If there’s not an abrupt change of course in Wyoming’s rate of workplace fatalities, the Cowboy State is on track to lose 36 workers to on-the-job deaths this year. They will leave behind wives, husbands, daughters, sons, parents and friends — the type of tragedy that devastates families. Wyoming’s working families have lived with this reality for more than a decade while state lawmakers consistently resist more safety enforcement and stiffer penalties.

This year, Gov. Matt Mead and Wyoming lawmakers again rejected those calls from worker advocates. Instead, they have doubled down on a strategy that, for a decade, doesn’t appear to have improved Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate — consistently the worst or close to the worst fatality rate in the nation. Rather than add teeth — enforcement and liability — Wyoming is offering up more voluntary “courtesy inspections” and a new pot of grant money to employers who want to create or improve their own safety programs.

According to some Wyoming leaders, it is only through cooperation, education and training that Wyoming can build a true “culture of safety.”

“I don’t believe that penalties deter. I think that nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I’m going to hurt my co-worker Bob today.’ … Because lots of people don’t believe they’re going to hurt a co-worker, the penalties aren’t going to be a threat to them. When the penalties come to play, the cow’s already out of the barn,” said Rep. Tom Lubnau (R-Gillette).

Coal-bed methane gas drilling in Wyoming's Powder River Basin was responsible for nearly 3,000 new wells annually for a period in the mid-2000s. In this photo, crews used a small drill rig to reach coal-beds only a few hundred feet down. (Courtesy Wyoming Bureau of Land Management's Buffalo field office — click to enlarge)

This year the Wyoming Legislature passed HB 89 (sponsored by Lubnau), which will arm the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration with seven new full-time safety consultants strictly dedicated to the agency’s long-existing voluntary courtesy inspection program. For years, Wyoming’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has offered courtesy onsite inspections, which employers can request, voluntarily, to gain advice on how to come in line with safety regulations — without the threat of citations for discovered violations. Those new inspectors will not be allowed to perform spot inspections or enforcement duties. The bill also sets aside $500,000 in grant money available to employers who want to establish or improve their own safety programs.

The grant program requires that the employer receiving a grant match at least 10 percent of the funding. No grant would exceed $10,000. It would also require that grant recipients report to the state the number of employees killed and injured for the next five years.

Gov. Mead did create one additional enforcement position at Wyoming OSHA, and the agency will have a total of nine enforcement officer positions this year. Yet Wyoming’s overall strategy to curb workplace fatalities still falls well short of the additional enforcement- and penalty-based proposals supported by worker advocate groups. For the past decade, the agency’s six inspection officers represented an inspection rate capacity of just one onsite job inspection per employer every 60 years. Some worker advocates see HB 89 as an acknowledgement that this is the last opportunity for Wyoming to significantly reduce workplace fatalities and injuries before politicians finally are forced to use the stick as well as the carrot.

“Our position here is we’ve been describing this as a strong first step. It puts private employers on notice, particularly in these most dangerous industries — oil and gas, in-situ mining and construction — that we’re giving you a chance here to come up to snuff with your operations,” said Dan Neal, executive director of the Equality State Policy Center (ESPC), which represents several unions and conservation groups.

The success of HB 89 and Wyoming’s ongoing voluntary approach to improving workplace safety will be measured in how many companies take advantage of Wyoming OSHA’s beefed up courtesy inspection and safety grant programs this year. On average, only 2 percent of Wyoming’s employers call on OSHA for courtesy inspections. Success will also be measured in how many workers are maimed and killed on the job.

In a March press conference, Gov. Mead said he intends to give the current strategy at least a year before considering more spot inspections or higher penalties for proven safety violations. HB 89 does include several reporting provisions to measure the success of the programs, and will be up for review in 2014.

“It depends on how it’s going,” said Mead. “If it has no noticeable effect, the timetable would be moved up, obviously. We have to do better. … If it looks like we’re not making any progress, then we’d have to be more aggressive, including, possibly, higher fines.”

Reactions to the ‘Ryan’ report

Like Lubnau, a majority of Wyoming lawmakers staunchly oppose increasing spot safety checks and fines for serious safety violations, for fear it would stifle business and saddle well-meaning employers with punitive fines. Fiercely pro-industry, most Wyoming leaders tend to believe that workplace safety is a matter best left to employers, with minimal government involvement.

“You can have a $50,000 penalty, and you‘ve got somebody dead and somebody out of business,” Lubnau told WyoFile.

Lubnau said the cooperative nature of HB 89 comes from his research of the aviation industry’s successful approach to improve its safety performance from the 1970s to the 1990s and beyond. He said the industry studied years of data to identify behaviors and trends leading to aviation accidents and then focused on improving those areas of risk. He believes the same approach can be applied to Wyoming’s most dangerous workplaces; construction, oil and gas, and transportation.

Construction for coal-bed methane development. Miles of pipeline and other construction were part of Wyoming's coal-bed methane gas play. (Courtesy Wyoming BLM Buffalo field office — click to enlarge)

According to a 2011 state-level report, an overwhelming percentage of Wyoming’s workplace fatalities were the result of not following existing safety rules, including the use of seatbelts.

“You’ve got to look at it as a step-by-step process. It takes a culture change to get there, and we have got cultural problems in our workforce,” said Lubnau.

Wyoming leaders have been under pressure for years to improve the state’s awful workplace fatality record. But it was a report in December by former state occupational epidemiologist Timothy Ryan that underscored the severity of the problem and finally made it politically acceptable to address the issue through legislation.

Timothy Ryan’s report verified what many worker advocates had suspected all along; the blame lies with employers and employees alike. And despite some gradual trends toward better safety performance, standards are disjointed, unevenly applied and rarely enforced.

After speaking with “hundreds of employees” in a variety of industries in Wyoming, Ryan said this is how workers described their typical work environment:

— “There is a breakdown in communication between upper management, supervisors, and employees regarding safety.”

— “Often the safety training that we receive is not enforced on the worksite.”

— “Employees are told to ‘get the job done’ and safety protocol and rules are not enforced, resulting in injuries and fatalities.”

— “On any one job-site, there can be a wide range in the safety standards.”

Ryan also found that from 2001 to 2008 non-fatal occupational injuries declined from 5,600 per 100,000 full-time workers to a rate of 4,000. But serious injuries — those that require hospitalization — remained a growing problem over the same time period. Approximately 700 workers per year were injured seriously enough to require hospitalization. The number of serious burns remained steady, and amputations were on the increase — from 10.1 per 100,000 workers to a rate of 14.7.

The idea for additional courtesy inspections came straight from the Ryan report. Ryan also recommended the need to continue and expand on current partnerships between industry and government agencies. For example, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance (WOGISA), formed several years ago and in 2011 it formally partnered with Wyoming OSHA to institute a series of “best practices.”

Ryan also stressed the need for better information gathering and sharing among agencies so that workplace injury and fatality trends can be more quickly identified.

Oil and natural gas industries rank among Wyoming's most dangerous occupations. (Courtesy Wyoming BLM Buffalo field office — click to enlarge)

Ryan resigned the day after submitting the report in December, and later told the New York Times, “The current Legislature is not interested in any new regulations that have to do with safety. … It got to the point where I wanted to see the action that’s connected to these findings, and I decided it wasn’t happening at a pace I was comfortable with.”

While worker advocacy groups such as the Equality State Policy Center, the Spence Association for Employee Rights (SAFER) and Wyoming AFL-CIO enthusiastically supported HB 89, they also say they’re not giving up on reforming enforcement, penalties and liability as part of the overall strategy to decrease deaths among Wyoming workers.

