10 Jan PBS Series “This American Land” Features North Fork Residents

January 10, 2014 –

The series “This American Land” on PBS recently aired a feature story on the North Fork Valley.  Local residents and Citizens for a Healthy Community members Oogie McGuire, Landon Deane, and Marley Hodgson talk about why it’s so important to keep risky drilling and fracking away from our farms, ranches, and towns.

“You don’t get that kind of food, agriculture, tourism in an environment where you have trucks with fracking chemicals going back and fourth,” said Oogie McGuire of Desert Weyr.  Landon Deane, of the Eagle Butte Ranch, added that “there’s places where you grow food and there’s places where you develop energy, and this is a place where we grow food … I don’t know about you, but I don’t want benzene in my apple juice.”

Earlier in the episode, PBS highlights the industry’s impact on Garfield County. According to David Ludlam, with the Western Slope Oil and Gas Association, “We do have impacts. The footprint that the oil and gas industry is putting on Colorado and other states is huge. It looks like a checkerboard of pads everywhere.”

According to one Rullison resident who has a well pad on her property, “the oil and gas impacts just about everything, the number of neighbors I’ve got, the number of people who travel this road … I used to get maybe a dozen or two during the day, well now I get several hundred a day.”

And according to one former industry employee, who now advocates for more responsible development, “I’d really like to see some accountability. So far they can go and pretty much do whatever they want, and they’re not fined. As soon as the oil and gas companies come into your area, it’s taken over, you don’t have a say anymore.”

Watch the full episode below.  The segment on the North Fork begins at 11:29 and the segment on Garfield County begins at 5:11.