10,000 Students Take to DC Streets, Calling for Action on Climate & BP Spill
April 20, 2011
10,000 Students Take to DC Streets, Calling for Action on Climate & BP Spill.
SUNY Cortland:Sustainability Week
April 20, 2011
SUNY Cortland: Bulletin News Detail.
04/14/2011
SUNY Cortland will celebrate Sustainability Week 2011 with presentations on climate change, renewable energy and other topics; two film screenings; Earth Day activities and much more.
The week, which began on Saturday, April 16, runs through Friday, April 22. It will culminate with student and staff events commemorating the 41st anniversary of Earth Day.
Sponsored by the Auxiliary Services Corporation, the Campus Recycling Committee and the President’s Office, the week’s events are free and open to the public.
David Goodrich, the former director of climate observations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will deliver the week’s keynote address. Goodrich will talk about his upcoming bike trek from Delaware to Oregon, during which he plans to raise awareness of climate change.
Goodrich, who is also former director of the Global Climate Observing System Secretariat in Switzerland, will speak on Monday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 205.
His address, “Pedaling Climate Change: A Bike Trip From Delaware to Oregon, Talking About Climate Change,” will discuss the two-and-a-half month journey he plans to start in May from coast to coast across the U.S.
”A friend of mine, his first reaction was that I’m certifiable,” Goodrich said.
Goodrich will discuss the reasons for his cross-country ride, the trip’s biggest obstacles and the places he is most looking forward to visit. They include the Sand Hills State Park in Kansas, the Snowy Range in Wyoming and the Cascade Range in Oregon.
“I’d like to have some case studies of places of climate change impact,” said Goodrich, who expects to bike between 60 and 80 miles per day. “And I want to see what people’s reactions are to it.”
The College’s sixth annual Community Cleanup Day kicked off the week’s activities on Saturday. It was organized by the City of Cortland, the Cortland Chamber of Commerce, the Cortland Downtown Partnership, the SUNY Cortland Institute for Civic Engagement and SUNY Cortland AmeriCorps.
SUNY Cortland’s other Sustainability Week events include:
• The annual Wilkins Bird Lecture of the Lime Hollow Center for Environment and Culture (LHCEC). John Marzluff, a specialist in wildlife relationships and avian social ecology, will discuss the curious behavior of crows and ravens in a talk titled, “The Surprising Behavior of Crows,”, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, in Sperry Center, Room 205. “Do crows really talk, give gifts and use surfboards?” Marzluff said. “Of course they do, and so much more.” The talk is co-sponsored by SUNY Cortland’s Biology Club.
• “The Environmental Impact of Tobacco: Working Toward a Tobacco-Free Campus.” The SUNY Cortland Tobacco Advisory Committee will present information from 1:40 to 2:40 p.m., on Tuesday, April 19, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “A Not-So Temperate Environment and How It Affects Forests (And People, Too).” Neil Pederson, an associate research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, will discuss the impact of climate change from 3 to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• Walking tour of the Hoxie Gorge Nature Preserve. Faculty members from the biology and geology departments will guide a tour and a discussion regarding carbon sequestration, biomimicry and nutrient cycling from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19. Participants interested in the tour must sign up in advance by contacting the Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education at (607) 753-5488 or by email.
• Sustainable lunch. The free, environmentally friendly lunch will be served from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in the Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge. Bill McNamara, the director of ASC Dining Services, will deliver a talk during the lunch. Lunch is limited to the first 65 attendees on a first come, first serve basis.
• “Doubt Mongering in Environmental Issues.” A SUNY Cortland environmental science seminar class will offer this presentation trom 1:40 to 2:40 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “Local Food Movement.” Beth Klein, from the Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department, Christine Applegate, manager of the Farmers Market, and Heather Birdsall, from Cornell Cooperative Extension, will discuss how students can get involved from 3 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in Bowers Hall, Room 155..
• The Greenhorns. A screening of this documentary film, which explores young people in America’s sustainable food movement, caps Wednesday’s activities. The film begins at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 105. A discussion with local, young farmers will follow at 9 p.m.
