By Margaret Hedderman
Most of us don’t think about it. You buy a piece of land and therefore you own it. But did you buy what is underneath it? Say, for example, the mineral rights? In hundreds of cases, the answer is no. The mineral rights are most likely owned by either the government or a private individual.
According the Bureau of Land Management:
In split estate situations, the surface rights and subsurface rights (such as the rights to develop minerals) for a piece of land are owned by different parties. In these situations, mineral rights are considered the dominant estate, meaning they take precedence over other rights associated with the property, including those associated with owning the surface.
Thus is the premise behind the 2009 documentary Split Estate, produced by Bullfrog Films and Red Rock Pictures. The film follows several families in southwestern Colorado and New Mexico who have had oil and natural gas companies take over the mineral rights on their property – building wells and hydraulic fracturing sights sometimes 250 feet from their homes.
The film opens at Steve and Catherine Martinez’s home in Bloomfield, NM where an oil company has recently placed stakes in the Martinez’s alfalfa field marking where the company will construct the drilling paddock.
Other families featured in the film have been locked out of their own property by oil and natural gas companies. Giant placed a port-a-potty and a pile of gravel over Gilbert Armenta’s family cemetery, throwing away the grave markers.
The travesties portrayed in Split Estate are not solely environmental – like the 20-30 acres of evaporation pits which separate drilling waste and waste water… near rivers and homes. Or the sudden leak from a fracking operation in a creek on Lisa Bracken’s property. Flammable bubbles of gas began erupting in the creek on Bracken and her neighbor’s properties. Samples from the ground water show levels of benzene, a well-known carcinogen, 48 times government standards.
According to the film, between 2003 and 2008 there were an estimated 1,435 spills in Colorado. Nearly a quarter of those spills contaminated either ground or surface water.
Laura Amos and her daughter. Both have suffered sever side-effects from living near fracking operations.
The focus of Split Estate is clearly on the health effects of these operations near homes and communities. From children developing severe rashes and asthma as soon as drilling begins to much more severe side-effects as cancer. A rare tumor was found on Laura Amos’ adrenal gland, affecting her thyroid and pituitary glands. A hydraulic fracturing operation 1,000 feet from her house hit her family’s well, filling their drinking, bathing, and dishwashing water with bubbles and gray sediment.
Christ and Steve Mobaldi lived near oil and gas operations near Rifle, CO.
Chris Mobaldi who moved to Rifle, CO to escape the traffic and smog of California, died last year from a third tumor on her pituitary gland. Just after Chris and her husband Steve moved to their “dream home”, multiple drilling operations began – 300 ft. from their house. It is believed that the operations contaminated their water supply.
The film uses extensive interviews with Dr. Theo Colborn, who recently won the Swedish Goteburg Prize for Environment and Sustainability. She has extensively studied the effects of chemicals used in fracking on the endocrine system and has become an activist for people whose health has deteriorated from living near oil and natural gas operations.
Directed by Debra Anderson and narrated by Ali McGraw, Split Estate features interviews with Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior Ken Salazar, Senator John Kerry, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, and Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with NRDC.
Split Estate is the classic tale of “not in my backyard” – of companies staking profits over people. Do you think the chairman of ConocoPhillips has a drill 200 ft. from his front porch? A short 76 minutes, this documentary will not fail to get you “all riled up.”
And you can watch it in full below:
What a beautiful review – thank you! i am so pleased that you found SPLIT ESTATE valuable. Scary scary stuff, isn’t it?
I’ll be back to watch this at some point after the holiday (I’m a sensitive sort – it pains me that PVC is still so prevalent, and “Gasland” scared the hell out of me), but I want to tell you now how important I think it is for us all to seek out the truth about these things. Thanks for helping us do that.
Beware Lawrence County there is a new drug in town. Yes it is hitting the the front yards of many residents. It may be in the local schools soon. It makes people see green. It makes neighbors see red. It makes government officials do strange things. You may have heard of it. The drug of choice these days is GAS. Not the kind you put in your cars, but the gas in Marcellus Shale under Pennsylvania.
People in OUR county have flocked to become local pushers. The oil companies have signed leases with many of OUR neighbors, unbeknownst to most of the general public in the area.
An article appeared in The New Castle News on November 16, 2011 that some of the school districts may sign gas leases to balance their ever-dwindling budgets. At what cost to OUR environment? At what cost to OUR children’s health?
A question comes to mind: Will a real benefit be seen in the area? Gas and lease companies will no doubt profit considerably. However, as far as the local economy in general, this has yet to be seen.
The gas companies have blitzed the media trying to convince all who would listen that this is the best thing since indoor plumbing. Beware! There is a cost to all who are drawn in.
Think of the numerous points on the downside. Property values may drop near drilling sites. In turn, tax revenues will fall. There will be damage to OUR local roads and bridges from the hundreds of trucks that will soon travel them. There may be irreversible damage to OUR waterways, air, parks and beautiful land. Not to mention the loss of local control over what is going on in OUR areas. Believe it or not, you and your local government will have no say over this expanding industry.
Will the drilling companies pay for these damages from accidents that may occur? Will they pay for the training of OUR local first responders who will be cleaning up spills and putting out gas fires if they occur? Will they pay for the damage to OUR land after all the profits have been extracted? Will the extraction of this gas help OUR energy bills decrease? This Gas will no doubt be sold on the open market to the highest bidder.
I would be very naive if I thought we could stop this from progressing at this point. However, we all need to be vigilant about laws being debated in OUR legislature. We need to make contact with all OUR elected government officials to see where they stand on all the issues about Marcellus/Utica Shale drilling. In conclusion PLEASE get involved now. Educate yourselves. Ask questions.
This land most of us have grown up on is now under siege. It will still be OUR land after the last gas rig packs up. What will be left for OUR children?
Richard J. Book New Castle News Dec 2011
Edinburg, Pa. Letters to the Editor
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