Important New Groundwater Study
October 14, 2010
http://www.powi.ca/pdfs/groundwater/Fracture%20Lines_English_Oct14Release.pdf
Nov.1 Lansing, NY Impact of Marcellus Shale Gas Development on Rivers, Streams and Forests
October 6, 2010
ANNOUNCING
Lessons from Pennsylvania: Impact of Marcellus Shale Gas Development on Rivers, Streams and Forests
……………………………………..
A Free, Public, Educational Forum on the Effects of Gas Extraction on Recreation, Hunting, Fishing, Hiking, etc.
Monday, November 1, 2010
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Lansing Middle School Auditorium
6 Ludlowville Road, Lansing, NY
High volume, slick water, hydraulic fracturing (hydro-fracking) to take natural gas from the Marcellus Shale has been going on in Pennsylvania for the past three years. Hydro-fracking includes withdrawing millions of gallons of water from nearby rivers, lakes, and streams, mixing it with chemicals, and injecting the solution under high pressure into the shale to release the gas.
What has been the effect of Marcellus gas development on the people who use the outdoors for recreation? What has been the effect on their hiking, fishing, biking, birding, hunting, camping, boating, family outings, sightseeing?
Pennsylvanians and those who have studied the effects will share what they have learned, and they will take questions from the audience at this free, educational forum.
Intended Audience
People who enjoy the outdoors for recreation, hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, birding, hunting, camping, boating, family outings, and sightseeing. In addition, anyone who seeks more information about the effects of Marcellus gas development in Pennsylvania on their natural environment should attend.
Speakers:
- Katy Dunlap, Trout Unlimited, Eastern Water Project Director. Ms. Dunlap will talk about changes in trout water, ranging from small mountain streams to the Delaware River, and what some members of Trout Unlimited are doing about the changes they see.
- Shellie Northrop, member and volunteer of several PA and NY hiking clubs and trail associations. Through Ms. Northrop’s years of hiking and contact with other hikers, she is able to describe the impact of drilling activities for hikers in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania. She will also use examples in PA to offer suggestions of how those of us in NY can take action now that will help protect our wilderness areas.
- Bill Belitskus, Allegheny Defense Project, Board President. Mr. Belitskus has been hiking, camping and recreating in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest for over 35 years, and is now watching the fragmentation of forest, truck traffic, and disruption from having 50% of the National Forest leased for drilling. He will discuss one of the critical issues of deep shale extraction: withdrawal of water from streams and rivers, and riparian rights of landowners to protect waterways.
Sponsors: Social Ventures, ROUSE, Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition (DRAC), Cornell Outdoor Education, Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, and others
Contact information: Sara Hess, 607-272-6394.
We must not let gas firms decide for us By Lisa Wright
October 6, 2010
We must not let gas firms decide for us. Ithaca Journal
By Lisa Wright • October 5, 2010, 12:00 am
The gas industry, in concert with the Obama
administration, is working hard to make gas into not
merely a bridge fuel, but a worldwide replacement
fossil fuel for decades to come.
I object to what is fast becoming a multinational
dominance of American mineral rights, and my First
Amendment right to free speech is being seriously
threatened by individuals and big government
agencies who don’t want me to object.
The landowner coalitions, many who formed in
reaction to the snake-oil salesmen tactics of oil and
gas industry landmen, are now turning against their
brothers and sisters in an unholy alliance with the
devil. Sophisticated industry PR people from
Washington, D.C., feed inflammatory information, e-
mails and fliers to these local coalitions, goading
them to perceive their friends and neighbors as the
enemy.
New Yorkers need a sensible statewide plan that
supports a healthy economic future for our farms
and natural areas. With the opportunity afforded us
by the current worldwide gas glut, New York should
be exploring energy and economic initiatives that
support local businesses and farms, and that won’t
drain and injure our water resources.
But we just cannot move forward in a political
environment where the dialogue is continually
reduced to a simplistic narrative of gas industry
hype and “trust me” rhetoric. The people of this
state, not the multinational corporations, must claim
and own this dialogue.
Many New York pro-drillers are tempted by the easy
money and promised royalties, and they avert their
eyes from the plight of our abused neighbors in
Dimock, Pa. Local governments are only now wising
up and realizing that there will be no free lunch.
Someone will have to pay for the infrastructure,
treatment and cleanup costs, and it won’t be the
heavily subsidized, wealthy multinational gas
companies. It will be little you and me.
Right now, the gas corporations and the Obama administration do not much care about our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. President Barack Obama’s big government, just like President George W. Bush’s big government, is now in the business of supporting one industry over the interests of we the people. That can change, but only if we the people make it happen.This country, like this issue, has become dangerously polarized. It is up to us as American citizens, as New Yorkers, and as individual members of our communities to stand up for one another. We must reject highly financed and cynical attempts to divide us and, in turn, we must work much harder to reconnect with our communities. In doing that, we will then have at least a fighting chance of finding acceptable ways of resolving the difficult problems that lie before us.