“We are starting with the path of least resistance. In theory, it’s (HB 89) great. We see it as part of a package. … The legislation shows the least painful, most palatable way to start addressing a problem,” said Mark Aronowitz, staff attorney for SAFER.

And groups such as WOGISA are not opposed to stiffer penalties and increased enforcement. In fact WOGISA, with a membership of more than 200 oil and gas operators and service companies, has already advocated for those measures and a tougher seatbelt law in Wyoming.

As for adding more courtesy inspectors at Wyoming OSHA, at least one drilling company has said it’s a welcomed move. Patrick Hladky, owner of Cyclone Drilling in Gillette, said he believes too many employers in Wyoming have been discouraged by the long wait time for courtesy inspections.

“We’ve tried in the past, and nobody shows up until months later,” said Hladky, adding that he believes more employers will take advantage of the beefed up courtesy inspection program.

Neal, of the Equality State Policy Center, said the courtesy inspection program is an excellent tool, but it likely suffers entrenched perceptions regarding OSHA.

“The whole idea here is some people just don’t know the law very well and they’re afraid to call OSHA to see where they’re not in compliance. You can do that and have the most egregious errors pointed out to you,” said Neal.

WHAT’S NEXT IF THE CARROT DOESN’T WORK?

Rep. Tom Lubnau (R-Gillette). Lubnau sponsored HB 89, which adds seven new "courtesy" inspectors to Wyoming OSHA.

Lubnau said he will likely introduce another workplace safety bill in the next legislative session, this time enticing employers to participate in a self-reporting program to help build a good database on workplace injuries and fatalities. Incentives could include reduced workers’ compensation premiums, he said.

In the meantime, Wyoming AFL-CIO and SAFER say they will continuing pushing the set of recommendations they submitted to the governor and state lawmakers earlier this year. Their four main recommendations:

• Mandatory post-injury inspections and increased spot inspections.
• Increased penalties for employers and employees who discourage reporting injuries “to protect safety awards, bonuses, and other performance incentives, or to avoid lost time accidents which can potentially lead to increased Workers’ Compensation premiums.”
• Require that company injury records be made public, much like under the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

“I differ with some lawmakers and the governor when they say we want more carrot than stick,” said Aronowitz. “I don’ think the stick is the most important thing, but it’s the threat of the stick. … We don’t drive 100 mph all the time because there’s a threat of the speeding ticket. I do think increasing penalties does have a deterring effect.”

However, Lubnau said he believes that the more buy-in from big companies on creating a culture of safety in Wyoming, the more it will squeeze out the operators and contractors who are bad actors.

“The ultimate plan is get the bad actors to adopt a safety plan or to go out of business,” said Lubnau. “No amount of enforcement is going to drive a bad actor out of business.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated to clarify the number of compliance officers at Wyoming OSHA.

 

— Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at 307-577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.

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RELATED STORIES:

Report: Wyoming lacks ‘culture of safety’ January 3, 2012

Official studying Wyoming’s workplace fatality problem resigns, December 20, 2011

Mead declares carrot over stick in workplace fatalities, October 14, 2011

Oil and gas leaders seek to stem deaths on the job, July 14, 2011

Deadly Workplaces; Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate still ranks among worst in the nation, July 12, 2011

Even toothless safety alliance is improvement, June 16, 2011

EPA delays Pavillion review for more groundwater testing

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to postpone an independent peer review of its Pavillion area groundwater contamination investigation until more sampling, testing and analysis is completed.

In a joint statement today Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes said “further sampling of the deep monitoring wells drilled for the Agency’s groundwater study is important to clarify questions about the initial monitoring results.”

This graphic explains the hydraulic fracking process. (Al Granberg/ProPublica — click to enlarge)

The statement goes on to say, “Together with the Tribes, the EPA and the State will convene a group of stakeholders and experts to develop and carry out a plan for further investigation of the Pavillion gas field to identify potential risks to drinking water, including possible sources and pathways for the migration of contaminants. Additional research will be conducted collaboratively using the highest scientific standards and will be subjected to independent peer review.”

The decision comes exactly three months after EPA made public its Pavillion groundwater contamination draft report, and stated that oil and gas activities — including hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — contributed to tainted groundwater in a rural residential area northeast of Pavillion in central Wyoming.

EnCana Oil & Gas USA, which owns and operates the Pavillion natural gas field, vehemently criticized the EPA’s December 8 draft report stating that it was premature and irresponsible to issue the report, and that the EPA’s testing and sampling methods were flawed.

Wyoming officials leveled the same criticisms at EPA and demanded that EPA release all of its documentation in the investigation. In response, EPA posted in excess of 600 pages of documents on its Pavillion groundwater investigation website.

In response to EPA’s decision Thursday to conduct more testing ahead of an independent peer review, EnCana officials said it confirmed their assertion that the agency’s draft report was flawed.

“We applaud the Governor for his leadership on this important issue,” EnCana said in a prepared statement. “Today’s announcement demonstrates the EPA’s report was rushed without peer review and the assertions aren’t supported by the data. Additional testing should focus on a rigorous evaluation of the taste and odor complaints on each of the domestic wells in question and focus on the chemistry in the domestic water well zone of the subsurface.”

In response, EPA spokesman Richard Mylott issued this statement from the agency; “EPA stands behind the data and conclusions in the draft report. We recognize the value of additional sampling and welcome a rigorous peer review of sampling (data) and our report by independent experts.”

Reached by phone on Thursday, John Fenton, a Pavillion area farmer who suspects his drinking water has been contaminated by oil and gas activity, said he’s satisfied that EPA will continue its investigation in partnership with the state, tribes and other local stakeholders. Fenton told WyoFile that by delaying the independent peer review until further testing is conducted, EPA’s critics won’t be able to claim the investigation was rushed or politically motivated.

“EPA said the work will be done to highest scientific standards and it will go to peer review. That’s what EPA has already been doing here,” said Fenton. “One thing I think it (more testing) may do, is whenever this comes to an end, the state’s not going to be able to say they didn’t have a say in it. … When they finally say, ‘Here’s the results,’ there shouldn’t be anybody bitching that they weren’t included.”

To the latter point, Fenton said the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation had been left out of the investigation process, and he’s grateful to hear that the state and EPA has made them a partner.

“I think if we can get the tribes on there, we’re only going to benefit from that. And I think they have a lot to offer that, quite frankly, has been ignored for too long,” said Fenton.

This week, Gov. Matt Mead signed into law a bill that provides $750,000 to help establish a permanent drinking water source for the rural residents northeast of Pavillion.

— Graphic originally used in the ProPublica article “What Is Hydraulic Fracturing?”

— Visit the EPA’s Pavillion investigation website to download a PDF of the Draft Report, and view project updates.

Related stories:

— EnCana wants fracking expert on EPA’s review panel

— EnCana to EPA: Stop public comment on Pavillion fracking report

— EPA Pavillion report stokes fire over fracking

— Find the source in Pavillion

— EPA finds compound used in fracking in Wyoming aquifer

— One man’s mystery leads to backlash against fracking

Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at (307) 577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.

REPUBLISH THIS STORY: For details on how you can republish this story or other WyoFile content for free, click here.

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FORT WASHAKIE — The Shoshone people, like most indigenous cultures, traditionally passed on their language orally. Though Shoshone-speaking Native American tribes inhabit several western states, the number of fluent speakers has dwindled consistently over the past decades. Some experts estimate there may be less than a few hundred fluent speakers of the language alive today. A survey of fluency was conducted last year of Eastern Shoshone tribal members ages 50 to 100 years old. Out of a total of 844 people who fit these age categories, only 103 identified themselves as fluent and 106 were proficient or had limited understanding of the language.

