Fracking Regulation on Trial in Andrew Nikiforuk’s ‘Slick Water’
Ahead of Vancouver Island book tour, author surveys Canada’s latest energy battleground.
Andrew Nikiforuk’s new book, Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, is in stores now.
Known for standing up to one of the most powerful industries on the planet, eight years ago Ernst sued gas driller Encana and Alberta’s energy regulators, claiming contamination of the well water in her rural backyard and the failure of government authorities to investigate.
Ernst’s suit also alleges a provincial regulator breached her charter rights by refusing to communicate with her after she publicly criticized it.
Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, published this fall by Greystone Books, blends Ernst’s compelling personal tale and long legal saga — still ongoing today — with the story of fracking and its human and environmental impacts.
It concludes Nikiforuk’s trilogy on the oil and gas industry in Alberta, which includes 2002’s Saboteurs and 2010’s Tar Sands, a winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award.
In the words of New Yorker environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, Slick Water is “a true-life noir filled with corruption, incompetence, and, ultimately, courage.” More specifically, Nikiforuk says, it is a story about “the courage of women.”
This Wednesday, Nov. 18, Nikiforuk embarks on a two-week book tour that will include five stops on Vancouver Island and one on Salt Spring Island. Find a full list of dates and locations in this story’s sidebar.
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