Fish farms, the mountain pine beetle, and shale gas exploration in northeastern B.C. are three environmental issues most top-of-mind for one local water activist as 2010 comes to an end.

According to Will Koop, coordinator of the B.C. Tap Water Alliance, the shale issue is one that presents “a deep set of problems for the future, both environmentally and politically”.

It is also one that gets Koop fired up, which is why he published in November a 58-page report called EnCana’s Cabin Not So Homey: Cumulative Environmental Effects—An Unfolding and Emerging Crisis in Northeastern British Columbia’s Shale Gas Plays.

“I don’t think there is enough critical analysis going on of this stuff,” Koop told the Straight by phone.

In the report’s introduction, Koop attributes this to the fact that the area in question is over 140,000 square kilometres, or 15 percent of the total provincial land base, but “most of British Columbia’s 4.5 million residents are far removed from the province’s natural gas zones”.

Those that live in the region are experiencing an overwhelming increase in industrial activities in their area, Koop writes, and this is having “significant impacts on land and water resources. Particularly as the industry’s water-intensive hydraulic fracturing or ”˜fracking’ operations expand to stimulate gas production”.

Fracking is a high-pressure rock-splitting method of extracting buried gas. In February, Koop told the Straight he was calling for a provincewide ban of the practice.

Kevin Heffernan, vice president of the Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas, told the Straight that same month he could not say what the impacts of such a ban could be.

“I don’t think anyone really knows,” Heffernan said. “It may have an impact. Natural gas comes from conventional and unconventional reservoirs. So commercial reservoirs, there really isn’t any fracking required, in some cases. Unconventional reservoirs, often there is a requirement for hydraulic fracking of one form or another. So there would be an impact, but I don’t think anybody knows what it would be.”

Koop said the implications for the future of B.C.’s water are huge, a point he hammers home at the end of his report.

The Straight left a voicemail message for EnCana spokesperson Alan Boras, but didn’t receive a reply by deadline.