Every year these elders pass away, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about the language.

Lynette St. Clair goes over new vocabulary with her class. (Brad Christensen/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

In an effort to combat these decreasing numbers and preserve the Shoshone language, Eastern Shoshone tribal members on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming are combining technology with tradition to help save the language.

Schools on the Wind River Indian Reservation have attempted to respond to the community desire to hear the language once again flowing from the mouths of their children. However, for a language that was never written, and as the number of fluent speakers dwindle, educators are in a race against time to create tools that teach and document the vast vocabulary for the next generation.

Ten years ago, Eastern Shoshone tribal member Reba Teran was using digital audio to record an audio dictionary to accompany the most complete phonetic dictionary ever compiled of the Shoshone language.

Teran mixed audio with written words because she said Shoshone is a language that is hard to read if you never heard it.

“I’ve read Wick Miller’s and I couldn’t read it. I could (read) some, but that’s because I know the language,” Teran said, referring to a dictionary compiled by Wick R. Miller, an American linguist known for his work with the Shoshone language. “For a new learner it would be hard.”

According to Teran, the language is complex because it is nasally and has a “trill like in Spanish.” There are also some words that have a silent long “E” and others flow with an accent on certain words, some longer, some shorter, or said faster.

Others have taken on the challenge such as George Hill of Salt Lake City who created a 600-word dictionary printed in 1877; a 22-page Shoshone language dictionary written by trader J.K. Moore of Lander, Wyo., in the 1800’s; and smaller and more recent dictionaries of 300 or less words compiled by Wind River Indian Reservation residents Gladys Hill and Melinda Tidzump. All of these served as reference points and sources when Teran started researching for the audio dictionary.

“I get a lot of people asking me when it’s going to be ready so they can see the words,” Teran said of tribal members from the Comanche tribe, a related dialect, and other bands of Shoshone people.

In 2002, Teran and a team of three tribal elders including her older sister Beatrice Haukaas, Manfred Guina and Roberta Engavo recorded more than 14,000 words and phrases, transcribing 9,000 of them. But it was dream that never fully materialized.

It’s a challenge that still weighs heavily on Teran’s mind. Early on, someone told her she would never finish the project.

“I do want to see it get done … it’s such an important thing,” Teran said. “We had gotten through the alphabet; we got to the T’s. That’s how close we were to the end,” she said.

In 2009, the Eastern Shoshone tribe planned to partner with the University of Wyoming’s American Indian Studies (AIS) program to create a lexical database of the Shoshone language after the AIS was awarded a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant.

University of Wyoming linguistic anthropologist David Shaul planned to work with Teran and a panel of Shoshone elders to create the project. This would include the work already assembled by Teran and the three tribal elders. Also in the database would be the early written records of the Eastern Shoshone housed at the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institute and the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center, in addition to the work of the late Professor Emeritus Anne Slater.

“The database will provide the basis for the future development of additional Eastern Shoshone language and teaching materials,” said University of Wyoming American Indian Studies Director Judith Antell in a 2009 press release.

Lynette St. Clair holds up the Shoshone language bingo–a language drill she created. (Brad Christensen/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

But shortly after this partnership was announced, Teran, the Eastern Shoshone language coordinator, lost her job working for the Eastern Shoshone tribe. She also was no longer involved with the project.

Shaul said the grant was written to include an intermediary that would serve between the university and the panel of elders, but since the tribe did not appoint Teran’s replacement, to date Shaul has not worked with any tribal elders.

“Because I cannot officially work with a speaker, the database is archival; it contains all words and phrases from published and from major unpublished sources available to the public,” Shaul said, adding that similar databases only have 1,800 to 2,000 entries.

Shaul has spent the past years curating written records and audio/visual objects for the database. The project wraps up in July and copies will be made available at the Fort Washakie School/Community library, the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, the University of Wyoming library and any other tribal libraries or entities that want a copy.

“The project contains over 4,000 main entries, making it by far the largest dictionary of a Shoshone variety, except for Comanche, which many people consider to be a closely related language,” Shaul said.

Time and money, Teran recalled, were always major roadblocks. She paid elders $15.00 an hour to research and record words. She explained that in the Shoshone language there is often more than one way to say a word. For example, the word “squish” can be said five different ways ranging from squishing something with the tip of a sharp object, your hand, body, foot or by sitting. Speakers averaged documenting 270 words a day. In 2007, a $1,500 grant from the Wyoming Humanities Council only lasted a week.

“It went pretty fast,” Teran said of the money.

When Teran started the phonetic and audio dictionary project 10 years ago, she said she felt a sense of urgency because there were only a few Shoshone elders who were fluent speakers. Today, Teran estimates that number is even smaller as elders pass away. And for her, that sense of urgency has amplified.

“We’re real poor on elders but our language is really rich and beautiful,” Teran shared. “Time is of the essence.”

In January 2012, Guina passed away, decreasing the number of fluent speakers even more.

“When Manfred passed away my heart just went down,” Teran said. “I thought ‘Geez, that’s one less person.”

In the meantime, she is working to revitalize the language through books rather than audio recordings.

In Oct. 2011, Teran received a grant from the Wyoming Historical Society to write a children’s book called “Elka,” which is a family story about a baby elk Teran’s brothers caught and raised. The book will contain Shoshone words that are translated into English and listed in a glossary. She also received a donation from a family foundation in California of $400 to buy software that will allow her to create a font for the Shoshone language since writing words phonetically can be very long.

Lynette St. Clair watches her students Selena Jarvis, D'Etta Durgin, and Sierra Ferris, left to right, using the Shoshone language iPad application she developed. (Brad Christensen/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

And though it may seem that Teran’s idea of capturing the language digitally has stopped for now; the conversation started by Teran and others is being picked up once again — this time with the use of technology such as iPads and computer software.

“The whole idea of using technology is to incorporate language and culture. It’s a very effective tool for me because of student engagement,” said middle and high school Shoshone language teacher Lynette St. Clair. She often has her students utilize laptops and programs like PowerPoint to aid students in speaking Shoshone.

“Often if I have a problem with any sort of technology in my classroom they know how to fix it. They are well-versed in technology. It’s a win-win for the language and the students.”

When St. Clair started to teach the language to high school and middle school students at Fort Washakie, she had one rule — there was no one right way to speak Shoshone.

“My main focus was not to dissuade but to encourage,” St. Clair said. “(Students) understand it’s not right or wrong.”

St. Clair explained that the Shoshone language, a member of the Uto-Aztecan family tree, is comprised of more than 30 languages and dialects. She explained the difference and similarities to her students using the idiom, ‘You say tomato and I say tomahto.’

Before accepting her new role, St. Clair served as the Indian Education Coordinator at Fort Washakie School from 2007-11, but her contact with the language started at youth.

St. Clair grew up communicating with her parents and grandparents in Shoshone. She said she was able to keep those speaking skills honed over the years with weekend conversations in Shoshone with her mother over coffee.

Now St. Clair, along with longtime Shoshone language teacher Cathy Standingrock, who teaches the elementary students at Fort Washakie, is working to cultivate the language in the school and their community.

Beatrice Haukaas holds decorations that were created for the White House Christmas tree. (Brad Christensen/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

“I am fortunate to have Beatrice (Haukaas), a master speaker, in my class,” St. Clair shared, referring to Teran’s older sister who was involved with the audio dictionary effort. This year, Haukaas works as a teacher’s aide in St. Clair’s classroom. The two often incorporate the phonetic spellings used in the audio dictionary, which gives their students a consistent way to spell the language. All students have a copy of the language project, which are on CD’s, as a reference.

