OP-ED: Fracking Poisons Water..Govt. Lets Gas Co. Off Hook for Clean Water

We are all from Dimock
Published – New York Amsterdam News 12-16-2011
By PAUL GALLAY Hudson Riverkeeper

Last week, I joined dozens of other grassroots activists on a relief mission to a small town called Dimock, Pa., where a dozen families on Carter Road no longer have access to safe water for drinking, bathing and other household needs. They made the mistake of allowing a company named Cabot Oil & Gas to drill their properties for natural gas using the technique known as “fracking.” Now, if you open the taps at Craig and Julie Sautner’s house, what comes out is a witch’s brew of lead, toluene, naphthalene and over a dozen other poisons that Cabot executives would never let their kids go within a country mile of.

But wait, it gets worse. After ordering Cabot to provide a steady supply of clean water to the families on Carter Road, the state of Pennsylvania reversed itself this year and said Cabot could cut these families off. Deliveries stopped on Nov. 30 and Cabot’s victims got down to their last few gallons of clean water. Even their own town officials, who are deep in Cabot’s pocket, betrayed these families by blocking an offer from the nearby city of Binghamton, N.Y., to give them some of its water.

This is no isolated horror story. The EPA found a connection between fracking and poisoned water supplies in Wyoming, while Duke University scientists proved that wells within a half-mile of fracking operations are contaminated with methane levels an average of 17 times higher than before fracking began.

In Texas, fracking communities have three times as many cases of childhood asthma as the rest of the state. Meanwhile, in Dimock, Stacy Haney of Amwell Township let the drillers onto her property and then had to abandon her house because her kids got sick from all the arsenic, benzene and toluene that fracking left in their blood.

When I joined activists from around the region to bring an emergency shipment of water to Dimock last week, the families involved told us that groups like ours were all they had left. I’m proud of what we did, but when nonprofit groups like mine are all these families have because the government has completely abandoned them, it’s just criminal.

Think it can’t happen here? It can and will if we don’t stop it. Without considering the impact on our families’ health, on our quality of life, on our roads-each of the 48,000 wells now planned for New York will bring with it about 4,000 truck trips-or on other industries like farming and tourism, New York State is getting ready to issue fracking permits as soon as this spring. Public opposition to fracking is growing, but is government listening?

Here in New York, we have enough problems already. We don’t need to put our water at risk from fracking, as city officials have testified that the state’s plan would do. How many more poisoned families will it take for New York State politicians to get the message: The fracking business isn’t safe and the companies don’t make good when they screw up.

President Barack Obama faced a similar situation with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas. When he saw how big the risks were, he sent the project back for a new safety study.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo needs to do the same thing here, because fracking will not only hurt important job engines like farming and tourism, it’s also seriously bad for your health. Just ask the Sautners, 20 miles over the state line in Dimock, Pa.
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Historic Indian Point Hearings

Hearings Focus on the Indian Point Plant’s Devastating Toll on Wildlife

For 40 years, Riverkeeper has been fighting to stop Indian Point and other industrial facilities from killing wildlife while using our river water for free. They are continuing that David-and-Goliath fight in Albany, as Riverkeeper argues that that Entergy’s hot-water discharges, its radioactive leaks, and its annual slaughter of 1 billion fish and other river life is flat-out illegal, and that the water permit it needs to continue operating should be denied.

Riverkeeper’s attorneys are outnumbered, and its resources and expert witnesses are stretched thin responding to roughly 100,000 pages of evidence submitted so far by Entergy—but they continue to point out serious flaws in the company’s case.

Entergy, in keeping with a tradition of running its plant on the cheap, playing games with science and using our river to subsidize its profits, wants to install massive cage-like structures throughout the Hudson in an unproven effort to reduce its massive fish kills, rather than invest in proven closed-cycle cooling technology to stop the slaughter.

• Get Informed: Read Riverkeeper attorney Mark Lucas’s statements in the Albany hearings by going to Riverkeeper.org
• Do Your Part! Support Riverkeeper’s legal team by making a donation to their Close Indian Point campaign.

