Fracking: In the path of the ‘shale gale’

The oil company had hoped that by taking only written questions from the residents, it could keep a lid on their emotions. But it was only seconds after the chief executive of Great Western Oil & Gas began the Q&A with the people of Windsor, Colorado, that the lid blew off. Before Rich Frommer could read out the first submission, Connie Reifschneider rose from her fold-up chair to interrupt him. “I’m shaking because I’m angry,” she said.

The family-owned oil company’s plans would turn her neighbourhood of bike-riding kids, pastureland and wild deer into a health hazard scarred by drilling rigs, trucks, noise, dust and chemical pollutants, she said. “How can you and your family, with any conscience at all, disrupt and possibly ruin the lives of so many other families by drilling in such close proximity to so many homes?” Mr Frommer was already wealthy and his only concern, she said, was to enrich his family further. “Answer this please: when is enough money enough?”

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