“There’s never been a universal system for the tribe,” St. Clair said. “It’s easier to utilize the dictionary.”

Last year, St. Clair attended a conference on preserving Native languages. There St. Clair was introduced to the world of programming using an iPad.

Within a day, St. Clair developed a short demo program to teach the Shoshone language using Thornton Media software. Her demo features categories and images, that when selected by the user, identifies the object in the Shoshone language. Not only can the user read the language, they can also hear it.

The demo is not implemented in St. Clair’s curriculum yet, but she does allow students to play with the demo, and students are excited to have another outlet to learn the language because for some, becoming fluent is a goal.

“I want to learn how to speak Shoshone so I can pass it on … my goal is being a fluent speaker,” said eighth-grader Tessa Pierre. “I would like to talk to my grandparents and joke around with them and actually know what they are talking about when they speak Shoshone to each other.”

For eighth-grader Adrianna Goggles, the idea of a program that can teach Shoshone is convenient. Goggles often learns Shoshone words and phrases from her grandmother but said the majority of her knowledge is attained at school. She has downloaded the Shoshone audio dictionary to her iPod, adding that her aunt has it on her PS3 gaming system. An iPad and Shoshone language program she could utilize on the weekends or after school to learn would only benefit her more.

“Instead of waiting for someone to teach you (Shoshone) you can pull (the iPad) out,” Goggles said of the potential of the software program.

Cheyenne Hebah, a seventh-grader, wants to learn because she is worried about the future of the language.

“I want to carry it on and teach it to my children so that it will go on forever,” said Hebah. “I want to become fluent. Hardly no one speaks (Shoshone).” She added that the only time she hears or speaks Shoshone is with her grandmother or at school during Shoshone class. “Hardly any of my friends know (Shoshone). I want to be able to talk on the phone and greet my friends just like how my grandmas talk to each other.”

In March 2011, Thornton Media released its first-of-a-kind application for the iPad and iPhone that teaches users to write using the Cherokee alphabet. The app called Writing Cherokee also features recordings voiced by Cherokee language instructor Harry Oosawee, so people can see how words are written and pronounced.

Creator Don Thornton founded Thornton Media in 1995 as a way for tribes and communities to revitalize their languages without the need for outside help so they could control their own cultural property.

Thornton was inspired to create the company after his grandmother helped an Oklahoma university professor create a Cherokee-English dictionary but never received any credit or pay for her work.

Since the company’s inception, Thornton has worked with over 100 native communities to save their languages. Thornton Media is currently trying to secure funding to create a full immersion 12 level video game with interactive characters designed to teach native languages. Characters in the game only speak in native languages and players can communicate back in the same language. Currently, only a demo version of the first level is available.

Tools like this could be the next steps in helping Native American languages flourish among their tech-savvy youth.

St. Clair is certainly optimistic about the possibilities and has applied for a three-year, $300,000 language preservation and maintenance grant through the Administration for Native Americans to secure funding to turn her demo into a full-fledged teaching tool for students.

From left to right, Jarvis, Durgin, and Ferris take a Vocabulary Verbal Assessment for their Shoshone language class. (Brad Christensen/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

If fully developed, the program will allow students to learn to speak and write Shoshone using games, pictures and quizzes on iPads. When a student completes a speaking quiz the information will have the ability to be automatically emailed to the teacher. The program is also capable of including videos of elders making such things as cradleboards or allowing students to listen to tribal songs and read about historical sites on the reservation.

“I’m confident that what little we’ve done so far can be a model for others,” St. Clair said of the potential of the program.

St.Clair also integrates the progressive teaching methods of University of Montana Professor Stephen Greymorning called Accelerated Second Language Acquisition. His system eliminates the need for English by teaching students how to speak the language and not merely translate. The idea is to get students not only speaking in native languages, but thinking in it as well. Greymorning’s techniques do not use technology but do incorporate the knowledge of elders.

“The stories left behind by elders has been a strong tool,” Greymorning said. “What my students accomplish in 20 hours of instruction for the most cannot be matched by any technological tool or aid.”

St. Clair agrees, but believes the combination of the wisdom of elders mixed with technology can further help ensure the language thrives.

The technology, St. Clair says, is “only as good as ‘grandma’ Beatrice Haukaas.”

“It’s not magic that (the program) says Shoshone back. You have to have correct sources and involve elders, not just one or two, but pull together all those people who are knowledgeable.”

Shoshone Words PDF — Click to download

 

— WyoFile contributor Tetona Dunlap is a writer and photographer for The Valley Journal in Ronan, Mont. She grew up on the Wind River Indian Reservation and recently completed the University of Montana’s journalism graduate program.

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Mead to meet with Pavillion residents to talk water supply

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead will meet with Pavillion area residents from 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Monday to discuss strategies for a long-term drinking water supply. Residents in about two dozen homes currently rely on water filtration and commercial delivery service for drinking water due to health concerns related to groundwater in the area.

Currently, the state of Wyoming and EnCana Oil & Gas USA — the main operator of the Pavillion natural gas field — are paying for the water delivery service.

The meeting will be held at Central Wyoming College Intertribal Education and Community Center (room 116) in Riverton. “I am committed to the health and safety of the residents. We can explore a long term water strategy now while we wait for answers to other problems,” Mead wrote in a letter to Pavillion area resident John Fenton.

In 2009, many residents in the central Wyoming farming community were told by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to not drink or cook with water from their domestic wells due to the presence of hydrocarbons and high levels of sodium, and to use ventilation while showering due to methane concentrations in the water.

Residents in the area have long suspected that natural gas drilling and production activity in the area may have tainted groundwater supplies, including the shallow aquifer that residents tap for domestic and agricultural supplies. Pavillion is now at the center of a national debate over the potential risks associated with hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — the method of pumping a mixture of water, sand and some chemicals under pressure to break open fissures in petroleum-bearing rock and shale formations to enhance the production of oil and natural gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is conducting an investigation of groundwater pollution in the Pavillion area, and the agency recently issued a draft report stating that oil and gas activity — including hydraulic fracturing — may contribute to the groundwater pollution.

“The findings (EPA’s) were immediately attacked by the state, industry and industry-friendly politicians,” Fenton said in a teleconference with the press on Tuesday. “All this while the people still sit here suffering the impacts and pretty much forgotten in all the political jousting that’s going on.”

The Wyoming Water Development Commission has studied potential water supply strategies, and in October issued a report (click here to download a PDF of the executive summary) recommending that rural residents form a water service district and possibly pay to extend a water pipeline from the town of Pavillion. Other options include individual water treatment systems, individual cisterns, or a central water well and distribution system. Estimated costs range from $175 per month for each individual home, to $1,225 per month.

“A whole house treatment system is upwards of $20,000, but they don’t remove a lot of the constituents we’re dealing with and it requires a huge amount of maintenance,” said Fenton.

Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at (307) 577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.

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Congressional research group issues report on EPA’s Pavillion investigation

This week, members of Congress received a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) regarding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s draft report of the Pavillion groundwater contamination investigation.

EPA’s draft report, issued on December 8, stoked America’s ongoing debate over the oil and gas industry’s use of hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — by concluding that compounds found in the aquifer near Pavillion, Wyo., are likely associated with industry activity, including fracking.

This graphic explains the hydraulic fracking process. (Al Granberg/ProPublica — click to enlarge)

The CRS, a public policy research agency that reports directly to congressional committees and staff, found no obvious concerns with the legality and quality of EPA’s draft report. CRS provided a summary of EPA’s findings, along with a summary of formal comments submitted to EPA so far. Essentially, CRS reported to Congress what EPA’s draft report did and did not say.

