As of right now, the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (ConsumerWellness.org) will sponsor the lab testing costs of Native American water samples to be tested at CWC Labs, where I serve as the lab science director. CWC Labs is an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) laboratory specializing in forensic analysis of food, water and environmental samples, and it will offer testing to the CWC using “at cost” pricing so there is zero profit earned in the testing services. As the lab science director at CWC Labs, I oversee mass spec analysis, liquid chromatography, time-of-flight and other instrumentation that can accurately detect and quantify heavy metals, pesticides and even fracking chemicals.

Until the era of oil is over, we have to monitor our lands and water supplies for possible contamination using the best tools of modern science

As a Native American myself, I share the concern about the contamination of land and water by oil pipelines. At the same time, I recognize the importance of energy independence for America as a crucial strategic resource. The unavoidable truth is that America’s economy still largely runs on oil, and the more oil we can acquire in North America, the less oil we have to purchase from foreign nations that abuse human rights, abuse women, abuse gays and are run by dictatorial tyrants. (Saudi Arabia, anyone?)

In terms of aggregate impact on human rights, the environment and military expenditures, any oil we can acquire in North America is far less costly than oil from the Middle East.

That means until we can develop the vastly improved energy storage technology to move beyond oil, we need to rely on the “least offensive” transport method available… and that happens to be pipelines, which are significantly safer than transporting oil by rail. Yet we must also hold the pipeline companies accountable by monitoring the quality of the water and land that might be impacted by pipeline leaks.

Since the completely useless EPA has no interest in protecting America’s environment — it’s a useless agency that should be gutted and closed — the job of real environmental protection falls to concerned citizens like you and I. That’s why I’m stepping forward with the promise of using good, solid science to monitor the water quality of Native American communities.

Help support our science donations by purchasing CHIEF Organics

Funds for the testing of Native American water supplies come from a portion of sales of our new CHIEF Organics product line. The entire product line, which currently features lab-tested ultra-clean whey protein and premium-grade magnesium products, raises money for the environmental testing of Native American lands and water sources. If you’d like to help support our mission of offering free lab testing to Native American communities, you can purchase CHIEF Organics products at the Health Ranger Store.

Importantly, note that we do not use taxpayer funds to conduct science in the public interest. Nor do we wish to receive any taxpayer funds. In truth — and this is a huge topic deserving another story altogether — every time Big Government gets involved in “science,” it ends up producing FAKE SCIENCE for political purposes, not genuine science based in truth. We cannot trust the government to produce any legitimate science. The EPA, FDA, CDC, USDA and other agencies exists as nothing more than front groups for corporate interests.

If you represent a Native American community and would like us to start testing your water, contact us via CWCLabs.com and we’ll give you instructions on how to submit samples.

Click here to listen to my full podcast at the Health Ranger Report website, or listen below.

This morning, the president signed documents that will advance the eventual approval and construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, both of which were stalled by President Barack Obama over the false notion of “climate change/global warming.” More on that in a moment.

As reported by Bloomberg, “We are going to renegotiate some of the terms, and if they like, we’ll see if we can get that pipeline built,” Trump said, who then added: “If we’re going to build pipelines in the United States, the pipes should be made in the United States.”

As further noted by Zero Hedge, Trump said his order streamlines the very cumbersome manufacturing regulations.” He then called the regulatory process a “tangled up mess.” (RELATED: Watch Trump dismantle the Administrative State by checking in at BigGovernment.news)

To reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said the terms and conditions regarding the pipelines will be renegotiated by the United States, which has reserved the right to do so.

The move is making a number of factions in the U.S. happy, including labor unions, which will have a role in building prospective pipelines, and Americans who are tired of sending their sons and daughters to fight in the volatile Middle East, where the U.S. currently gets the lion’s share of its oil.

As Bloomberg noted further:

The moves, taken on Trump’s fourth full day in office, are a major departure from the Obama administration, which rejected the Keystone proposal in 2015 and has kept Dakota Access blocked since September. Environmentalists, concerned about climate change and damage to waters, land and Native-American cultural sites, now face an executive branch that’s less sympathetic to their efforts. For the oil industry, it heralds more freedom to expand infrastructure and ease transportation bottlenecks.

Natural News founder and editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, understands there are still legitimate concerns about the safety of the environment, especially land and resources belonging to Native American tribes whose resources could be adversely affected by any subsequent pipeline leak or spill.

“I support energy independence but I’m also a huge supporter of environmental protection,” Adams said. “That’s why I have announced a donation of water quality lab testing to all Native American communities that may be affected by these two pipeline projects.” (See related articles on NaturalNews.com for details of his announcement.)