Lisa Wright is a Brooktondale resident
Spying on Anti-Fracking Activists
September 16, 2010 2 Comments
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101001/OPINION/10010375/-1/SITEMAP)
Goodman: FBI raids and the criminalization of dissent
By Amy Goodman. Published: 2:00 AM – 10/01/10
Early in the morning on Friday, Sept. 24, FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota’s Twin Cities kicked in the doors of anti-war activists, brandishing guns, spending hours rifling through their homes. The FBI took away computers, photos, notebooks and other personal property. Residents were issued subpoenas to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. It was just the latest in the ongoing crackdown on dissent in the U.S., targeting peace organizers as supporters of “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Coleen Rowley knows about the FBI. She was a career special agent with the FBI who blew the whistle on the bureau’s failures in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks. TIME magazine named her Person of the Year in 2002. A few days after the raids in her hometown of Minneapolis, she told me, “This is not the first time that you’ve seen this Orwellian turn of the war on terror onto domestic peace groups and social justice groups … we had that begin very quickly after 9/11, and there were Office of Legal Counsel opinions that said the First Amendment no longer controls the war on terror.”
Jess Sundin’s home was raided. She was the lead organizer of the St. Paul, Minn., anti-war march on Labor Day 2008 that occurred as the Republican National Convention began. She described the raid: “They spent probably about four hours going through all of our personal belongings, every book, paper, our clothes, and filled several boxes and crates with our computers, our phones, my passport … with which they left my house.”
They smashed activist Mick Kelly’s fish tank when they barged into his home. The net cast by the FBI that morning included not only anti-war activists, but those who actively support a changed foreign policy toward Israel-Palestine and Colombia. The warrant for Kelly sought all records of his travel, not only to those countries, but also all his domestic U.S. travel since 2000, and all his personal contacts.
No one was arrested. No one was charged with a crime. Days later, hundreds of protesters rallied outside FBI offices nationally.
The raids happened just days after the U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general released a report, “A Review of the FBI’s Investigations of Certain Domestic Advocacy Groups.” The IG looked at FBI surveillance and investigation of, among others, the environmental group Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Pittsburgh-based Thomas Merton Center.
Founded in 1972 to support opposition to the war in Vietnam, the Merton Center continues to be a hub of anti-war activism in Pittsburgh. In 2002, the FBI spied on a Merton-organized rally, claiming “persons with links to international terrorism would be present.” As the IG reports, this claim was a fabrication, which was then relayed to FBI Director Robert Mueller. He repeated it, under oath, to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The illegal surveillance trickles down, through “Joint Terrorism Task Forces” that bring together federal, state and local law enforcement, homeland security and military agencies, often under the roof of a “fusion center,” the name given to shadowy trans-jurisdictional intelligence centers. There, it seems, slapping the “domestic terror” tag on activists is standard.
Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell recently apologized when it was revealed that his state homeland security director, James Powers, had contracted with a private company to research and distribute information about citizen groups engaged in legal activity. Groups opposed to the environmentally destructive extraction of natural gas known as “fracking,” for example, were referred to as “environmental extremists.”
Their crime: holding a screening of the Sundance-winning documentary “Gasland.”
Back in the Twin Cities, the state has been forced to back off eight other activists, dubbed the “RNC 8,” who were part of organizing the protests at the Republican National Convention. They all were pre-emptively arrested, before the convention started, and charged, under Minnesota state law, as terrorists. The prosecution has since dropped all terrorism charges (four of them will go to trial on other charges).
This is all happening while the Obama administration uses fear of terrorism to seek expanded authority to spy on Internet users, and as another scandal is brewing: The Justice Department also revealed this week that FBI agents regularly cheated on an exam testing knowledge of proper rules and procedures governing domestic surveillance. This is more than just a cheating scandal. It’s about basic freedoms at the core of our democracy, the abuse of power and the erosion of civil liberties.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour.
Analysis: Terrorism advisory group aided Marcellus industry
Thursday, September 16, 2010
By Tom Barnes and Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10259/1087897-53.stm#ixzz0zisy864R
ACLU seeks more info on anti-terrorism bulletins
Monday, September 20, 2010
By Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
ACLU seeks more info on anti-terrorism bulletins. Monday, September 20, 2010. By Tracie Mauriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10263/1088997-100.stm#ixzz107xq8V5U
Just one Planet . .
September 6, 2010
From Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab publication, “Living Bird”, Summer, 2010
“The View From Sapsucker Woods” by John Fitzpatrick – in part-
“The Deepwater Horizon gusher was generated by 21st-century technology, but it symbolizes the 19th-century ethics we continue to apply when environmental protection contradicts energy exploitation. Although we cannot yet know the eventual scale of its biological and economic costs, we should for once agree that we must assemble, and never again forget, all the fundamental lessons of this disaster. The unthinkable is possible, and must be planned for in advance. As we assess risks versus rewards, as we fully audit the true costs of energy exploration and extraction, we need to incorporate and properly mitigate the enormous risks and costs of disasters like Deepwater Horizon. With just one planet to steward and only one chance at this game, all of us should ponder whether some natural systems are just too complex and valuable to risk losing, regardless of what temporary energy boost lied (lay)beneath them.”
