Head’s up, folks! What’s been described as a ‘war’ to protect New York’s natural upstate environment is beginning in earnest.
New York State’s environmental regulatory agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation, has taken steps this week to fast-track natural gas development in the upstate region. Concerned citizens who’ve examined the DEC’s recently published guidelines (almost 900 pages worth) tell us that they contain no sufficient protections against contamination for the upstate watersheds that supply drinking water to millions of people downstream, including the citizens of New York City.
One of the industrial era’s truly awe-inspiring achievements has been the network of reservoirs and aqueducts bringing water to three major metropolitan areas south of the Catskill Mountains. Incredibly, the water from the Catskills has remained so clean, thanks to stringent regulations for water usage and development existing regionally until now, that processing before consumption has been at the very minimum. Also, the New York metro area has the distinction of some of the very healthiest, best-tasting municipal water in the nation.
This situation, which New Yorkers have taken for granted for generations, is set to change. What has been described as one of the nation’s most dramatic industrial changes is set to take place, beginning next year, when the DEC’s new guidelines take effect.
It has long been rumoured that there was ‘oil’ under the Catskill Mountains, a northeasterly section of the Appalachian mountain chain, just south of the Adirondacks (where, incidentally, these regulations can also have a great potential impact). What actually exists there, about a mile below ground, is natural gas, trapped within the strata of an extensive shale play, called the Marcellus shale.
The Marcellus shale & its treasures of natural gas were beneath the consideration of energy companies .. until a technique of natural gas extraction called ‘fracking’ was developed by Halliburton. ‘Fracking’ consists of driving clean water, sand, and chemicals under tremendous pressure underground in order to fracture the shale and release the gas for extraction. The used water, now laden with chemicals, is pulled from the drilling site and stored in ponds lined with industrial plastic.
In the interest of the protection of ‘industry secrets’, the precise chemicals used in the fracking process are generally unknown, although concerned citizens have mined some of this information and found known carcinogens and neurotoxins among the chemicals that will be driven into the ground, in proximity to our aquifers, and stored in open pools above-ground afterward.
Despite industry assurances as to the foolproof safety of the fracking process, contamination problems have already arisen at an alarming rate where fracking has taken place in Pennsylvania. Further, concerned organizations examining the DEC’s new regulations see no recourse for individuals subject to drilling either on their own land, having granted the energy companies exploratory leases (with the possibility of payout for a hit), or on neighboring lands, should their lives be negatively impacted.
The fracturing process, developed by Halliburton, is not subject to restrictions under the Clean Water Act, as decided under the Cheney White House.
Here in rural New York, the organization Catskill Mountainkeeper has been at the forefront of the current issue, working tirelessly for those citizens set to be seriously impacted by fast-tracked drilling.
New York City dwellers, this means you.
Their latest action alert reads, in part, as follows:
GAS DRILLING BULLETIN
THE BIGGEST CASUALTY OF GAS DRILLING WILL BE YOU!
The implementation of gas drilling is being fast tracked. The number of opportunities
to impact the outcome is dwindling. If all of us who live in and love the Catskills
don’t stand up now, the results are very likely to be catastrophic.
As Catskill Mountainkeeper has reported, the provisions of the Draft Supplemental
Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) governing natural gas drilling issued
on September 30, 2009, are woefully inadequate. The proposed regulations simply
won’t provide enough protection for the Catskills and the New York City water supply.