For his part, Trump has also not abandoned environmental concerns. In announcing plans earlier this week to cut more than three-quarters of existing federal regulations, the president said he and his administration would focus on the redundant, economy-killing portions of federal regulations but would ensure that protections for land, water, and air remained firm and in place. (RELATED: What’s the latest in global warming science? Find out at ClimateScience.news)

The executive actions Trump signed Tuesday include a directive the president noted would speed up environmental reviews and approvals for “high-priority infrastructure projects.”

“We intend to fix our country, our bridges, our roadways,” he said. “We can’t be in an environmental process for 15 years if a bridge is going to be falling down or if a highway is crumbling.”

As for the Obama administration’s objections, the former president couched the bulk of his rejection of both projects in an environmental cloak, but that was never true.

The American Thinker notes that Obama’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline was because he ostensibly agreed with his State Department that the project “would not serve the national interests of the United States.” How improving domestic oil production versus sending American troops overseas to fight in countries rich in oil is not in ‘our best interests’ makes sense when you understand Obama’s true motivations: Billionaire Warren Buffett, whom Obama has bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and famous Democratic donor, owns most of the oil-carrying trains.

Investors Business Daily noted in 2011:

As oil production ramps up in the Bakken fields of North Dakota, plans to use the pipeline to transport it have been dashed.

As a result, North Dakota’s booming oil producers will have to rely even more on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, which Buffett just bought, to ship it to refineries.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe in a deal valuing the railroad at $34 billion. Berkshire Hathaway already owns about 22% of Burlington Northern, and will pay $100 a share in cash and stock for the rest of the company.

Unlike Trump and Adams, whose environmental concerns are real, Obama’s concerns are more aligned with greenwashing by Corporate America and his corporatist pals.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

Bloomberg.com

Investors.com

In August 2015, the Animas River in the southern part of Colorado and northern New Mexico was turned a grotesque shade of yellow-orange after a contracting crew working for the EPA accidentally released some 3 million gallons of toxic water filled with mining byproducts into the water. It was the largest environmental disaster of the year, but thus far it appears as though the agency has managed to shirk its responsibility for the massive spill.

But now, because of the inaction of the Obama administration and the EPA itself, three states and a number of Native American tribes have filed suit in federal court seeking to force the agency to do something it should have done voluntarily: Pay for the clean-up, just like it forces private companies and individuals to do when they pollute.

As reported by Inside Sources and Natural News, the Navajo Tribe filed suit under Federal Tort claims seeking more than $160 million in damages. The tribe’s reservation runs adjacent to the river and suffered when the toxic heavy metals contained in the contaminated water from the Gold King Mine near Silverton, CO., were released during a botched EPA ‘cleanup’ project.

Spending money they don’t have—and can’t get back

“In particular, it has impaired our ability to maintain the cultural, ceremonial and spiritual practices that undergird the Navajo way of life,” said Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch, in a press release, as cited by the Farmington Daily Times. “Through this claim and our corresponding lawsuit, we are demanding that the U.S. government finally provide the Navajo Nation relief.”

The Navajo Tribe is not alone, by a long shot. It is one of several communities that are seeking relief from the Obama administration to help pay for the costs of cleaning up the EPA’s massive spill and detoxifying drinking water during the period of contamination.

Earlier in December, the agency did agree to pay $4.5 million to state, local and tribal governments to help cover the emergency response costs that were tied to the spill. But agency officials denied some $20.4 million more in additional requests for past and future expenses that would not have been if the spill hadn’t occurred. That decision affected two Native American tribes and more than a dozen state and local agencies.

In recent days a pair of Colorado lawmakers pressured the EPA to pay the remainder of the claims, noting that a piece of legislation passed earlier in the month removed any legal obstacles that the agency cited as reasons for the denial.

But most definitely many of the costs that were denied should certainly have been paid, such as the $250,000 spent by the Navajo Nation to haul in drinking water to replace supplies that had been taken from the San Juan River downstream from the spill. The agency said it would only pay for the transport of water through early September 2015, just a few weeks after the spill, arguing by then that water was no longer contaminated.

Why does it take a lawsuit to get the EPA to do the right thing?

In addition, Inside Sources reported, the agency has refused any and all expenses incurred after October 31, 2015, when it shuttered its incident command center. Nevertheless, area communities argue that cleanup costs and observational testing continued beyond that date.

Besides, the cleanup and treatment of water are just a sample of what it costs to mitigate such spills. The potentially harmful yellow waters halted watersports of all kinds and most tourism to the area, robbing communities of revenue. And as cities in the area, like Durango, CO., stopped pumping drinking water from the river, residential wells nearby suffered contamination as well. In a bid to stop the contamination from spreading even further, area farmers stopped using river water for irrigation of crops.

None of those lost revenues have been paid by the EPA.