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EPA Finds Hydrofracking Chemicals DO Contaminate Drinking Water

According to Tom Kenworthy, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress the oil and gas industry claim that the practice of hydraulic fracturing has never polluted a drinking water well is just not true. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency officially threw that claim in the waste pit.  Go to the following link to read the whole story.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/12/08/385706/epa-finds-hydrofracking-chemicals-contaminate-drinking-water/

The Riverkeeper Releases Fracking Details and Facts

10 Major Flaws With New York’s Fracking Plan

The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is responsible for fully evaluating fracking’s potential impacts to public health and the environment, but its draft
environmental impact statement and proposed regulations do not protect New Yorker’s environment, health, and drinking water. DEC recently extended the comment period
and the public now has until Jan. 11 to comment on DEC’s fracking plans, which will
determine how this industrial activity will proceed in New York. The plans have a
numberof major flaws, including the DEC’s failure to:

Fully protect the New York City Watershed. The New York City Watershed plus
a 4,000 feet buffer around it is protected on the surface, but the DEC’s proposal still
leaves the watershed vulnerable to drilling underneath watershed lands. The DEC
proposal is also mute on issues relating to wastewater disposal, truck traffic and water
withdrawals that could affect the watershed.

Fully protect the tunnels, dams and aqueducts that deliver New York City’s water.
While New York City requested a seven-mile buffer around the infrastructure (tunnels,
dams, and aqueducts) outside the watershed that supplies drinking water to 9 million
New Yorkers, the DEC has only proposed a heightened review for surface wells
proposed within 1,000 feet, leaving New York’s water supply vulnerable to damaging
vibrations and contamination.

Protect principle aquifers and private wells. The DEC proposal would potentially
allow fracking in principal drinking water aquifers after additional environmental
review. It could allow fracking near private wells if property owners waive their
right to preserve a 500-foot buffer.

Prohibit open pits. In Pennsylvania, open pits have been a major source of
concern for nearby residents, who complain of foul odors, air pollution, leakage
and potential health problems associated with the pools of hazardous fracking
waste. Further, these pools may present a danger to birds and other wildlife.
DEC’s proposal would allow open pits in some cases after a heightened review.

Plan for wastewater disposal. There is no wastewater treatment plant in
New York designed to treat fracking wastes. In Pennsylvania, fracking
wastewater has at times been sent to wastewater treatment plants that weren’t
equipped to handle the waste, resulting in discharges to rivers of untreated wastes
upstream from drinking water intakes. Now, most Pennsylvania wastewater is trucked
to Ohio, where it is injected deep underground.

Consider health impacts. The DEC omitted potential health impacts from its draft
environmental review, and has so far ignored a letter signed by 250 doctors and
health care professionals calling for an independent health impact analysis. In
Pennsylvania, some residents living near fracking sites have complained about the
deaths of horses and dogs, and about a range of illnesses they fear were caused by
the industrial activity nearby.

Analyze cost to communities for social and emergency services, schools and
infrastructure, including road maintenance. The DEC analysis contains hundreds
of pages about the possible economic benefits of fracking, but neglects to seriously
consider potential negative economic impacts, which could be severe. Increased
heavy truck traffic, with 4,000 truck trips per active well, could cost hundreds of
millions of dollars in annual road maintenance.

Analyze potential negative economic effects on other industries, like agriculture
and tourism. Farming and tourism are the two top economic drivers in much of
the Catskills, Southern Tier and Finger Lakes region; heavy industrial activity
could seriously disrupt both industries, but the DEC has failed to account for
this possibility.

Consider private property impacts. The DEC has not considered potential
impacts to private property owners, such as decreased property values (and property
tax revenues for local governments and schools), liability for damage due to gas drilling
and difficulties getting bank loans for properties encumbered by gas leases. There is
also concern that set-backs from private property are inadequate to protect homes.

Study the potential for fracking to trigger earthquakes. There is a strong correlation
between fracking and quakes. The U.S. Geological Survey has confirmed that
earthquakes have been caused by the injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal
or oil recovery. And a gas driller in England found it “highly probable” that its operations
had triggered earthquakes there. Despite this and other evidence, the DEC has discounted
any connection between fracking and earthquakes.

Source:  The Riverkeeper Organization
Go To:  Riverkeeper.org