“Detecting and distinguishing between potentially shallow and potentially deep sources of groundwater contamination lies at the heart of the primary findings in the EPA Draft Report,” CRS stated in its January 25 report to Congress. “Whether the (EPA) report clearly links groundwater contamination to drilling or hydraulic fracturing activities at depth has been the source of relatively heated commentary by proponents and opponents of the use of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas development.”

The CRS goes on to explain, “EPA did not appear to conclude that there was a definitive link to a release from the (oil and natural gas) production wells, nor to the constituents found in the domestic wells in the shallower portion of the aquifer. Absent such a link, EPA also did not conclude in its Draft Report that the constituents found in the aquifer were caused by a specific release that may pose a threat to human health or the environment at the Pavillion site.”

The public comment period on the draft report was extended through March 12. The draft report will undergo an “external review” by an independent panel of scientific experts, and nominations of experts to the panel are being accepted until February 17.

Fracking is the method of pumping a mixture of water, sand and a small amount of chemicals into petroleum-laden formations under high pressure to force open cracks in the shale and allow oil and natural gas to flow through production wells.

Wyoming stakeholders participating in the Pavillion groundwater contamination investigation had received a preliminary copy of EPA’s draft report before it was released on December 8. Immediately following the release, both EnCana Oil & Gas USA (the company that owns and operates the Pavillion gas field) and Wyoming state officials slammed the EPA and the report, questioning the agency’s methods and analysis.

John Fenton, a Pavillion area rancher among several who suspect oil and gas activity there may contribute to water contamination, told WyoFile on Thursday, “People around here are really disappointed about how the state has attacked this (EPA draft report).”

“I think there’s been a lot of misinformation about the whole process out here,” Fenton continued. “It’s disheartening because we tried and tried to get the state of Wyoming to do something about it.”

State and industry officials contend that the EPA is withholding important information related to the investigation that could help stakeholders judge the quality of EPA’s draft report, and say that much more monitoring, sampling and analysis is needed to draw conclusions about the source and extent of groundwater contamination in Pavillion.

Regarding the heated exchange between stakeholders over the EPA draft report, the CRS concluded, “… it is likely that proponents and opponents of hydraulic fracturing will continue to disagree over the EPA Draft Report’s main conclusions linking hydraulic fracturing chemicals, and perhaps the hydraulic fracturing process specifically, with groundwater contamination in the Pavillion area.”

The Energy and Environment Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Wednesday regarding EPA’s research of fracking, including the Pavillion groundwater contamination investigation. Witnesses scheduled to testify before the committee include Tom Doll, Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission supervisor; Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for the Western Energy Alliance; Bernard Goldstein, professor and dean emeritus at University of Pittsburg’s Graduate School of Public Health; and Paul Anastas, assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

No Pavillion area residents were invited to testify during the hearing, so several residents say they will take part in a teleconference at 11 a.m. on Tuesday to express their support of the EPA’s investigation. Speakers will include John Fenton, impacted landowner, chairman of the Pavillion Area Concern Citizens, board member of the Powder River Basin Resource Council; Louis Meeks, impacted resident, member of Powder River Basin Resource Council; Jeff Locker, impacted resident, member of Pavillion Area Concern Citizens; Wilma Subra, chemist and technical advisor, and president of Subra Co.

 — Click here to download a PDF of the CRS report.

— Visit the EPA’s Pavillion investigation website to download a PDF of the Draft Report, and view project updates.

Related stories:

— EnCana wants fracking expert on EPA’s review panel

— EnCana to EPA: Stop public comment on Pavillion fracking report

— EPA Pavillion report stokes fire over fracking

— Find the source in Pavillion

— EPA finds compound used in fracking in Wyoming aquifer

— One man’s mystery leads to backlash against fracking

Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at (307) 577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.

Graphic originally used in the ProPublica article “What Is Hydraulic Fracturing?”

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Report: Wyoming lacks ‘culture of safety’

To address Wyoming’s long-standing distinction as among the deadliest states in the nation for workers, state and industry officials must work cooperatively to create a “culture of safety,” according to the Wyoming Occupational Epidemiologist Timothy Ryan.

“Over the last year I have analyzed 17 years of occupational fatality data (1992-2008), read through fatality case reports, and have spoken with hundreds of employees working for various sized companies in the major industries in Wyoming. The Nature of the Problem in Wyoming: The common theme throughout is the lack of a ‘culture of safety’ in Wyoming,” Ryan wrote in a December 19 “interoffice memorandum” to Gov. Matt Mead.

Click here for the full 9-page report, which was released to the public for the first time late Tuesday morning.

A total of 369 workers died on the job in Wyoming from 2001 through 2010, creating a per 100,000 workers annual fatality rate that ranked Wyoming either the worst or second-worst in the nation for a decade — with the exception of 2009 when Wyoming ranked fourth deadliest. Several legislative measures have been proposed in recent years to persuade safer practices, such as tougher seatbelt laws, holding operators accountable for their own proven negligence and raising fines for safety violations that lead to the death of a worker.

None of the bills passed.

Ryan, who submitted his resignation along with his recommendations report last month, didn’t list any of those legislative measures as part of a strategy to make Wyoming’s workplaces less deadly.

Bill Adams of Jackson Electric Inc. operates a trackhoe at a construction site in Casper. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile - click to enlarge)

Instead, he recommends the state and industry continue to cooperate in a recent effort to identify and implement best industry practices, particularly in Wyoming’s oil and natural gas fields. He said the state should also promote the use of free “courtesy inspections,” which have long been a service provided by the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The purpose of a courtesy inspection is to identify hazards and get professional advice on how to come into compliance with safety standards. A company that requests a courtesy inspection from Wyoming OSHA is essentially promised that no citations will be issued as a result of the inspection. Yet, fewer than 2 percent of Wyoming’s workplaces request a courtesy inspection, according to Ryan’s report.

Even at that rate, Wyoming OSHA officials have said they are so short-staffed that it can still take months for OSHA to respond to a request for a courtesy inspection.

Ryan’s recommendations also include the continuation of his effort to create a central database for information related to workplace fatalities, which should be easily accessed for analysis. The focus of all these efforts should be on Wyoming’s “high risk” industries, which Ryan lists as “oil and gas, transportation and construction,” he wrote.

Gov. Mead issued a prepared statement Tuesday afternoon, promising that the state would continue its focus on understanding and improving workplace safety.

“I believe that we must find ways to get workers in Wyoming home safely at the end of the day,” Mead said. “These recommendations are a first step on the path to making every workplace safer. They do not provide a solution but show that some systemic changes need to be made. They also indicate we still have work to do to further evaluate and make progress in workplace safety.”

Mead reiterated his intention to hire another state occupational epidemiologist to replace Ryan, and move the position to the Department of Workforce Services.

“I am committed to this effort and want the position to continue with the objective of reducing workplace fatalities and injuries,” Mead said.

FROM THE REPORT:

Nature of the Problem

— There is a breakdown in communication between the upper management, supervisors, and employees regarding safety.

— “Often the safety training that we receive is not enforced on the worksite.”

— Employees are told to “get the job done” and safety protocol and rules are not enforced, resulting in injuries and fatalities.

— On any one job-site, there can be a wide range in the safety standards.

Recommendations:

— Organize and develop continuity of ongoing efforts.

— Develop data monitoring system for the collection and timely analysis of occupational data.

— Promote OSHA courtesy inspections.

— Support efforts by industry to develop, monitor and enforce safety standards and practices.

Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at (307) 577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.