What is so maddening about all of this is that when individuals or small businesses or corporations screw up and harm the environment—or just violate some inane agency rule—the EPA is all over them like a cheap suit. But when the agency is at fault and should make good on its mistake, it takes an expensive series of lawsuits just to be compensated for monies that communities and companies would not have spent, were it not for the EPA’s malpractice.

Maybe that will all change under President Trump.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

InsideSources.com

NaturalNews.com

Daily-Times.com

Facebook recently announced it would rely on SNOPES to “fact-check” news articles to make sure Facebook operated with high integrity standards and full transparency. In reality, the announcement was a thinly-veiled attempt to censor independent journalism by labeling real news “fake news” with the help of all the left-wing (actual) whores and fraudsters at SNOPES.

SNOPES has frequently labeled truthful reporting on vaccines, GMOs and false flag shootings to be “false” information, siding with liberals, President Obama and the corporate establishment on nearly every topic. While claiming it is an arbiter of truth, SNOPES really functions as just another liberal propaganda mouthpiece, declaring left-wing propaganda to be “truthful” while slamming anything that contradicts liberal ideology or Big Government narratives. In this way, SNOPES mirrors Politifact, which is also run by left-wing propagandists and mind manipulators.

SNOPES, “claims to be one of the web’s ‘essential resources’ and ‘painstaking, scholarly and reliable'” says the Daily Mail, which goes on to explain:

It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research. Now they are divorced – with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on ‘himself and prostitutes’.

Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson’s new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the website as an administrator… she has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims [that SNOPES] is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a ‘Dump Bush’ platform. Its main ‘fact checker’ is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog ‘ViceVixen’ says she is in touch with her ‘domme side’ and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking pot.

This montage shows the original SNOPES founders (bottom right) alongside the “Vice Vixen” escort-porn star now working there:

“The CEO of Snopes.com, the fact-checking website that was recently named as one of Facebook’s “fake news” arbiters, has been accused in divorce proceedings of appropriating company funds which he allegedly spent on expensive holidays and prostitutes,” reports Breitbart.com.

The founders’ names are David Mikkelson and Barbara Mikkelson. Via Breitbart:

Barbara has claimed that her former husband embezzled money from the company. Court documents obtained by the Daily Mail state that Barbara accused David of “raiding the corporate business Bardav bank account for his personal use and attorney fees.” Barbara also claims that David embezzled $98,000 over four years, which “he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired.” Barbara claims that David spent $10,000 from their business accounts between April and June of 2016 to fund an expensive 24-day holiday for him and his “girlfriend.”

Here’s a composite of online posts from Elyssa Young, the new bride of David Mikkelson, who also ran an online escort posting. She’s now an administrator at SNOPES, which gives a whole new meaning of “prostitutes” aiding “presstitutes.”

Court documents: SNOPES CEO embezzled $98,000 to hire prostitutes

This divorce document states that SNOPES CEO David Mikkelson embezzled money from the company to hire prostitutes. As shown in the document below, courtesy of UK Daily Mail:

…embezzlement of $98,000 from our company over the course of four years, which were monies he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired…

In addition to marrying an escort service tease, David Mikkelson thinks he should be paid $720,000 a year to run the SNOPES left-wing propaganda website. Via the UK Daily Mail:

David wanted his salary raised from $240,000 to $360,000 – arguing that this would still put him below the ‘industry standards’ and that he should be paid up to $720,000 a year.

‘As I said, based on industry standards and our revenues, my salary should be about 2x to 3x what it is now,’ he wrote in an email to Barbara in April 2016. ‘I’ll settle for $360K with the understanding that it’s to be retroactive to the start of the year.’

Banging whores with “sweet liberal shill money”

“According to divorce papers, Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson started taking all sorts of trips around the world to bang whores after that sweet liberal shill money started rolling in,” reports Zero Hedge.

“While engaging in this debauchery, Mikkelson wrote off just about everything as a business expense, embezzling a reported $98,000. The Snopes co-founder has since settled down and married a [NSFW] part time porn actress, Snopes.com administrator (spicy!), and sex worker. As in, she has a website devoted to being a whore.”

Lying for the left also turns out to be incredibly profitable. “David kept their joint baseball card collection, a savings account with $1.59 million balance, and other savings worth more than $300,000,” reports the paper.

Here’s a photo of the SNOPES founders posing as complete slobs with their obese cat perched on a couch that looks ripped out of the 1970s. David’s expression almost seems to say, “What I really wanted was some VIP pu##y and all I got was this obese creature annoying the hell out of me… plus a cat!”

SNOPES CEO marries a prostitute who has been banged by men from around the world… is that “diversity?”

SNOPES CEO Mikkelson’s new wife, Elyssa Young, has been banged by so many other paying customers that you can actually find online reviews for her “services.”

