Water, oil don't mix in Rockies

Despite the objections, oil shale development has been pushed forward by a series of recent actions. In an effort to encourage the fledgling industry, officials said, new regulations allow oil shale operators to pay unusually low royalty rates. The system calls for producers to pay 5% for the first five years, increasing 1% each year until reaching 12.5%, the standard federal oil and gas royalty rate.

In recent weeks, the industry was included in the $700-billion government bailout package with investment and tax incentives to help oil shale producers build refineries and other expensive infrastructure.

Though the region's elected officials support efforts to discover new sources of domestic oil, they say that with so many unanswered water questions, public land managers should be slowing the pace of development, not speeding it up.

The governors of Colorado and Wyoming have expressed concerns about the venture's effect on water in their states.

Not so, Utah. The state contains the least-rich shale deposit but is the most enthusiastic booster of the unconventional oil source. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. recently declared Utah "open for business as it relates to oil shale."

The renewed push for oil shale development comes at a time when conventional energy companies are being blamed for squandering and fouling water across the West.

Wyoming and Montana are squabbling over water quality concerns about coal-bed methane drilling. Colorado and New Mexico towns have discovered benzene and other dangerous chemicals in their wells, with energy projects the suspected culprits.

Ranchers in the region say their crops and livestock suffer as oil and gas production drains underground aquifers. Sportsmen complain that rivers and streams are being compromised by the energy industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency, in official comments to the Bureau of Land Management, expressed concerns about the possibility that oil shale production would deposit "salts, selenium, arsenic, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in groundwater."

Craig Thompson found many of the same compounds when he studied groundwater pollution from an abandoned oil shale project in western Wyoming that began during the last oil shale boom, in the 1970s. Despite 30 years of cleanup efforts, he said, the aquifer is still not free of chemicals.