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Gov. Matt Mead announced today that he will shuffle vacant positions within state government, and possibly make new hires, to beef up resources at Wyoming Occupational Health and Administration (OSHA) as part of the state’s larger effort to curb on-the-job fatalities and injuries.

“Over the last few years there has been a growing emphasis among Wyoming workers, Wyoming companies and state government to keep employees safe,” Governor Mead said in a prepared statement on Tuesday afternoon. “My office and the Department of Workforce Services want to augment those efforts and that is what we are proposing today.”

Related Story: State warms to call for bigger OSHA role in stemming workplace fatalities

Mead said he will create three new positions in the Wyoming OSHA program by moving vacant positions from other divisions of the Department of Workforce Services to Wyoming OSHA.

“This movement of vacant positions can be done without legislation,” Mead said.

Additionally, Mead said he is working with state lawmakers to draft a bill that would provide five more OSHA consultants, “funded out of the Industrial Accident Fund.” Existing state statutes allow for expenditures related to workplace safety programs from the Industrial Accident Fund.

“New OSHA employees, whether three or eight, will be housed in Wyoming OSHA within the Department of Workforce Services. If the number is eight, Governor Mead and Director Evans are proposing seven employees for safety consultations and one additional compliance inspector,” according to a press release from the governor’s office today.

“The news coming out of the Governor’s office today is exciting. WOGISA is very supportive of the Governor’s statement and efforts to help make Wyoming safer for it workers. WOGISA (Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Alliance) is  pleased to hear of the movement to get another (epidemiologist)in place in a timely manner,” WOGISA organizer Bonnie Foster said in a prepared statement to WyoFile.

Foster said all stakeholders in Wyoming need to work together to bring about a culture of safety, “and WOGISA has been working this direction and is glad to be one of the leading forces, along with the Governor, OSHA and Workfoce Services.”

John Robitaille, vice president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, told WyoFile, “We hope the additional personnel is hired at Wyoming OSHA to ensure additional opportunities for safety consultations are increased dramatically and agree that additional inspectors will help us reach our goals.  We offer our assistance to the Governor, if needed, to help him help us improve our workforce safety.”

“These additional people can respond to requests from companies and employees who want a safety consultation,” Governor Mead said. “There are 23,000 employers in Wyoming and only six people to do safety consultations or inspections. This proposal is an important step in supporting companies who want to improve safety procedures and a needed step to keep workers safe.”

For several years now, state and industry officials have resisted calls for legislation that backers claim would help save workers’ lives, such as a tougher seatbelt law, more OSHA inspections, stiffer penalties for safety violations, and affirmation of Wyoming’s “duty of care” law, which holds oil and gas operators liable for their own proven negligence in the death or injury of a contract worker on their job sites.

Last week, state officials met with representatives of the Wyoming AFL-CIO and the Spence Association for Employee Rights (SAFER) to discuss approaches toward stepping up Wyoming OSHA’s presence in the construction, oil and natural gas industries — which represent the state’s deadliest occupational sectors, according to state and federal data.

Click here to read the press announcement from Gov. Mead’s office.

UPDATE: Gov Mead to add to OSHA: Gov. Matt Mead announced today that he will shuffle vacant positions within state government, and possibly make new hires, to beef up resources at Wyoming Occupational Health and Administration (OSHA) as part of the state’s larger effort to curb on-the-job fatalities and injuries. Click here to read the update, and click here to read the press announcement from Gov. Mead’s office.

After a decade of resisting more workplace inspections and stepped up enforcement of existing safety regulations, some state officials are now considering a bigger role for the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in addressing the state’s ongoing high workplace fatality rate.

Last week, state officials met with representatives of the Wyoming AFL-CIO and the Spence Association for Employee Rights (SAFER) to discuss approaches toward stepping up Wyoming OSHA’s presence in the construction, oil and natural gas industries — which represent the state’s deadliest occupational sectors, according to state and federal data.

Oil drill employees — like this duo working on a rig in Montana — are among those most susceptible to workplace-related injuries or fatalities. Wyoming has long struggled with one of the worst workplace fatality rates in the nation. (Courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management — click to enlarge)

“One thing we talked about was increasing the number of spot checks that we do,” said Joan Evans, director of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, which oversees Wyoming OSHA.

Such action was the obvious response for safety officials in North Dakota when oil and gas drilling, a major contributor to workplace fatalities, increased dramatically in that state in recent years. Not to step up surprise inspections in the face of increased injuries and deaths “would be a crime,” according to a top official in the North Dakota OSHA office, which is run by the federal government.

Some key changes in Wyoming’s inspection and enforcement effort could be undertaken by the executive branch without legislative action, according to state officials. Interviews with those involved in the discussions on workplace safety with Gov. Matt Mead’s administration indicate change may well be on the way. But the governor remains noncommittal about the potential new state effort.

Responding to a question by WyoFile at the Wyoming Press Association convention earlier this month, Mead said stepped up OSHA enforcement “could be part of the strategy.” He added, “I want to be careful before heading down that path.”

The renewed discussions come after a state report (posted at the end of this article) in December confirmed what many already understood is a grim reality in Wyoming’s workplaces. Wyoming lacks a “culture of safety” that has resulted in an average of one workplace fatality every 10 days for the past 10 years, according to the report. Investigations indicated that in more than 85 percent of the deaths, safety procedures were not followed. Over a 10-year period, Wyoming consistently ranked worst or close to the worst in the nation for workplace fatalities, peaking in 2007 when Wyoming’s rate was four times the national average.

For several years now, state and industry officials have resisted calls for legislation that backers claim would help save workers’ lives, such as a tougher seatbelt law, more OSHA inspections, stiffer penalties for safety violations, and affirmation of Wyoming’s “duty of care” law, which holds oil and gas operators liable for their own proven negligence in the death or injury of a contract worker on their job sites.

The recent discussion of a bigger role for Wyoming OSHA represents a potential shift from Mead’s staunch declaration this past fall to resist enforcement actions as part of an overall strategy to address workplace fatalities.

In an October 2011 letter to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance, Mead wrote, “There are many ways to approach the problem: laws can be passed, rules can be written, fines can be levied. I remain unconvinced that these are the best ways to enhance a culture of leadership and safety. I say this because we don’t yet fully understand the problem. … I believe we should focus on the prevention and awareness side before we get heavy handed.”

A cement crew pours a foundation for a new home in Casper. State leaders say they may consider stepping up on-site safety inspections in a broad effort to stem workplace injuries and fatalities in Wyoming. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

Many stakeholders close to the issue anticipated that the state’s occupational fatality report would provide clear direction and serve as a springboard for distinct actions to improve Wyoming’s track record. But the sudden resignation of the state’s leading man in the workplace safety effort, occupational epidemiologist Timothy Ryan, was seen by some as a setback.

After 16 months on the job, Ryan submitted his first formal analysis of Wyoming’s workplace fatality problem to the governor in December, then quit the next day. He later explained to the New York Times that he believed Wyoming’s political leaders didn’t support him in producing the report.

“It got to the point where I wanted to see the action that’s connected to these findings, and I decided it wasn’t happening at a pace I was comfortable with,” Ryan told New York Times reporter Dan Frosch.

The governor and state lawmakers generally side with industry’s preferred strategy of cooperation and “best practices” over enforcement. But worker advocates say there’s always been enough evidence to at least step up OSHA’s role. Ryan’s 9-page report simply added to the evidence, and now more people seem to be warming up to the idea.

“I’m very optimistic, I think that we might get something accomplished,” said Kim Floyd, executive secretary of the Wyoming State AFL-CIO.