This particular review states that she “travels overseas extensively” and is a great choice “if you seek a lover.”

Hiring and marrying actual whores to “services” the presstitutes in the fakestream media is all part of SNOPES’ “diversity” program, according to the CEO. “Our editorial staff is drawn from diverse backgrounds,” Mikkelson told the UK Daily Mail.

If he means diversity in sexually transmitted diseases, he’s probably right. Can you imagine the vast array of viral populations festering in the crotches of these despicable “fact-checking” sleazebags?

Another SNOPES fact-checker turns out to be a pot-smoking fetish gear sex blogger who thinks Republicans fear females

The bizarre, twisted “diversity” of SNOPES’ staff doesn’t end there. Another SNOPES “fact-checker” named Kim LaCapria is a fetish gear sex blogger, according to Breitbart.com:

Writing under the pseudonym Vice Vixen, Snopes fact-checker Kim LaCapria regularly wrote about sex and fetish gear on her own blog, which was described as a lifestyle blog “with a specific focus on naughtiness, sin, carnal pursuits, and general hedonism and bonne vivante-ery.” LaCapria’s blog often featured reviews of sex toys. One particular review reads, “If you are doing something to your fella, and you apply this to the base of his cash-and-prizes while you carry on, he will scream and perhaps cry.” On another blog, LaCapria once described what she did on her day off, writing that she “played scrabble, smoked pot, and posted to Snopes.” She then added, “That’s what I did on my day ‘on,’ too.”

TruNews adds:

Snopes “fact-checker” Kim LaCapria claimed on her personal blog that she has “posted to Snopes” after smoking marijuana. As TheDC previously revealed, LaCapria describes herself as “openly left-leaning” and once claimed that Republicans fear “female agency.”

Official “fact-checkers” turn out to be steeped in debauchery, betrayal and deviant behavior

What’s astonishing in all this is how Facebook has already announced it will rely on SNOPES to “fact-check” news articles. Because SNOPES has long been run by left-leaning liberal propagandists, everyone knows Facebook’s “fact-checking” is really just a new form of censorship to silence independent journalism.

The fact that left-wing propagandists also happen to be actual whores, and men who marry whores, and people who reportedly embezzle money to hire whores is no surprise to anyone. The political left has descended into cabal of liars, thieves, asshats and intolerant, abusive hate-mongers who have been widely rejected by most of civil society. Revelations about SNOPES only further confirm what we’ve all known about the opinion leaders on the left for quite some time: They’re mostly sick, twisted, mentally ill sociopaths who have no ethics, no morals and no dedication to actual truth. They lie when it’s convenient; they stab each other in the back (feel the Bern!); they have weird sex fetishes (Bill Clinton’s numerous sex assaults on women); they routinely cheat on each other (Bill Clinton is not Chelsea Clinton’s father); and they LIE, LIE, LIE while proclaiming that have a divine monopoly on “truth.”

That Mark Zuckerberg would appoint these people to “fact-check” Facebook news just makes Zuckerberg a sicko and a psycho. In doing so, he’s in good company with other globalist psychopaths like Jeff Bezos, George Soros, Bill Gates and Ted Turner. Other small-time propagandists who operate with a similar degree of fraud and deception include:

– Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia who launched the propaganda venture using money earned from being a porn king.

– Jon Entine, a biotech industry propagandist who was exposed by Natural News for being a violent psychopath who physically attacked his wife in front of their own child.

– James “the Amazing” Randi, who was caught on tape soliciting sex acts from young men.

James Randi, in turn, leads to David Gorski, the discredited “skeptics” blogger and cancer surgeon who has been reported to the FBI for a series of allegations involving the same cancer center where now-imprisoned cancer surgeon Dr. Farid Fata committed widespread criminal fraud by falsely diagnosing patients with cancer so he could profit from “treating” them.

All these people are leftists. What they have in common is their complete abandonment of truth, ethics and morality in their psychopathic quest for power. They are all willing to lie, cheat, steal, defame, slander or, in some cases, even murder people in order to get their way.

Oh wait, let me guess: SNOPES is going to investigate these accusations against SNOPES and proclaim that everything in this story is false. Therefore, all criticism of SNOPES is “fake news” by definition, because the authenticity of the monopolistic arbiter of news can never be questioned, you see.

The Ministry of Truth is alive and well in America, and it’s run by deviants, traitors and whores. If you believe anything you read on SNOPES, you’re a complete fool.

Ditch Facebook, Google, CNN and the WashingtonPost

All this helps explain why people are ditching Facebook, Google News, CNN, MSNBC and all the corrupt, twisted “mainstream” news sources and turning to independent, alternative news gateways.

