Slick Water

From the award-winning author of Tar Sands comes the shocking, inspiring story of an oil and gas industry insider’s determined stand to hold government and industry legally accountable for the damage fracking leaves in its wake.

When Jessica Ernst’s well water turned into a flammable broth that even her dogs refused to drink, the biologist and long-time oil patch consultant discovered that energy giant Encana had secretly fracked hundreds of gas wells around her home, piercing her community’s drinking water aquifer. Since then, her ongoing lawsuit against Encana, Alberta Environment, and the Energy Resources Conservation Board has made her a folk hero in many places worldwide where fracking is underway. In this powerful work of investigative journalism, Andrew Nikiforuk interweaves Ernst’s story with the science of fracking and stories of human and environmental repercussions left in its wake. Slick Water raises dramatic questions about the role of Big Oil in government, society’s obsession with rapidly depleting supplies of unconventional oil and gas, and the future of civil society.

Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning Canadian journalist who has been writing about the oil and gas industry for more than two decades. He is the author of multiple non-fiction books, including Tar Sands, winner of the prestigious Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, Saboteurs, winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction. He was one of the first journalists in North America to document the devastating effects of hydraulic fracturing on rural communities.

"Andrew Nikiforuk crafts a stunning picture of fossil fuel industry and government abuse." -Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

"In this balanced and meticulously researched page-turner, Andrew Nikiforuk follows Alberta whistleblower Jessica Ernst’s quest for justice with a passion, verve, and level of damning detail reminiscent of A Civil Action. In so doing, Nikiforuk uncovers a pattern of collusion, deception, and denial, reaching from the oil patch to Ottawa, that will shock law-abiding Canadians. Jessica Ernst is Canada’s Erin Brockovich, and this is an heroic book—Nikiforuk’s best one yet." -John Vaillant

"Using the courageous case of Jessica Ernst's lawsuit about her flammable well water as foreground, Nikiforuk masterfully reveals what everybody in the oil and gas industry knows, but does not want the public to know, about past, and likely repeat, offenses" -Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus, Cornell University

"Slick Wateris a true-life noir filled with corruption, incompetence, and, ultimately, courage. It is a deeply informative, disturbing, and important book." -Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

"This meticulously researched study...lifts the lid on the costs of that vast geological-engineering experiment, fracking." -Nature Magazine

"Essential reading for every human whose soul is not clouded by methane or coated in oil." -Publishers Weekly