“As it runs through Orin Edwards’s ranch, the Belle Fourche River bubbles like Champagne. The bubbles can burn. They are methane, also called natural gas, the fuel that heats 59 million American homes. Mr. Edwards noticed the bubbles two years ago, after gas wells were drilled on his land. The company that drilled the wells denies responsibility for the flammable river.

“An hour’s drive west, the artesian well on Roland and Beverly Landrey’s ranch has failed. After producing 50 gallons a minute for 34 years, the well, the ranch’s only source of water, stopped flowing in September. A well digger who examined it blames energy companies drilling for gas nearby, but the companies dispute that. So the couple – he is 83 and ailing; she describes herself as “no spring chicken” – hauls water in gallon jugs and drives 30 miles to town weekly to wash clothes and bathe.

“Dave Bullach, a welder who lives near Gillette, couldn’t take it anymore. For two sleep-deprived years, he endured the incessant yowl of a methane compressor, a giant pump that squeezes methane into an underground pipeline. There are thousands of these screaming machines in Wyoming, where neither state nor federal law regulates their noise. Mr. Bullach stormed out of his house at midnight last year with a rifle and shot at the compressor until a sheriff’s deputy hauled him off to jail.

. . . . .

”’Ways of life are being changed for the purpose of energy extraction,’ said Jim Ventrello, a Republican county commissioner in Delta County, Colo., ‘and it is not the quality of life that we seek here.’

“That overwhelmingly Republican rural county in western Colorado banned coal-bed methane operations this year.”

Complete story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/national/29METH.html?pagewanted=all

“As it runs through Orin Edwards’s ranch, the Belle Fourche River bubbles like Champagne. The bubbles can burn. They are methane, also called natural gas, the fuel that heats 59 million American homes. Mr. Edwards noticed the bubbles two years ago, after gas wells were drilled on his land. The company that drilled the wells denies responsibility for the flammable river.

“An hour’s drive west, the artesian well on Roland and Beverly Landrey’s ranch has failed. After producing 50 gallons a minute for 34 years, the well, the ranch’s only source of water, stopped flowing in September. A well digger who examined it blames energy companies drilling for gas nearby, but the companies dispute that. So the couple – he is 83 and ailing; she describes herself as “no spring chicken” – hauls water in gallon jugs and drives 30 miles to town weekly to wash clothes and bathe.

“Dave Bullach, a welder who lives near Gillette, couldn’t take it anymore. For two sleep-deprived years, he endured the incessant yowl of a methane compressor, a giant pump that squeezes methane into an underground pipeline. There are thousands of these screaming machines in Wyoming, where neither state nor federal law regulates their noise. Mr. Bullach stormed out of his house at midnight last year with a rifle and shot at the compressor until a sheriff’s deputy hauled him off to jail.

. . . . .

”’Ways of life are being changed for the purpose of energy extraction,’ said Jim Ventrello, a Republican county commissioner in Delta County, Colo., ‘and it is not the quality of life that we seek here.’

“That overwhelmingly Republican rural county in western Colorado banned coal-bed methane operations this year.”

Complete story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/national/29METH.html?pagewanted=all