To assist people in finding independent, truthful journalism run by intelligent, ethical people who don’t embezzle money to hire whores, here are several solutions:

CENSORED.news provides a near-real-time update of news headlines from all the popular independent media websites like Breitbart, NaturalNews, Infowars, Zero Hedge, Activist Post and more. (More sites being added soon.)

GoodGopher.com is an independent search engine that searches indy news website. It’s refreshed daily, and you can use it to find breaking news on all the topics that are routinely censored by the mainstream media. Click here to see a real-time search result for “SNOPES Elyssa Young”

FETCH.news brings you real-time news headlines on specific topics from across the independent media. There, you can monitor news feeds covering the DEA, FDA, FBI, CIA and the CDC. Or monitor news on topics like encryption, psychiatry, smart meters, population control or influenza.

AlternativeNews.com brings you real-time news headlines from across the Natural News universe of websites, including NewsTarget.com, Trump.news, TalkNetwork.com and more.

Share.NaturalNews.com is part of the Diaspora open source social network system, which is an uncensored alternative to Facebook. Thousands of former Facebook users have already migrated to Share.NaturalNews.com where every post appears in your feed.

Gab.ai is Twitter alternative where content is entirely uncensored. It’s still a relatively small site, but it’s growing rapidly. Find our feeds at Gab.ai/HealthRanger and Gab.ai/NaturalNews

The city first issued warnings about the water on Wednesday, December 14. Some restrictions have already been lifted, and others may be lifted soon if tests give the municipal water a clean bill of health.

But residents were angered to learn that officials had received reports of discolored water as much as two weeks before issuing the warnings, and had not investigated those reports.

According to federal officials, there are four unconfirmed reports of people showing symptoms of illness consistent with drinking poisoned water.

Corrosive, organ-destroying chemical

Under current restrictions, the city of 300,000 is divided into three different water use zones. In the first zone, municipal water may be used for any purpose. In the second zone, residents are encouraged not to use municipal water for any purpose at all and to use bottled water for everything including bathing. In the third zone, the water is considered safe for bathing or clothes washing, except by children who might swallow the water if they bathe in it. Water in this zone should not be consumed internally.

The city said that up to 24 gallons of a toxic chemical had spilled from a facility operated by Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions Inc., a subsidiary of oil refiner Valero. It is still unknown whether the water supply was contaminated by the incident.

But as early as December 1, the city had received a report of discolored water. It received another such report on December 7, followed by a December 12 report of an unusual odor and appearance to the water. Two days later, the city issued its first warnings.

The chemical in question is a mix of hydrochloric acid and Indulin AA-86, an asphalt emulsifier that is corrosive to the skin, eyes and respiratory tract and can cause damage to internal organs.

With the water ban in place, schools and businesses had to close across the city. Stores began to sell out of bottled water immediately and placed emergency orders for shipments of more.

“People [are] waiting in aisles with their grocery carts ready for them to put out the new water shipments,” resident Zach Kastelic said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned people against trying to profit from the crisis.

“Every resource of my office will be made available to help regarding the water supply incident in Corpus Christi,” Paxton said. “We’re monitoring the situation closely. Price gouging on bottled water will not be tolerated.”

Public and private donors supplied bottled water to be given out free to residents, but it took three days for the deliveries to start arriving.

Slowness marks official response

Corpus Christi residents have been angered by both the company’s and city’s responses to the crisis. More than half a dozen lawsuits have already been filed against Ergon.

The city has been criticized for the slow nature of its response, both before and after the potential contamination was announced.

In part, the delay in testing the chemical was beyond the city’s control, however. Because Indulin AA-86 is a proprietary chemical, the city was forced to waste valuable time petitioning Ergon for more information on the chemical. The company actually forced the city to sign a non-disclosure agreement before revealing the contaminant’s chemical formula.

Then – because the U.S. legal system requires essentially no safety tests or protocols to be created before chemicals are allowed to enter the market – it turned out that there was no known test that could reveal the presence of Indulin AA-86 in water. Thus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first had to develop such a test, which it then ran on samples of Corpus Christi water.

Sources for this article include:

Edition.CNN.com

MySanAntonio.com

NBCNews.com

LATimes.com

This rather vague conclusion was drawn in the EPA’s final report on the subject, released on December 13, and represents a shift in the agency’s stance compared to last year’s draft version, which said that fracking is not having widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water.

The new report has drawn criticism from those on both sides of the debate. Supporters of the fracking industry accuse the outgoing administration and agency leadership of playing politics and sending a “parting shot” as they exit the stage, while environmentalists believe that the agency failed to gather enough evidence to draw stronger conclusions.

EPA admits to ‘data gaps and uncertainties’

The EPA itself says that the changes made to the final draft were due to the agency’s inability to conclusively back its earlier claim that there were no widespread effects on drinking water supplies.

