Neil Kornze, Principal Deputy Director, BLM:
Attention: 1004-AE26*
I support the recommendations in the standard NRDC letter to you and your agency re proposed rules for regulating oil and gas fracking on our public lands. I assume you have received a number of these, and so you don't need another of the same to consider. However . . .
The NRDC letter in part reads as follows. "Those strict safeguards should . . . ensure that oil and gas companies are held accountable for contamination they cause. . . ."
Holding companies accountable has in the past seen decision makers in those companies and the regulatory agents they have worked with walk away from the messes they have had a direct hand in causing.
Consistent with the principle that corporations are people and that our government is made up of people who are conscious actors charged with protecting American land and the American people, the rules and regulations should provide for criminalizing contamination and other wrongdoing at least to the extent that real, named persons are tried in a court of law and if found responsible, they go to jail. If environmental damages are judged to take eons to neutralize or dissipate, prison terms as punishment should last as long.
Again, I support the recommendations in the NRDC letter. But in addition, please put some teeth into the bite of accountability. Leadership on the side of right and the justified takes us beyond our narrow roles in a daily work routine. Get out there and make something important happen, something that perhaps even goes beyond fracking and business (profit's) interests.
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* See also http://www2.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing and
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2013/june/nr_06_07_2013.html and http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/wy/pavillion/EPA_ReportOnPavillion_Dec-8-2011.pdf .