• “Sustainable Heating at SUNY Cortland Using Biomass and Geothermal Energy.” This Earth Week Sandwich Seminar features a talk from SUNY Cortland senior Matthew Rankin about the use of alternative energy sources at the College. He will speak from noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.
• “Student Actions for Sustainability.” This presentation by the Environmental Science Club, the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and the SUNY Cortland Recreation Association (SCRA), begins at 1:40 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “The Technical and Economic Success of Renewable Energy in Central New York.” Melissa Kemp, director of Halco Renewable Energy, will deliver this talk at 3 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Bowers Hall, Room 155.
• “The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Lessons for U.S. Energy Policy in the Era of Extreme Energy.” Brice Smith, associate professor and Physics Department chair, will deliver this lecture, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, in Sperry Center, Room 105.
Earth Day
A series of commemorative events are on tap for the 41st anniversary of Earth Day on Friday, April 22. The Sustainability Week tent between Bowers Hall and Sperry Center will house most of the day’s activities. They include:
• The Physics and Engineering Club will offer a “Build Your Own Wind Turbine” session under the tent From 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
• College faculty, staff and community members will present “Local Food Resources and Composting Made Easy” from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. under the tent.
• The Environmental Science Club will offer “Earth Café 2050” from noon to 3 p.m.
• NYPRIG will present “The Facts About Fracking” under the tent from noon to 3 p.m.
• The third annual Outdoor Gear Sale and Fender Blender will allow participants to create their own smoothies while peddling a bike. Presented by the SUNY Cortland Recreation Association, the event is scheduled from noon to 5 p.m. at the Community Bike Shop Building next to Lusk Field House.
• An Earth Day open house at the Main Street SUNY Cortland building, 9 Main St., will round out the day’s events. The Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, Environmental Justice Committee, and Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County will be present for the program, which runs from 4:30 to 7 p.m.
The open house includes a screening of My Name is Allegheny County, a film that chronicles a community’s organized resistance to a radioactive waste dump in Allegheny County. Two local activists, Jim Weiss and Paul Yaman, will monitor a discussion after the film.
For more information on Sustainability Week 2011 events, contact Brice Smith at (607) 753-2822 or by email.
Pa. wants to cut off gas-drilling wastewater AP
April 19, 2011
Pa. wants to cut off gas-drilling wastewater – Yahoo! News.
Pa. wants to cut off gas-drilling wastewater
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Citing potentially unsafe drinking water, Pennsylvania called on companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation to stop taking wastewater to 15 treatment plants by May 19.
Tuesday’s announcement was a major change in the state’s regulation of gas drilling and came the same day that an industry group said it now believes drilling wastewater is partly at fault for rising levels of bromide being found in Pittsburgh-area rivers.
Gas drilling that uses millions of gallons of chemical-laden water has rapidly grown in the past three years in Pennsylvania.
In other major gas-drilling states, drilling wastewater is kept out of rivers largely by injecting it deep underground into disposal wells. But in Pennsylvania, some drilling wastewater is treated by sewer authorities, largely in western Pennsylvania, and discharged into rivers.
Those wastewater plants, however, are ill-equipped to remove all the pollutants, and Pennsylvania still allows hundreds of millions of gallons of the partially treated wastewater to be discharged into rivers from which communities draw drinking water.
The state Department of Environmental Protection cited elevated levels of bromide in rivers in western Pennsylvania in its announcement.
“Now is the time to take action to end this practice,” acting Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer said in a statement Tuesday.
Bromide is a salt that later reacts with the chlorine disinfectants used by drinking water systems and creates trihalomethanes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that trihalomethanes can be harmful to people who drink water with elevated levels of the chemical for many years.
Officials at Pittsburgh-area drinking water authorities in Beaver Falls and Fredericktown say their facilities have flunked tests for trihalomethanes in the past couple years.
Complicating the matter is that, in addition to gas drilling, Pennsylvania’s multitude of acid-leaching, abandoned coal mines and other industrial sources are also a major factor in the high salt levels that lead to trihalomethanes in drinking water.
Pennsylvania imposed tougher wastewater treatment standards for drilling wastewater in August, although it still allowed facilities that had been permitted to accept drilling wastewater before August to continue accepting limited amounts under the same treatment standards. Fifteen of those 27 facilities that were grandfathered under the August rules were still accepting the wastewater, the DEP said.