From Fox News:

“The final report doesn’t include that phrase because EPA scientists determined they couldn’t back it up without comprehensive data on hydraulic fracturing across the U.S. and because it didn’t ‘really communicate the findings in the report,’ said Thomas Burke,deputy assistant administrator at EPA on a conference call with reporters Tuesday.”

Environmentalists say that the failure of the EPA to obtain the “comprehensive data” needed to accurately assess the risks was caused by a lack of cooperation and transparency on the part of the oil and gas industry.

Gas and oil companies often make the claim that sharing their proprietary data could threaten their competitive edge, but many believe that their reluctance to cooperate fully with EPA investigators has also been based on other concerns.

Briana Mordick, former oil industry geologist and current environmental advocate, told the Houston Chronicle that protecting trade secrets is only part of the picture:

“[Mordick] described a general reluctance by oil and gas companies to aid scientists and share proprietary data – something they resist in part out of fear that competitors could gain an edge and also because it could be used against them in court.

“‘This lack of data is due to industry’s unwillingness to participate,’ Mordick said. ‘Industry has consistently claimed fracking is safe. My question is why aren’t they willing to put their money where their mouth is?'”

Parting shot or not, this slight shift in the EPA’s stance is not likely to truly represent much of a threat to the fracking industry. Indeed, industry factions are already hailing the final report as evidence that fracking is safe, despite its modified conclusions.

FDA has failed in adequately assessing fracking risks

All along, the EPA has dragged its feet in terms of a comprehensive and critical examination of the fracking industry and its impact on drinking water supplies and the environment in general.

In 2004, the EPA determined that fracking was safe, but pressure from Democrats who believed that the agency’s initial conclusions were lacking in “scientific rigor” resulted in Congress ordering in 2009 that the study be performed again.

Five years after the new study began in 2011, the conclusions drawn seem only slightly more concerned about the industry’s potential environmental impact, despite the agency’s admission that there are still only scant amounts of relevant data to work with.

At any rate, the current controversy may prove to be nothing more than a storm in a teapot. The EPA under the Trump administration is almost guaranteed to be more favorably inclined to the fracking industry, and whatever parting shots the Obama EPA might fire before leaving are likely to leave only puffs of smoke, while posing little – if any – threat to the oil and gas industry as a whole.

Sources:

FoxNews.com

HoustonChronicle.com

EnvironmentalLeader.com

CFPub.EPA.gov

According to the farmer, Steve Jensen, he saw oil just “bubbling up out of the ground” while he was harvesting wheat. Jensen says that he smelled the oil a few days before discovering it had infiltrated his fields of wheat crops. In an interview with CBS News, he said that the oil was “spewing and bubbling six inches high.”

Jensen discovered the disaster on September 29th, 2013, and yet for some reason, it took authorities 12 whole days to inform the public. Unsurprisingly, this delayed response raised many questions about how the state of North Dakota was handling its tremendous oil industry boom – and this is still a bone of contention among those concerned about the environment. Governor Jack Dalrymple himself claimed that he was not informed of the spill until several days after it had been discovered. Dalrymple promised that the state would investigate its procedures for reporting spills. Hopefully, they have made improvements in this regard.

While the governor admitted that there were many questions about what happened and how the mess could have been prevented, he all but excused the less-than-stellar behavior of Tesoro Corp. when it came to reporting the spill.

“Initially, it was felt that the spill was not overly large,” Dalrymple commented. “When they realized it was a fairly sizable spill, they began to contact more people about it.” Sure, just a little oil spill – no need to let anyone know about an environmental contaminant that can destroy the water supply. No need at all. …

The Tesoro Corps’ underground pipeline spilled 20,600 barrels of oil under the farmland. This monstrous spill was four times the size of the 2013 spill in Arkansas that forced the evacuation of more than 20 homes. The Arkansas spill was reportedly caused by a pipeline that had burst.

The North Dakota spill reportedly spanned across 7.3 acres of land, roughly the size of seven football fields.

Fortunately for North Dakota, that spill occured in a fairly remote portion of the state. The pipeline was located in the northwest corner of the state, with the nearest home being about half a mile away. Thankfully, there were no reports of water contamination, and no animals or people were reported as being injured by the spill.

Tesoro Logistics released a statement to announce that at least the affected segment of the pipeline had been shut down. True Activist reported:

“‘Protection and care of the environment are fundamental to our core values, and we deeply regret any impact to the landowner,’ Tesoro CEO Greg Goff said in a statement. ‘We will continue to work tirelessly to fully remediate the release area.'”

At the time, the company estimated that the spill would cost about $4 million to clean up, but insisted that it was “completely contained and under control.” According to them, there was a natural layer of clay about 40 feet thick underneath the oil spill zone that supposedly kept it from contaminating the water supply.

