Dissociated Press
December 23, 2008
The well water at the home of Jessica Ernst, a resident of rural Alberta, Canada, exhibits one trait unbecoming of the fluid that nourishes life; it is flammable. Ernst describes the morning she made this unlikely discovery. "I poured myself a glass of water, but found myself really put off by the thick head fizzing away at the top of the glass," Ernst recalls. "I thought it was a robust Canadian brewsky at first, and then I realized that beer comes out of a beer tap, not a kitchen faucet!" This stunning revelation prompted Ernst to look more closely at the liquid's "head." "It was apparent that what I'd thought was white foam was actually smoke. So I did the only logical thing a Canadian does when confronted with something that seems like it wants to be on fire: I helped it along. Why not? It is colder than Heck here! We need all the heat we can get!" Accordingly, Ernst poured the water into a discarded soda bottle and set a match to it. The water promptly caught fire, the blue and green flames roaring like a rocket as they melted the bottle. Ernst was elated at first. "I thought, with my trick water, I'll be the hit of every party! Then I remembered, this is rural Alberta. Who am I gonna impress with this trick? The caribou? Not likely!"
Ernst's annoyance over her inability to exploit her trick water grew into genuine distress mere hours later. "I was in the shower, and it seemed like the longer the water ran over me, the more my skin burned, like frostbite." If the burning had felt more like a sunburn, that would have been fine with Ernst. "In a frigid Heck like Canada, even the illusion of heat is welcome. But to feel like I'm on the verge of freezing to death all the time? I get enough of that sensation when I open the front door to fetch the morning paper, thank you!"
Ernst, wishing to know the cause of her distress, embarked on an investigation that led her to Alberta's thriving coal bed methane industry. She learned that coal bed methane typically rests in shallow coal seams at the same depth as the groundwater that supplies most of rural Alberta's wells. The drilling sites are encased in concrete to prevent methane from leaking into the water table, but a lack of regulation has caused the placement of the concrete at many sites to be faulty. The resulting contamination has given Alberta's water its ability to "burn in defiance of God and nature," as Ernst puts it. "Of course, the water can't help that it is a horrible sinner, being inanimate and all. The gas company, on the other hand..." Here, Ernst trails off as she shakes with anger. Or extreme cold. It is hard to tell the two apart in Canada.
As if the water contamination weren't bad enough, Ernst said, after warming up or cooling down as the case may have been, the gas company could no longer supply rural Albertans with gas to heat their homes, but wanted to charge them for it anyway. "Yeah, all the gas leaked into our water supply, so they couldn't pull any more out of the gas fields and pipe it to us. But they claimed they still owned the gas and were entitled to compensation for its distribution into our homes, however unconventional its distribution was." Outraged, Ernst and her neighbors convinced the local utility council to hold a hearing on the gas company's billing proposal. "The gas company's presentation was really lame," Ernst recalls. "They tried to convince us of the virtue of self-boiling water! Yeah, it needs to boil itself, seeing as we can't get gas into our stoves anymore!"
Ernst's rebuttal was "certainly one of the most effective and unique arguments we've seen in some time," utility council president Brad Hedges said. "We hear testimony about the impact on families all the time in this business, but Mrs. Ernst's home video testimonial was truly one of a kind." The video portrayed a belching contest Ernst's sons had. Beverages were mandatory, and the beverage of choice was the contaminated groundwater coming from Ernt's tap. "Mrs. Ernst's son David really let one rip," Hedges said. "We aren't certain what happened, but we think the braces on his teeth sparked somehow, and his last belch lit up like a Roman candle." David's belch not only won the contest, it also set the living room drapes on fire. "The thing that really got to us," Hedges said,"is the look of annoyance on Mr. and Mrs. Ernst's faces when they had to beat the flames out by hand. I mean, it wasn't like they could douse the flames in water."
The utility council is expected to rule in favor of Ernst. "The ruling has been delayed, though, since the members are having a hard time getting their vehicles to start so they can drive to the meeting hall," Ernst says. "What can I say?" Ernst sighs in resignation as she pours water into a pot and lights it on fire. As she warms her hands, she adds, "It's friccin cold here!"
Dissociated Press reporter Taliesin is currently on suspension again. This time, his editors are ticked off that he wrote a story that actually had some truth to it, and they fear that if he gains a reputation as an honest reporter, the wild antics that draw free publicity to the organization will disappear.
Jessica Ernst's story, the real story of the real Ernst, that is, is told in Canadian Business, Aug 14-Sep 10, 2006. Vol 79, Iss 16/17 pg 19.