“While there are several possible sources for bromide other than shale drilling wastewater, we believe that if operators would stop giving wastewater to facilities that continue to accept it under the special provision, bromide concentrations would quickly and significantly decrease,” Krancer said in the statement.
Kathryn Klaber, president of the industry’s Marcellus Shale Coalition, said she would provide specifics in the coming days about actions that coalition members will take in an effort to reduce the amount of bromide that ends up in Pennsylvania rivers. Her organization came to that conclusion after seeing new research from Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, Klaber said.
HYDROFRACKING IN THE MARCELLUS SHALE: THE LIABILITY AND INSURANCE COVERAGE IMPLICATIONS
April 19, 2011
PERRIN’S LEGAL WEBINAR SERIES: HYDROFRACKING IN THE MARCELLUS SHALE: THE LIABILITY AND INSURANCE COVERAGE IMPLICATIONS
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
2:00 – 3:30 PM ET
Speakers:
Emily A. Collins, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Michael Conley, Esq., Offit Kurman, Philadelphia, PA
Michael J. Naughton, Esq., Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP, NJ
Carl J. Pernicone, Esq., Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP, New York, NY
Radisav D. Vidic, Ph.D., P.E., William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Environmental Engineering and Chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburg, PA
Agenda Topics to be covered:
Overview & Background of Hydrofracking & the Marcellus Shale
Categories of Plaintiffs
Theories of Liability: Statutory
Theories of Liability
Defendants
Insurance Coverage Issues
Registration
Cost: $129, unlimited listeners. Includes 1 CLE for 1 listener (Additional CLE credits $25 each).
CLE Credit: 1.5-2.0 CLE credits, depending on state requirements.
Applications are being made to all CLE states as requested by attendees.
Speaker Bios:
Emily A. Collins, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
Emily Collins joined the Pitt Law Faculty in 2008 as a Clinical Assistant Professor and Supervising Attorney of the Environmental Law Clinic. Professor Collins comes to Pitt Law from the Office of Public Interest Counsel of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, where she served as a state-employed public interest environmental attorney in the areas of water quality, water rights, air quality, solid waste disposal, low-level radioactive waste disposal, remediation, and wastewater rates.
Drawing on her public interest practice and education at the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic and the Gallatin School of New York University, Professor Collins has designed an interdisciplinary clinic that teaches students to work effectively in cross-disciplinary teams that provide legal and technical assistance to groups and individuals with environmental and community health concerns in Western Pennsylvania.
Michael Conley, Esq., Offit Kurman
Philadelphia, PA
Mr. Conley is the Chair of the Firm’s new Insurance Recovery Group in its Philadelphia office and a Principal in the Labor & Employment and Litigation Department.
Mr. Conley’s broad legal experience includes insurance coverage litigation, labor and employment law and general litigation. He represents policyholders with claims against insurance companies. His insurance coverage law experience includes handling coverage actions on behalf of insureds relating to bad faith claims, defense obligations, law and ordinance exclusions, breach of health insurance contract, crime coverage, employment liability coverage and coverage for asbestos-related claims and environmental liability.
Mr. Conley’s commercial litigation experience includes representing clients in cases involving breach of contract, abuse of process, trademark infringement, unfair trade practices and collections. For companies facing labor and employment law claims, Mr. Conley has handled issues involving collective bargaining throughout the US with various unions; over 100 labor arbitrations; appearances before the NLRB; and successful defense of union certification elections.
Mr. Conley regularly counsels companies on a variety of business matters and his experience includes contract drafting and negotiations on behalf of US-based clients for work in US, Europe, Middle East, South America and India; business acquisitions; ICC Arbitrations in Europe; environmental law issues; business formation; and MSHA and OSHA matters.
Michael J. Naughton, Esq., Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP
New Jersey
Michael J. Naughton is a Partner in the New Jersey office and the chair of the firm’s Environmental & Energy Regulatory & Compliance Group. He has represented clients in hundreds of environmental regulatory and permitting matters involving federal and state environmental laws and regulations throughout the United States.