Tesoro’s director of contingency planning and emergency response, Eric Haugstad, said that the spill was attributed to a hole in the pipeline, roughly one-quarter of an inch in diameter. The 20-year old steel pipeline runs 35 miles from Tioga to a railroad near the Canadian border. The company said it would be investigating possible causes for what could have created the hole.

Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota spokesman for The Sierra Club, noted that this spill was a perfect example of lackluster supervision in a state where the oil industry has exploded in the last few years. Schafer said, “We need more inspectors and more transparency. Not only is the public not informed, but agencies don’t appear to be aware of what’s going on and that’s not good.”

As for the farmer? Mr. Jensen said that he would not be able to farm on the land affected by the spill for many years to come.

Sources:

TrueActivist.com

CBSNews.com

The 700-acre Berkeley Pit is a massive crevice left behind from nearly 30 years of copper mining. It filled up with water 900 feet deep, which then accumulated toxic levels of inorganic compounds including arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, iron and zinc. The water is as acidic as distilled vinegar, strong enough to liquefy the steel propeller of a motorboat.

The pit is a Superfund site and also a tourist attraction, where people pay $2 to see the toxic, reddish water. It has also become renowned as a location to study extremophiles, microorganisms that can persist in conditions toxic to most life.

Flock of unprecedented size

The Pit is maintained by mining companies Montana Resources and Atlantic Richfield, which since 1995 have been responsible for preventing birds from landing in the toxic lake. In late November, an off-duty Montana Resources employee called to notify Berkeley Pit staff that a flock of about 25,000 snow geese was in the air about 25 miles away.

The area typically only sees between 2,000 and 5,000 snow geese all year, including during the spring and winter migration periods.

An estimated 10,000 geese landed in the Berkeley Pit. According to one mine official, the water turned “white with birds.”

“The number of migrating geese that passed through this area and landed in the pit is unprecedented,” a Montana Resources spokesperson said.

Mine employees used loud noises and drones to try and frighten the birds out of the water, but some remained in the lake even a week later.

Since the incident, dead snow geese have been turning up near and across the nearby city of Butte, including on roadsides and in a Walmart parking lot.

Officials expect the death toll to reach into the thousands. Because death from the water is not instantaneous, however, it may take a while to form a reliable estimate. Montana Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are using aircraft and drones to try to count the dead birds.

Investigations underway

This is not the first time a mass poisoning has taken place at the Berkeley Pit. In 1995, the dead bodies of 342 snow geese were found floating in the pit. The mine company initially denied that the water had poisoned the birds, instead saying they had eaten contaminated grain. But this was disproven by a University of Wyoming study showing burns and sores in the oral cavities, tracheas, esophagi and digestive organs of every bird autopsied. Heavy metals were also found in the animals’ kidneys.

After that incident, the government ordered Montana Resources and Atlantic Richfield to operate a “hazing” program to scare geese away from the lake. The program seemingly brought the number of bird deaths down to about 15 per year – until now.

Montana Resources has asked federal officials whether any further large migrations are expected. The large flock from the recent incident had bypassed its typical landing spot, Freezeout Lake, because it was completely frozen over. This occurred in part because the birds migrated later than usual due to warm weather in the Arctic, meaning that they arrived in Montana later into the winter. Then a snowstorm iced over Freezeout Lake.

“I can’t underscore enough how many birds were in the Butte area that night,” said Mark Thompson, environmental affairs manager for the Berkeley Pit. “Numbers beyond anything we’ve ever experienced in our 21 years of monitoring by several orders of magnitude.”

An investigation is underway to determine the causes of the incident. In addition to the delayed migration, one cause may be growing numbers of snow geese moving into new habitats.

In the early 20th century, snow geese were endangered. A ban on hunting allowed their populations to rebound to 2 million by the 1980s. Now, the population is estimated at 15 million.

The EPA is also investigating whether the mine operators were negligent in their duties.

Sources for this article include:

Independent.co.uk

WashingtonPost.com

TheGuardian.com

If it sounds like I’m joking, I’m not. Over the last year or so, I’ve come to learn that I’m about 10% Native American, my relatives tell me. I’m publishing a photo of my great great grandmother below, where you can see the Native American characteristics quite clearly. Because I’ve had numerous death threats over the years, I’m obviously not going to post my family tree online and subject my relatives to similar threats. So you’ll have to take my word that what I’m relating here is genuine and very personal.

This realization also explains a lot about who I am and where my passions for natural medicine and environmental protection have come from. Those who have seen me in person know that I have red skin, and although my heritage includes many ancestors of European descent, my grandmother — the granddaughter of the woman you see in the picture below — taught me many skills of gardening, wildcrafting and living off the land… all in ways that I now realize were inspired by Native American traditions.

Check out the photo below. My great great grandmother is the woman on the right:

Here’s a close-up of my great great grandmother (can you see the resemblance?)

