“And, to be fair, much of that is absolutely true. But how do you explain a farmer in Mead who can light a flame in his well and the whole thing goes up like a giant blowtorch?” Jen reached over and tossed Hauck a couple more bound documents. “Or a rancher in Keenesburg, less than a quarter mile from a well site, whose cattle are dying on their own grazing land and the toxicology report says ammonium persulfate poisoning. That’s one of the chemical agents they mix with fracking water to loosen the shale. Along with hydrochloric acid.”
Hauck paged through the top file a minute and then tossed it back on the table. “So no court in the region was willing to hear your case, so you were going to take it to Denver because of the environmental threat?”
“Not the environmental threat,” Jen said. “That kind of suit would take years, cost millions … Even if we had a chance of winning. What we were filing was an injunction against the town. Templeton.”
“The town …? I don’t understand.”
“They were the defendant. And it wasn’t over oil, at all …” Keeler pushed across a document with Watkins’s name in bold capital letters at the top. “It was over water.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Trey Watkins.
Rooster.
Trey’s father pushing Hauck away.
RMM. And the gleaming metal tankers chugging toward Hannah from the river.
It all came clear to him now.
That’s not oil, Moss had said. It’s water.
Water that kept the wells flowing. Water that ran the fracking process, which could reach the shale.
“The town is selling off its water supply to RMM,” Hauck said, pushing back his chair.
“Out here, water flows uphill, Mr. Hauck,” Jen said, “to money. Yes, RMM and other firms have locked up what used to be farmland for exploration and drilling. But wells are one thing. Nothing happens without the water. And these days, there is none. It’s the water they’ve diverted away that’s the biggest threat to the way this place used to be.”
Hauck gazed at Dani, everything sinking in. She asked, “It’s legal for a town to sell of its water supply?”
“Not the essential water supply …” Jen shook her head. “That’s governed by law. But what becomes classified as excess water, yes. And look around at what they’re dealing with here. You see the fields. The so-called excess water they’re selling off is precisely what the farmers need to irrigate their crops.
“In normal years, farmers and ranchers paid an average of thirty dollars for an acre-foot of water,” she explained. “That’s about three hundred and twenty thousand gallons. In a drought year, when water is scarce, that can rise to as high as a hundred dollars per acre. Today, oil and gas exploration companies are paying as high as one to two thousand dollars per acre. That’s treated water from city pipes, runoff from the Rockies; what’s already low, but sitting in reservoirs near Greeley. And from the Poudre River in Templeton. It’s like a bubble. The farmers can’t compete. They’re being systemically starved, between the weather and the oil development companies, who for that same acre of water can get a thousand times the return as on a field of crops. Farmers and ranchers can’t produce their crops or graze their cattle, so there’s no choice but to lease out their land for something.”
“How do they get this massive supply of water?” Dani asked. “Where does it all come from?”
“There are auctions,” Jen said. “Just like there are for land. A single well can use up to five million gallons. Statewide, the mining industry is consuming up to thirteen billion gallons per year. To put it in perspective, that’s enough to serve a population base four times the size of Greeley, which is a city of close to a hundred thousand. Or to make all the man-made snow at every ski area in Colorado for the next ten years. And the demand keeps growing. Cash-strapped cities are balancing their budgets by selling off whatever water they can do without.
“Farms are being forced to shut down. Those that remain trade high-end corn and potato crops for low-revenue ones like alfalfa and beet root or hay that can be produced without much water. The energy companies are locking up supply with long-term agreements. Town managers make themselves look good by balancing their budgets. But it’s the farmers and ranchers who are truly being starved.”
“So you and Watkins and a few of his fellow farmers got together a class action suit and were suing the town to stop them from selling off their supply to RMM?” Hauck said.
“You can see why it scared them.” Jen nodded. “Take away that water in abundant supply, those hundred-million-dollar wells are basically just giant holes in the ground.”
“So they were pressuring Watkins to stop, but he kept on.”
“Until his son was killed. He said he was being harassed, but he kept on ahead with it. I figured it was the kind of way we were all being harassed. Who could ever have imagined this? I was suspicious when I heard what happened, but I had no proof. And even if I did …” Her exhale conveyed her futility. “Their interests are vast, Mr. Hauck, and their will to use them just as undeterred. There are the people in the white hats in this town and the people in the black hats, and you best not forget who’s who.”
Hauck shook his head. “Oil companies just don’t operate in their own sphere above the law. BP had to deal with that in the Gulf. Tobacco companies had free rein and then they were forced to obey the law.”
“BP faced a government that had an interest to make them pay. Here, they’ve completely bought off all the channels that could possibly redress them. Lawyers. Local judges. Half the state legislature. Hell, even the state land councils and water boards are basically just rubber stamps with all the public pressures of jobs and energy independence.