Michael has been representing corporations and individual clients in real estate transactions, environmental litigation and regulatory compliance matters for more than 27 years. He has litigated numerous environmental cases involving various claims, including natural resource damage claims throughout the United States. Michael maintains a national CERCLA practice and routinely appears before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, New Jersey Office of Administrative Law and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.
In addition, Michael also advises clients in brownfield cleanups and redevelopment of contaminated properties. This part of his legal practice focuses on matters of due diligence and contractual allocation of environmental risks in transactions, disclosure laws and obligations concerning environmental conditions on real property, securing environmental insurance products to protect the firm’s clients against cleanup cost overruns and pollution legal liability, permit requirements under state and federal regulatory laws.
He also has experience in the handling of energy and infrastructure projects, climate change and sustainability matters. Michael has the ability to represent clients engaged in or considering business ventures in emerging green energy fields such as solar, wind, geothermal, cogeneration, biofuels and biomass. He also has experience in many aspects of energy management. He interfaces with consultants involved in energy efficiency analysis, energy master planning, and procurement of energy and alternative energy sources. Also, as a sub-set of the firm’s environmental permitting services, he assists consultants and engineers in the performance evaluations of a facility’s greenhouse gas (GHG) profile.
Michael has been appointed as a Special Environmental Mediator for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. He has also served as a Director of the Environmental Law Section for the New Jersey State Bar. Michael is a frequent lecturer and has written extensively on environmental law and regulatory issues.
Carl J. Pernicone, Esq., Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP
New York, NY
Carl J. Pernicone is a Partner in the New York office and is a co-founder and Co-Chair of the firm’s Insurance Practice Team. Carl focuses his practice in the area of insurance and reinsurance coverage issues arising in complex, high exposure matters.
Much of Carl’s work concentrates on coverage disputes arising from so-called “long-tail injury” claims―such as those involving asbestos, lead, silica, workplace chemical exposure, and environmental liability. More recently, he has become involved in addressing the coverage implications in the emerging area of Climate Change liability.
For more than two decades, Carl has represented insurers across the country as counsel of record in complex, high exposure suits in state and federal courts. In addition, he has extensive experience in analyzing coverage; issuing coverage opinions; preparing reservation of rights and disclaimer letters; drafting policy wording; and drafting insurance coverage settlement agreements policy “buyback” agreements. Carl also regularly lectures and writes on topical coverage decisions and emerging coverage issues. In addition, he manages the firm’s National Attorney Training program and chairs its Associate Professional Training and Development Committee.
Carl has been named to SuperLawyers’ Magazine’s 2009 and 2010 lists of the top Insurance Practices attorneys in the Metro New York area.
Radisav D. Vidic, Ph.D., P.E., William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Environmental Engineering and Chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburg, PA
Dr. Vidic holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Belgrade (1987) and received his graduate education in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois (M.S., 1989) and University of Cincinnati (Ph.D., 1992). His research efforts focus on advancing the applications of surface science by providing fundamental understanding of molecular-level interactions at interfaces, development of novel physical/chemical water treatment technologies, water management for Marcellus shale development, and reuse of impaired waters for cooling systems in coal-fired power plants. Dr. Vidic published over 150 journal papers and conference proceedings on these topics. He received 2000 Professional Research Award from the Pennsylvania Water Environment Federation for his research accomplishments and dedication to the profession, was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003/04 and a was elected by the Pittsburgh section of American Society of Civil Engineers as 2008 Professor of the Year. In February 2011, he was selected by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as one of the top 10 people shaping the Marcellus shale debate in Pennsylvania.
Maura Stephens: Meet the Gas Geezers
April 19, 2011 1 Comment
Maura Stephens: Meet the Gas Geezers.
Frack Pushers
Meet the Gas Geezers
By MAURA STEPHENS
This weekend, as 10,000 energetic, bright young people are converging on Washington, DC, for PowerShift 2011, a geezer* is waging an all-out assault on their future.
Eighty-two-year-old Texas fossil-fuel-pushing megabillionaire T. Boone Pickens has, incredibly, essentially written a bill called the NAT GAS Act (“New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions,” H.R. 1380), to switch fleet vehicles such as buses and interstate trucks to “natural” gas.