When my grandparents were growing up, many Native Americans hid their ancestry to avoid discrimination

The strange thing about all this is that no one in my family ever communicated any overt identity with Native American culture. Yes, we enjoyed hunting for arrowhead artifacts on my grandmother’s farm — and we found many — but I don’t recall anyone ever telling me in my childhood, “We are of Native American descent.”

It all makes sense, of course, when you consider the cultural context of the era in which my grandparents were raised. In a society dominated by white people, many Native Americans did not advertise their culture or heritage. Some were even ashamed of it. It’s only relatively recently that society has found greater respect and honor for our Native American ancestors who lived and thrived in North America long before the colonists arrived from Europe.

I can easily imagine my grandmother being told by her mother, “Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone your mother is half Indian!”

Remember, in the 1930s and 40s, Native Americans were still thought of as “savages” by many ignorant European-Americans. Many tried to hide their heritage rather than celebrate it, so the knowledge of the identity of our ancestors was hidden from us rather than passed freely from generation to generation. It is shocking to come to the realization that for most of my life, I have been denied the knowledge of my true ancestry because of a deep-rooted fear among Native Americans to feel safe in expressing their true identities.

Now, I am ready to serve as a “science warrior” to help protect my Native American brothers and sisters across this nation…

How I’m going to help protect Native American waters from pollution and contamination

I’m going public with this because I’m ready to pursue a science mission to help protect Native American waters from pollution and contamination. We’ve all seen the pipeline protests in North Dakota, and it’s obvious that Native American waters are under extreme assault from corporate interests as well as the EPA itself (remember the Gold King Mine spill?).

Today, I own and run a world-class science lab that’s internationally accredited by ISO (ISO-17025 standard). My lab instruments are capable of detecting heavy metals, pesticides and other pollutants in water and other environmental samples. I now plan to use that lab (CWClabs.com) to test water samples from Native American lands all across North America (including Canada).

Here’s how I’m going to fund that effort:

Today, I’m launching CHIEF Organics Whey Protein. It’s the first of an expanding line of CHIEF Organics products we’ll soon be announcing. A full 1% of net sales revenues from CHIEF Organics products goes to fund the laboratory analysis of Native American water samples — a service which I will now offer at no charge to all Native American communities across North America.

Conducting the science costs real money — the ICP-MS instrument along costs over $300,000, and the MS-TOF instrument is similarly expensive. I’m probably $2 million into my current laboratory, and running each sample costs additional money. But now we have a mechanism to pay for it so that we can run Native American water samples at no charge to Native American communities.

Through this mechanism of raising funds for science by offering organic, lab-validated whey protein and other products, we can offer free lab testing to all Native Americans, including those in Canada and Mexico. That’s one small way I can help honor my own ancestors while using the best tools of modern science to make a lasting difference in the world.

(Soon, my lab will even be able to test for fracking chemicals in water supplies. This will help identify aquifers where fracking may be causing chemical contamination.)

Why is this needed? Many Native America communities in America simply do not have extra funds to pay for laboratory testing, so they often aren’t aware of the contamination issues they’re facing. The U.S. government, meanwhile, actually causes contamination through a destructive EPA that, bluntly stated, causes more harm to the environment than it prevents. Only through a private, self-funded laboratory can Native Americans finally get reliable, scientifically accurate testing of their water sources. That’s what I’m announcing today, and that’s what we are funding with our launch of CHIEF Organics.

You can help support this initiative by choosing CHIEF Organics products, which are available right now at the Health Ranger Store.

How to request lab testing for your Native American water sources

If you are connected with a Native American community and you’d like to take advantage of this offer for free scientific testing of your water samples, simply contact us through the Natural News contact page.

Put “Native American water” in the subject of your email. We’ll get you instructions on how to send us a water sample for testing.

To help financially support this effort, just purchase our ultra-clean CHIEF Organics Whey Protein products, which are laboratory verified, certified organic, and tested for rBGH, pesticides, GMOs, heavy metals and other contaminants.

Nobody on the planet does more laboratory testing of whey protein than CHIEF Organics. This is the cleanest, most pristine, most transparently honest whey protein you’ll ever find, and it’s sourced from New Zealand.

Thank you for your support in helping me apply modern science to the contamination challenges my own ancestors never had to deal with. The Earth is more polluted than ever, but we also have the scientific tools to detect that pollution, alert those affected by it, and maybe even halt the destructive environmental policies of greed-driven corporations and runaway Big Government.

Thank God we don’t depend on government grant money, or we’d never get funded for a project like this. The funding for science to protect Native Americans can only come from non-governmental sources. We the People have to step up and get this done, because our corrupt government will never do anything meaningful to protect the very people it has marginalized for centuries.