In a creative public relations arrangement, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Chesapeake Energy of Oklahoma City have partnered to bring the Totally Trout family event back to the Arkansas State Fairgrounds March 6, 2010. What’s wrong with this picture?

Chesapeake begins seismic testing this spring on the AGFC Gulf Mountain Wildlife Management Area and continues to pursue a lease of 64 acres from AGFC at Cow Shoals on the Little Red River. Landowners along the Little Red with as little as one acre of land are being pressured to sign lease agreements. In addition, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission allowed the trucking of one million barrels of waste water in from October to December from frack drilling wells in Arkansas’ Fayetteville Shale play to waste containment wells in an area in Oklahoma whose residents don’t want it.

AGFC was scheduled to discuss the Little Red lease as last month’s commission meeting, but apparently it has been put off until the March commission meeting.

Federal and other state agency employees I’ve talked to are incensed over the power of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission and AGFC’s compromising stance with regard to the resource it manages, and I would not be surprised to see further legal action to try to halt the fracking menace in north central Arkansas. As one federal worker told me, “ground water is surface water,” and contamination is a big concern. Be watching.

© 2010, Scott Branyan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Conservation Issues, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.