Pickens has been working the Hill, White House, airwaves, and editorial boardrooms for some time. He’s got buddies like MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan gushing over him and Joe Nocera writing oily op-ed odes to nat gas in the New York Times. And Pickens has somehow managed to sell President Obama and an astonishing number of Congress members on the myth that nat-gas is a homegrown wonder fuel “bridge” from dirty foreign oil to a clean energy future.
Pickens wrote in the Huffington Post on April 16 about his “Pickens Plan”: “We have to create American jobs, not OPEC jobs, and not jobs which can be ‘off-shored’ . . . . The Pickens Plan will enhance the economy, improve the environment and resolve the national security threat caused by our dependence on foreign oil, much of it from OPEC and many other nations who don’t have our best interests at heart. I’m for any fuel, as long as it’s American . . . including wind and solar, nuclear, natural gas, and coal.”
Pickens is not the only billionaire pushing this crude on the unsuspecting public. Advertising, sports, media, and bison-burger mogul Ted Turner, 72, who like Pickens is often called an environmentalist by incurious journalists, is driving the nat-gas bulldozer as well.
Picking apart the hype
But “natural” gas is not clean, it’s actually quite filthy when extracted via high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a relatively new Halliburton-developed process now ravaging many states, most recently the Marcellus shale states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and threatening New York.
A new non-industry-funded, peer-reviewed study released last week by Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth, coauthored by Anthony Ingraffea and Renee Santoro, shows that the entire process of Marcellus fracking from exploration to delivery is as bad as or worse than coal in its greenhouse gas emissions. (It’s no surprise the industry is attacking the study with all its might.)
And fracking is not going to supply us with domestic fuel to replace that scary OPEC (read: Mideast) oil. First of all, much of our oil now comes from our neighbors Canada and Mexico; Saudi Arabia is the third biggest supplier, followed by Venezuela and Nigeria.
Second, you can bet that much of the frack-gas will be shipped overseas, where industry can get a higher price. Corporations’ mission is to make money, not to help their country or do the right thing — despite their multimillion-dollar PR and lobbying campaigns’ often successful efforts to hoodwink us. So that’s just their honchos’ idea of good business practice.
Third, there’s already a glut of gas here now. By pushing vehicle conversion, Pickens creates a “need” for more drilling.
Which brings us to what I think is the real goal of oil baron and former wildcatter Pickens. He’s bought up huge tracts of land that sit on aquifers; in fact he owns more water than just about anyone. He isn’t hiding this; it’s part of his business plan.
When fracking pollutes your water supply, he’ll sell you bottled water.
And his buddy Turner, the second-biggest landowner in the United States and biggest landholder in Patagonia, gains big-time from fracking, too. He has huge ranches in New Mexico. The biggest, nearly 600,000 acres, is being mined for nat-gas, which contributes to his bank vaults. And a 2007 land purchase in Nebraska gives Turner access to the one of the gretat aquifers of the world, the Ogalalla, which underlies eight states. Its primarily fossil water, left from the last glaciation, is being rapidly depleted, but that might not stop a water privatization company from receiving permission to draw from it.
Neither man needs the money, but accumulating wealth appears to be addictive. Pickens and Turner claim their motives to be concern for the environment and patriotism.
That’s a joke. Fracking has turned vast swaths of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Louisiana, and other states into industrial wastelands. Arkansas had to suspend fracking last month when it was suspected of setting off a series of small earthquakes.
Now the drillers are falling over themselves to poison the fresh water, air, and food supply of Michigan and the Marcellus shale states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia . . . and they’re desperate to get at New York, which so far has been holding them off. (A fragile moratorium is soon to expire, and it is not clear where new governor Andrew Cuomo stands.)
The beautiful hills, farms, streams, and woods of those states are being replaced by drill pads, rigs, truck depots, compressor stations, and pipelines.
And once the gas runs out — and it will, because it’s finite — the frackers will vanish, leaving wasteland behind. Tourism, agriculture, wineries, orchards, hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation will have bit the dust in favor of fossil-fuel extraction, noise pollution, light pollution, ruined roads and infrastructures, failed farms, and collapsed communities. Economists Jannette Barth in New York State and Deborah Rogers in Texas have both concluded that after a possible initial boom, fracked communities generally fare worse than communities without fracking.