There is an unacceptable disregard for the potential public health issues that have
been documented to be a byproduct of natural gas drilling. In part these come from
the toxic chemicals that are used in hydro-fracking (the process by which gas is
released from the shale rock formations deep underground). These chemicals are
being knowingly injected into our air, drinking water and blood streams without
our knowledge or consent. Unless we are able to effectively mobilize ourselves
we appear to be setting ourselves up for a host of unparalleled multi-generational
diseases and health afflictions.Consider the following stories from nearby Dimock, PA., reported by Jon Hurdle at
Reuters on Friday March 13, 2009:
When her children started missing school because of persistent diarrhea and vomiting,
Pat Farnelli began to wonder if she and her family were suffering from more than
just a classroom bug. After trying several remedies, she stopped using the water
drawn from her well in this rural corner of northeastern Pennsylvania, the forefront
of a drilling boom in what may be the biggest U.S. reserve of natural gas. “I was
getting excruciating stomach cramps after drinking the water,” Farnelli said in
an interview at her farmhouse, cluttered as a home with eight children would be,
while her husband, a night cook at a truck stop, slept on the couch. “It felt
like an appendicitis attack.” The family, which is poor enough to qualify for government
food stamps, began buying bottled water for drinking and cooking. Their illnesses
finally ended, and Farnelli found something to blame: natural gas drilling in the
township of 1,400 people.
Ron and Jean Carter suspected there was a leak when the water supply to their trailer
home started to taste and smell bad after Cabot started drilling 200 yards (meters)
away. Not wanting to risk the health of a new grandchild living with them, the
70-year-old retirees scraped together $6,500 for a water purification system. “It
was kind of funny that the water was good in July but after they drilled, it wasn’t,”
said Ron Carter.
Tim and Debbie Maye, a truck driver and post office worker who have three teenage
children, have been cooking and drinking only bottled water since their well water
turned brown in November after Cabot started drilling. But she can’t afford bottled
water for her animals. Her cats have been losing fur and projectile vomiting because
they lick drips from the spigot that carries water from their well. Her three horses
— one of which is losing its hair — drink as much as 50 gallons a day. “I tell
my husband, ‘I’m going out to poison the horses,'” she said.
The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, a Colorado research group, has identified 201
fracking chemicals and found almost 90 percent had the potential to harm skin,
eyes, and sensory organs; 50 percent could damage the brain and nervous system,
and 29 percent may cause cancer.
Health issues, while critical are not the only concern. In addition to contaminated
drinking water and air there will also be:*
The tremendous disruption of our daily lives from hundreds of large tractor trailers
traversing and damaging our roads
*
The invasive noise of drill engines that run 24/7 and sound like jet engines
*
The disruption of banks of klieg lights shining 24/7
*
The draining of many of our lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers
*
The destruction of our view shed
*
The inability of local medical and emergency services to handle the types of chemicals
and other accidents associated with gas drilling
*
And the devaluation of propertyUnfortunately this is turning into a war to protect your way of life, your family’s
health and the value of your property – once gas drilling starts it’s too late!WHAT YOU CAN DO
Insisting that our government is responsive to those who elect them and pay their
salaries is a critically important principle of our country – and it works. Due
to pressure from Catskill Mountainkeeper and other groups, the DEC has reversed
their previous position and is now presenting public hearings where the public can
make comments for the record. See the schedule below. Please come, educate yourself
and be prepared to make comment for the record.
Thanks largely to their efforts, residents of New York City are now invited to a public hearing on the gas drilling issue. While many of these hearings have been held in the upstate region, this is the only one that has been scheduled for New York City.
It will be held at the auditorium at Stuyvesant High School, 345 Chambers Street, on November 10.
As of now, Mountainkeeper has no further information on the hearing.
Personally, I feel it’s very important for the city to get involved in this, since, as usual , city concerns will trump the concerns of upstate. That’s the way it always goes.
For this reason I feel it’s most important for New York City residents to get up to speed as quikly as possible in order to make themselves heard on what could be an incredibly expensive issue for the future, both in terms of human life and in economic terms if, eventually, the city is required to invest in a treatment plant to handle any potential hazard, either known or unknown, of this dramatic change to an environment that represents one of the state’s most unique & valuable resources.
Please think about becoming familiar with this issue. One of the best ways to do so would be with attendance at New York’s public hearing. Given a good crowd, the city may also provide more than one.
For more information, visit Catskill Mountainkeeper
right here.
Other regional organizations, like the PA group Demascus Citizens, can also be reached through this site.