available from Anja Bendel, High Plains Economic Development District, 307-331-0012; anja.bendel@gmail.com

Reuters lands in Wyoming to report on natural gas polluting water wells

Jon Hurdle reported this in an Oct. 1 Reuters story:

PAVILLION, Wyoming - Louis Meeks, a burly 59-year-old alfalfa farmer, fills a metal trough with water from his well and watches an oily sheen form on the surface which gives off a faint odor of paint.

He points to small bubbles that appear in the water, and a thin ring of foam around the edge. Meeks is convinced that energy companies drilling for natural gas in this central Wyoming farming community have poisoned his water and ruined his health.

A recent report by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests he just might have a case -- and that the multi-billion dollar industry may have a problem on its hands. EPA tests found his well contained what it termed 14 "contaminants of concern."

It tested 39 wells in the Pavillion area this year, and said in August that 11 were contaminated. The agency did not identify the cause but said gas drilling was a
possibility.

What's happened to the water supply in Pavillion could have repercussions for the nation's energy policies. As a clean-burning fuel with giant reserves in the United States, natural gas is central to plans for reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Entire article reprinted from Reuters at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/01-8