Although some big players will do incredibly well in this speculative industry, most domestic and foreign (of whom there are many) investors will be losing billions as large and small companies go belly up. The Oil Drum conducted a detailed evaluation of investment in shale-gas fracking last autumn and concluded, “Shale gas plays in the United States are commercial failures and shareholders in public exploration and production (E&P) companies are the losers. . . . U.S. shale plays have been over-sold and are unlikely to deliver the results that investors now expect. In fact, shareholders have already lost most of their investment.”
Another claim the gas geezers make is that they’ll be creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for U.S. workers. Anyone who believes this has not been paying attention as U.S. corporations spent the past few decades shipping manufacturing jobs overseas. There are few factory jobs left.
Yet the energetic, environmentally conscious young people at PowerShift will have nothing BUT hazardous industry jobs available if the gas geezers get their way. And those jobs will last only as long as the finite gas does.
On the other hand, jobs in energy conservation, infrastructure rebuilding, and solar, wind, hydro, biogas (methane recycling), and other renewable energy production methods will last as long as the sun shines, breezes blow, waters flow, and animals and people keep making waste and passing gas (methane).
Maybe the gasbag geezers would serve a more patriotic and environmentally responsible duty if they would just recycle their own wind. Germany can do it, why can’t we?
Congress is buying into this . . . why?
It’s not just the NAT GAS bill. Many other energy plants and facilities and related industries are jumping on the nat-gas bandwagon.
It’s an all-out corporate campaign, and the multimillion-dollar PR juggernaut is swaying minds and votes faster than alarmed scientists, medical professionals, and activists can alert legislators and the public.
“I think the House can pass it in 30 days,” Nocera quotes Pickens as saying about his bill.
How has Pickens managed to get 178 (at last count; up from 129 a few days ago) cosponsors, including many members of the Progressive Caucus and Sustainable Energy and Environmental Committee? (Don’t they remember who funded the anti-Kerry “swiftboat” campaign in the 2004 presidential race?)
What’s especially puzzling is that there is a vast body of information readily available about the perils of fracking to fresh water and other things necessary for healthy people, communities, and countries. Congress members should see Pickens’s pitch for what it is: pure spin.
By now they should have watched the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Gasland by Josh Fox and heard testimony from Sandra Steingraber, Conrad “Dan” Volz, and other scientists calling for a slowdown if not an outright ban on fracking. And they must have read Ian Urbina’s three-part series in the New York Times that shares never-reported studies by the Environmental Protection Agency revealing lax regulations and numerous cases of water contamination, as well as a confidential study by the drilling industry that concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in waterways. Or Urbina’s latest piece in the Times, “Millions of Gallons of Hazardous Chemicals Injected into Wells.”
Perhaps the legislators just don’t have time to watch a 107-minute film about a subject that affects the whole country? Or read front-page New York Times coverage. Perhaps they don’t have environmental or health advisers on their staff to debunk the lousy science being foisted on them by the gasbags and explain the unacceptable tradeoffs of fracking? Perhaps they just believe the propaganda. Perhaps, uh . . . ?
Surely Pickens isn’t handing out campaign contribution checks or promising them lifetime water supplies. Surely not that.
So, then, what’s going on in Congress?
Those Congress members have to answer to the next generation of voters. Because it’s certain that if Pickens and his corporate cronies get their way, the young people at PowerShift don’t stand a chance. They’ll be fracked. And they will remember who fracked their future.
Let’s hope the PowerShift youth, unlike their elders, have the smarts and vision to shift the balance of power from the megacorporations to the people. And to shift the power supply from the fossil fuels of greedy geezers to the environmentally sound fuels of the future.
*Note: I am using the word “geezer” here as a pejorative, although I have nothing against elders, have loved and still love quite a few of them, and am well on the way to becoming one myself. I hope to get there, and to remain such for a long time.
Maura Stephens is an independent journalist and cofounder of the Coalition to Protect New York.