But’s it remains unclear whether state leaders will warm up to Wyoming AFL-CIO and SAFER’s other recommendations. They include making company injury records public, broadening Wyoming OSHA’s powers to shut down operations, increase OSHA penalties, and impose serious consequences for those who “discourage the reporting of injuries to protect safety awards, bonuses, and other performance incentives, or to avoid lost time accidents which can potentially lead to increased Workers’ Compensation premiums,” according to a letter from Wyoming AFL-CIO and SAFER to Gov. Mead.

The short amount of time between the release of Ryan’s report in December and the upcoming legislative budget session in February may make it difficult for Floyd and his colleagues to convince lawmakers to take action on such recommendations. But Floyd said if legislative action is needed — whether it’s for more OSHA inspections or more bold measures — worker advocates won’t hesitate trying.

“If there’s any way to get a bill introduced, I think we’re going to try it. I mean, we can’t wait another year,” said Floyd.

Meanwhile, Mead says the state will hire another occupational epidemiologist to replace Ryan and lead the effort to decrease workplace fatalities and injuries. He said the position will move from the governor’s office to the Department of Workforce Services.

“I believe placing this position in the Department of Workforce Services will facilitate data access and allow the State and employers to identify, implement and monitor concrete recommendations and make workers safe,” Mead said in a prepared statement.

In addition to more un-announced workplace inspections, the state is also considering how it can speed up OSHA’s response time to perform courtesy, or volunteer, inspections of workplaces, according to Evans. Part of that effort would have to include convincing more Wyoming employers to request courtesy inspections (which essentially guarantee no citations will be issued identified hazards as long as they are corrected) because only 2 percent of Wyoming’s employers take advantage of the existing program, according to Wyoming OSHA.

OSHA’s Role

Of particular focus in stemming workplace fatalities is the oil and gas industry and related construction. From 2001 to 2008, the oil and gas industry accounted for 20 percent of all occupational fatalities in the state. Ryan reported that 96 percent of those fatalities “occurred when safety procedures were not followed.”

Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate improved from worst-in-the nation — 17 fatalities per 100,000 workers in 2007 — to fourth-worst in 2009, passing the “worst” distinction to Montana, Louisiana and North Dakota where many drilling rigs migrated during the same period.

According to Ryan, more than half of the 16,000-plus jobs lost in Wyoming during that time were in natural resource development and construction, the occupations with the most risks for injury and death — not only in Wyoming, but across much of the nation.

Matt Reed, owner of Envision Electric Inc., works on a new home in Casper. Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate has improved in recent years, from having the worst in the nation in 2007 to fourth-worst in 2009. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile — click to enlarge)

In the summer of 2011, Ryan told WyoFile, “My concern is that people are going to look at this and say ‘problem solved.’ Well, no. When the economy picks back up in construction and mining, and oil and gas picks up, so goes the fatality rate.”

When drilling rigs flooded into North Dakota exploiting the Bakken shale oil play, and the of number workplace fatalities there began to rise, North Dakota OSHA officials wasted little time in stepping up enforcement, according to Erik Brooks, assistant director of OSHA’s Bismark Area Office.

In the fall of 2011, the agency pulled in federal OSHA inspectors from the surrounding region to conduct a two-week “flood” of inspections in the Bakken play, performing 108 onsite inspections, according to Brooks. During the entire previous year, the agency had conducted a total 230 inspections.

“When you’re talking about bringing in 20,000 employees into North Dakota, we have to act according,” Brooks told WyoFile. “If people weren’t getting hurt, then there wouldn’t be such a need for the (OSHA) presence. But when you have half of your fatalities in one industry you have to take action. It would be a crime not to take action.”

Unlike Wyoming, which is among just a handful of states that runs its own OSHA agency, North Dakota is among the majority of states that operate under federal OSHA and its regional offices. Brooks said before the Bakken oil play took off, there were just four OSHA compliance officers assigned to cover both North Dakota and South Dakota. However, as part of the federal OSHA Region 8 office, those states can pull in resources as needed. In addition, three more compliance officers have been hired to help meet the increase in work activity in the two states.

“This increased volume of activity in both construction and oil and gas makes it necessary for us to increase our activity,” said Brooks.

Brooks said he believes that OSHA enforcement and good safety training are the most critical strategies to making the oil and gas industry safer, because much of the risk related to drilling has been “engineered out.” In other words, the industry has come a long way in integrating safety into the design of equipment and process. What’s left is good training and management — particularly at a time when the industry is retiring experienced workers and hiring first-generation roughnecks.

“Lots of young people come up here (to North Dakota). The money is very attractive, and they just don’t have that same skill set. It is a skill and a talent to do this correctly,” said Brooks.

Wyoming OSHA program manager J.D. Danni said his agency has also pooled its resources, on occasion, to focus on a particular industry or geographic area when compliance and accident trends are identified.

“When Jonah started booming in 2006 and 2007, we had all our inspectors go out there for a week or two,” said Danni. “But to tap into federal resources, we don’t do that.”

Since the 1980s, Wyoming has consistently had eight inspector positions, but those slots are often left vacant. Danni explains that Wyoming is home to one of the few OSHA agencies that has rules specific to the oil and gas industry. Once Wyoming OSHA compliance officers gain that expertise, they’re often lured away by the oil and gas industry.

“We did not have a full staff last year. We had a couple of vacancies. Now, we have two new employees that we need to train,” said Danni. “We’ve gone down to where we have three people have left. … A couple of years ago we were down to four inspectors (because of job changes).”

RELATED STORIES:

Worker advocates slam state for timid response to workplace fatalities, January 6, 2012

Report: Wyoming lacks ‘culture of safety’ January 3, 2012

Official studying Wyoming’s workplace fatality problem resigns, December 20, 2011

Mead declares carrot over stick in workplace fatalities, October 14, 2011

Oil and gas leaders seek to stem deaths on the job, July 14, 2011

Deadly Workplaces; Wyoming’s workplace fatality rate still ranks among worst in the nation, July 12, 2011

Even toothless safety alliance is improvement, June 16, 2011

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see more quality Wyoming journalism, please consider supporting WyoFile: a non-partisan, non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth reporting on Wyoming’s people, places and policy.

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Reprinted with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. Not for republication by Wyoming media.

When U.S. EPA issued a report last month on groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo., many saw it as proof that hydraulic fracturing had contaminated drinking water.

It wasn’t.

Fracturing contaminated groundwater, EPA said. Not drinking water.

The distinction is important. People in the small central Wyoming town don’t drink from the aquifer, 800 feet down. They drink from water wells, which are generally much shallower.

Finding fracturing chemicals in any groundwater does puncture a big industry talking point — that fracturing has been used safely for 60 years and has never, ever contaminated groundwater. But fracturing done in Pavillion was much closer to the surface — and groundwater — than the mile-deep “fracking” in shale formations like Pennsylvania’s Marcellus.

The groundwater versus drinking water distinction has been lost in the finger-pointing between environmentalists and industry. So have some other key facts. Among them:

• Oil and gas production activities — drilling, not “fracking” — did contaminate wells as shallow as 15 feet with high concentrations of benzene, xylenes and other nasty stuff, according to EPA’s study. But those concentrations still have not been found in drinking water.
• “Material Safety Data Sheets” that the local driller, EnCana Corp., provided were not sufficient to determine what chemicals were in the fracturing fluid used, according to EnCana.
• None of the wells, save two, were sealed with concrete all the way below the drinking water zone. Some of those wells were drilled as recently as 2007.