The Whole Fracking Enchilada
Violating the bedrock, the atmosphere, and everything in between by Sandra Steingraber
Published in the September/October 2010 http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/issue/5825/> issue of
/Orion/ magazine
I HAVE COME to believe that extracting natural gas from shale using the
newish technique called hydrofracking is /the/ environmental issue of
our time. And I think you should, too.
Saying so represents two points of departure for me. One: I primarily
study toxic chemicals, not energy issues. I have, heretofore, ceded that
topic to others, such as Bill McKibben, with whom I share this column
space in /Orion/.
Two: I’m on record averring that I never tell people what to do. If you
are a mother who wants to lead the charge against vinyl shower curtains,
then you should. If the most important thing to you is organic golf
courses, then they are. So said I. Read more of this post
CBS News Sept. 4, 2010
September 5, 2010
Sept. 4, 2010.
A Burning Debate Over Natural Gas Drilling
Chemicals That Energy Companies Secretly Use in a Process Dubbed “Fracking” Are Fueling Concerns About Our Water Supplies
(CBS) The natural gas-producing shale that lies under 34 states is now being seen as a game-changer in helping meet the nation’s energy needs for decades to come. But the process of extracting that natural gas, dubbed “fracking,” is fueling environmental fears. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian has more:
“You can’t live like this – it’s so stressful every single day………”
Siegel & Ingraffea. SUNY Cortland, Feb. 20, 2011
September 1, 2010
Don Siegel (SU) and Tony Ingraffea (Cornell). Sunday. February 20th, 2-4pm – place tba
PBS/ProPublica TV report on Hydrofracking
August 28, 2010
The price of gas: A Need to Know investigation
August 27th, 2010
Hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — is a process used by energy companies to get natural gas out of the ground. Fracking involves forcing water, sand and chemicals underground to fracture rocks and release the natural gas trapped within them.
But what happens to those chemicals once they’ve been injected into the ground? That depends upon whom you ask. In a joint effort with ProPublica, the non-profit investigative journalist organization, we sent correspondent John Larson to Wyoming, where some residents believe fracking is contaminating their water and risking their health.
Gas Industry Strategy Revealed in Confidential Document
August 23, 2010
Pittsburg City Paper Aug. 19, 2010 LINK
Shale Game
BY CHRIS POTTER
Somewhere beneath our feet — Pennsylvanians are told — lies a mile-deep layer of rock known as the Marcellus Shale, which contains more natural gas than Saudi Arabia has oil. And natural-gas companies are lining up to drill it all around the state.
Lately, though, they seem to be doing most of their prospecting in Harrisburg.
City Paper has acquired a document — titled “A Holistic Solution to Modernizing Pennsylvania Policies Impacting Marcellus Shale Development” — currently being circulated in Harrisburg. Credited to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a trade group representing drillers, the proposed “solution” is a wide-ranging wish-list of industry priorities. Among its requests, for example, is that legislators “encourage” state and local governments to convert their vehicle fleets to natural gas.
The document — which is marked “DRAFT CONFIDENTIAL” — asserts that the coalition is “committed to participating in an honest, open dialogue.” But it includes positions the coalition has, at least in public, offered few specifics on. Among them:
— The coalition urges legislators to “oppose statutory and regulatory proposals that are not logically or scientifically based, or that would otherwise jeopardize capital investment with little or no benefit to the environment or consumers.”
— The coalition also asks legislators to “reinforce … the current preemption language” in state law, which bars local officials from passing their own environmental regulations. It also seeks to ensure that drilling is permitted “in all zoning districts.” (Since shale drilling can take place a mile below ground and a mile from the “well-head” visible on the surface, however, it’s possible this exemption would only apply to below-ground operations.)
— The coalition, which has long argued against imposing a “severance tax” on the value of gas drilled, will accept one — sort of. Gov. Ed Rendell has proposed a tax of 5 percent on the value of the gas; the coalition accepts that rate — but only after the well has been in operation for five years. Until that time, it urges charging only 1.5 percent on the value of the gas.
The coalition largely declined to comment on the document, and did not respond to a list of e-mailed questions. Instead, coalition president Kathryn Klaber issued a statement asserting the coalition is “fully committed to crafting commonsense legislative and regulatory policies.” Those policies, Klaber adds, “will help ensure that Marcellus development remains competitive with other shale gas-producing states,” which will ensure “that the economic and environmental benefits associated with responsible Marcellus Shale gas production reach all Pennsylvanians.”
“If this is a strategy for the industry, it’s unconscionable,” counters Pittsburgh City Councilor Patrick Dowd after reviewing the document. Read more of this post
GDACC 