More info
Steve Horn, PR Watch: Fracking Insiders Score Big; Americans Not Told True Costs of Massive Drilling
Ian Urbina, New York Times: three-part series on lax regulations on water used in fracking, March 2011
Spectra Energy Watch: Shale Gas or Shell Game Part I, Part II, on Deborah Rogers’s research
Barth report: Unanswered Questions About The Economic Impact of Gas Drilling In the Marcellus Shale: Don’t Jump to Conclusions
Local group warns Auburn on gas well water Apr. 18, 2011
April 18, 2011
Local group warns Auburn on gas well water
Christopher Caskey / The Citizen | Posted: Monday, April 18, 2011 3:05 am
A group of local citizens concerned about natural gas drilling is calling on the city of Auburn to tighten regulations related to gas well water at its sewage treatment plant.
A letter signed by 75 people questioned how the city can trust that the companies currently dumping well water at the plant to follow the rules. They specifically pointed to a recent public notice that announced citations against six natural gas drilling companies for failing to file proper monitoring reports in 2010.
The group, which calls itself the Cayuga Anti-Fracking Alliance, wants the city to do one of two things. Either charge an “exorbitant price” to take the water and require all drilling firms to accept any future liability related to environmental or health impacts from the water, or refuse to take natural gas well water altogether.
City and state regulations currently ban any water from the controversial Marcellus shale formation and from wells that use a process known as high-volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing (or fracking, for short) from going into the city’s wastewater plant.
The firms cited in March for the reporting violations were also forced to produce certification that no water from the Marcellus Shale was discharged into the local plant.
“How do we know that this is the case apart from taking natural gas companies at their word?” the group asks in their letter to the Auburn City Council.
“Bluntly put, the natural gas industry has no incentive to tell the truth,” the letter later states.
Members of the city council say they are intrigued by the group’s concerns. Auburn Mayor Michael Quill said on Thursday that the council will hold a work session in the coming weeks to try and answer some questions and discuss issues related to processing well water at the city plant.
Quill said he is interested in studying legislation in other municipalities about processing well water and see if the city should change its own regulations. A work session on the issue would be a way to “get everyone in a room together talking to each other” about the issue, he said.
“None of us want anything (processed at the plant) that’s detrimental to the environment,” Quill said.
Councilor Gilda Brower said she’s also watching the issue closely. She said on Thursday that the city may have to do more testing of the water that comes through. Though Brower said she’s in favor of going even further, at this point.
“I would support a ban, for sure,” Brower said.
The city’s wastewater plant has accepted natural gas well water for more than a decade. But that water, and natural gas drilling, has become the focus of controversy in recent years.
The horizontal hydrofracking process is used to pull large amounts of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a large underground formation that runs through parts of New York’s Southern Tier and Pennsylvania.
The natural gas well water processed at the Auburn plant mostly comes from wells in the Trenton Black River, Queenston, Oriskany and Oneida formations in New York state and is hauled by a handful of companies. The water is considered industrial waste, and the city must include all sources in an industrial pretreatment program filed with the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Each hauler must report the wells and formations from which the water comes.
The wastewater from the Marcellus wells contains higher levels of contaminants, radioactive materials, chlorides and dissolved solids than water from a typical gas well that uses a conventional, vertical drilling process. The water coming into the Auburn site contains lower concentrations of contaminants, according to city officials.
The state is currently in the process of finishing an environmental review for horizontal drilling in the Marcellus formation. And as that process continues, the members of the Cayuga Anti-Fracking Alliance are one of dozens of environmental groups looking to ban horizontal drilling in New York state.
Auburn resident Beth Cuddy, who helped bring the local group together, said she started focusing on the issue recently when she saw in a national media report that said Auburn accepts well water.
She described the organization as an “informal group,” though she said they plan to organize local rallies and events to raise awareness about the hydrofracking issue. This weekend they held private screenings of a documentary on the issue, and Cuddy said they are looking for other times and places to hold similar screenings.
They also plan to continue lobbying local officials and raise awareness about environmental issues surrounding hydrofracking.
“I don’t see any way it (hydrofracking) can be done where it doesn’t affect the water,” Cuddy said. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to destroy the one resource we need to survive as a human race.”
Staff writer Christopher Caskey can be reached at 282-2282 orchristopher.caskey@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter at CitizenCaskey.