The report is a draft, and its findings are going to be subjected to peer review. EnCana has disputed most of EPA’s findings and disparaged the agency’s methods. Wyoming’s state oil and gas supervisor, Tom Doll, even suggested that EPA could have contaminated the deep aquifer itself when it drilled deep monitoring wells.

But EPA is standing behind the report. Administrator Lisa Jackson last week sent a letter affirming her support but also explaining some nuances of the study.

EPA’s findings will be tested in the political arena. The House Science Committee is planning a Feb. 1 hearing on the Pavillion report. Republican committee leaders chose a title — “Fractured Science” — that leaves little doubt the report will be attacked.

But if EPA’s findings are accurate, they point to some very basic problems in Pavillion. Oil and gas operators dumped their waste into unlined pits, which was legal at the time. They also did not seal their wells off from drinking water by encasing them in concrete all the way through the drinking water zone, a basic drilling practice laid out in the American Petroleum Institute’s standards.

“At least in retrospect, it appears they didn’t have the wells sealed enough to make sure that fluid couldn’t move up the wellbore,” said Dave Yoxtheimer, a hydrogeologist at Penn State University’s Marcellus Initiative for Outreach and Research.

EnCana spokesman Doug Hock said that the wells in question are located far from drinking water wells and there is no indication they have leaked. He also said, “The contamination associated with these pits is isolated and there is no evidence of impacts to drinking water.”

Material Safety Data Sheets, or MSDS, have been the industry’s preferred method of public disclosure of hydraulic fracturing chemicals. Oil and gas companies have long argued that the sheets amount to full disclosure. Texas’ new public disclosure law requires disclosure only of chemicals from MSDS sheets. But the sheets, which are posted at work sites as instructions for what to do in the event of accidental contact with chemicals, are designed for worker safety rather than long-term water quality monitoring. In this case, an established operator is saying that its own MSDS sheets are not reliable.

As part of the study, EPA got the MSDS from EnCana and compared them to the chemicals it found in the Wind River Aquifer below Pavillion.

“Tert-butyl alcohol, was detected … a known breakdown product of … tert-butyl hydroperoxide (a gel breaker used in hydraulic fracturing),” EPA says on page 35 of its report.

But EnCana says EPA should not use MSDS to link fracturing to contamination in the aquifer.

“Peroxide breaker was never used in the field yet we did record it in the MSDSs because it is possibly used in hydraulic fracturing,” EnCana officials state in written materials prepared for a technical briefing for reporters. “Yet they chose to make that claim despite knowing that peroxide breaker was not used.”

EnCana says EPA never requested more detailed information about what chemicals were used in which specific areas.

“However,” Hock said, “we are planning to provide this information as part of our rebuttal to the draft report.”
Groundwater contamination

EPA concluded that contamination from “constituents associated with hydraulic fracturing” are in the “drinking water aquifer,” around 800 feet down.

But those materials are different than contaminants EPA found in much shallower drinking water wells. And the agency says the contaminants in drinking water are “generally” below health and safety thresholds.

“We have absolutely no indication right now that drinking water is at risk,” Jackson said last year in a televised interview on Pavillion.

Still, after EPA found “petroleum compounds” in 17 of 19 drinking water wells in 2010, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry recommended that some well owners use alternate sources of water for drinking and cooking. The agencies made no conclusion about where those compounds came from.

The EPA report notes that contaminants deeper in the aquifer could flow upward toward drinking water wells. Some stock ponds in the area flow, indicating that water moves up from below. They could also come up through old, forgotten oil and gas wells.

But they haven’t, or at least there is no indication of that in EPA’s study.

To reach most drinking water wells in Pavillion, the contaminants would need to rise upward several hundred feet. But to reach drinking water in shale formations, any contaminants would have to rise upward a mile or more.

In shales like the Marcellus or the Barnett in Texas, gas is trapped in hard rock a mile or so below the surface. Drillers inject millions of gallons of chemical-laced water at extremely high pressure to “fracture” the shale and allow the gas to flow out.

Because it is deeper, it requires more industrial activity at the surface. Drillers use exponentially more water than in the conventional production found in Pavillion, and the water is under exponentially higher pressure.

“I don’t think it’s something that can be extrapolated across formations all over the country,” Penn State’s Yoxtheimer said.

In dismissing the report, industry figures and Wyoming officials have said EPA itself might have contaminated the water in the aquifer when it drilled deep monitoring wells.

But Yoxtheimer said EPA documented a very careful approach to drilling the wells, monitoring everything that went into the wells. He does see a weakness in that the municipal water used to drill the monitoring wells was not tested and suggests its source could be tested, “to fill that gap.”

Some have noted that a portion of EPA’s samples were not tested within the proper time frame. Yoxtheimer said that might invalidate them in a court case, and EPA itself probably would not accept samples that had expired. But he said that given what they were testing for, the time lag probably did not affect the outcome and, if anything, would have shown less contamination because over time such chemicals diminish.

“Technically, the samples weren’t valid,” Yoxtheimer said. “But it probably didn’t affect the quality.”

More troubling to Yoxtheimer is how little data there is overall about fracturing chemicals. EPA said financial constraints prevented drilling more than two deep monitoring wells into the Wind River Aquifer.

“That’s a very limited data set,” he said. “It’s not a data set you can draw large conclusions from.”

EnCana wants fracking expert on EPA’s Pavillion review panel

This week EnCana Oil & Gas USA continued to criticize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s implication of hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — in the Pavillion groundwater pollution investigation and for how EPA has carried out the investigation, most recently questioning the pending independent peer review process for EPA’s Pavillion “draft report.”

EnCana spokesman Doug Hock told WyoFile today that the company is unsure which classification EPA will apply to the draft report, but EnCana is asking that EPA conduct a “Highly Influential Scientific Assessment” peer review, which the company considers to be the most thorough.

EnCana is also concerned that the independent peer review panel of experts may be lacking, and should include experts in the disciplines of “petroleum engineering; Wind River geology and hydrology; geophysics; hydraulic fracturing; geochemistry (including isotopic chemistry); analytical chemistry; microbiology; cement bonding and logging; sample collection quality assurance and quality control; monitoring well design, construction and sampling; and, water well design construction and maintenance.”

“We remain very concerned by the short list of primary disciplines that the EPA identified in its Peer Review Plan,” EnCana Oil & Gas USA president Jeff E. Wojahn wrote in a January 10 letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

On Friday, EnCana asked EPA to suspend  the draft report public comment period that began December 14 and is scheduled to close January 27. Hock explained that EnCana filed a Freedom of Information Act with EPA in December asking for a large volume of data that EnCana officials believe EPA has not made public.

“Our concern is they (EPA) haven’t responded to the Freedom of Information Act request, and the clock is ticking,” Hock told WyoFile today, referring to the current public comment period.

EnCana, along with Wyoming’s governor and the state’s top regulatory officials, have sharply criticized EPA and its draft report of the Pavillion groundwater investigation ever since it was released on December 8. In a press release accompanying the report, EPA stated, “The draft report indicates that ground water in the aquifer contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing.”

EnCana and state officials have said the EPA’s sampling events were too few to draw any conclusions, and noted that some “blank” control samples turned up contaminated. They also complained that the two water monitoring wells drilled at the direction of EPA were sunk awfully close to the actual petroleum production zone, potentially fouling the integrity of the sampling.

Check back later for a full report.

Related stories:

— EnCana to EPA: Stop public comment on Pavillion fracking report

 — EPA Pavillion report stokes fire over fracking

— Find the source in Pavillion

— EPA finds compound used in fracking in Wyoming aquifer

— One man’s mystery leads to backlash against fracking

Contact Dustin Bleizeffer at (307) 577-6069 or dustin@wyofile.com.

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