So now all of the “produced” (polluted) water that they make at Pennsylvania fracking sites will be either reused when possible, or sent to Ohio for disposal in a deep disposal well when it its just to toxic to reuse.
Only July 1st the current horizontal fracking ban in NY will will expire. Bromide, heavy metals, and in the Marcellus Shale especially radiation from uranium, will be strewn everywhere.
A regional rally to ban fracking will be held on June 25th, its is called the “Day of Action”. You can find out more at www.gasmain.org
Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial drilling technique that injects millions of tons of highly toxic chemical fluids into the ground to break apart shale and release natural gas. Even while scientists believe these chemicals may already be poisoning America’s drinking water, the natural gas industry has unleashed a massive 34-state drilling campaign. So here are the top ten reasons why NOT to frack in New York, or anywhere.
10. The Old Paradigm
If we just drill for more fossil fuels, we are only putting off the inevitable, and destroying the environment for short-term gains and profits. We need to develop affordable and sustainable forms of energy; simply finding another finite substitute for oil will only continue the old paradigm and drill us deeper into this insane hole of unsustainability. “Clean” natural gas, during harvesting or use, is a lie!
9. Experts Say Beware
Ronald E. Bishop, Ph.D., CHO who is part of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at the State University of New York, College at Oneonta wrote:
“Over the last decade, operators in the natural gas industry have developed highly sophisticated methods and materials for the exploration and production of methane from unconventional reservoirs. In spite of the technological advances made to date, these activities pose significant chemical and biological hazards to human health and ecosystem stability.”
This is from Dr. Bishops January 2011 “draft” paper Chemical and Biological Risk Assessment for Natural Gas Extraction in New York.France is on track to ban hydraulic fracturing altogether for reasons just like these.
8. Well Pads of Destruction
When hydrofracked and drilled horizontally, wells require large, industrial pad sites, this includes new roads to each well, compressor, and any other access points (such as water). Depending on how many wellheads it will contain, a pad will need to range from 5-15 acres, and of course anything in the way gets destroyed.
7. Noise Pollution
With natural gas production wells have temporary noise pollution from drilling and fracking that will last about a month per well. After the well is set, compressor stations will be needed for every 100 or so wells in order to bring the gas pressure. Compressor stations are permanent, extremely noisy, and run day and night. Not to mention the next category, traffic.
6. Traffic
The considerable amount of trucks needed, 800 to 1500 (avg of 960) loads of water, materials, chemicals, and equipment will ruin small towns and take a huge toll on public roads. The large scale of development planned for the Marcellus, and the fact that it must be fracked, translates to dramatic increases in traffic compared to that generated by drilling conventional wells.
5. Toxic Waste
The “produced water” from the Marcellus Shale is toxic waste. “Produced Water” is the industry term to sanitize this noxious, polluted water. This is a separate category from the fracking fluids because besides the added chemicals, the water picks up hydrocarbons, heavy metals like arsenic, and radioactivity from the shale and becomes even worse than the mix that goes in. In fact a study at the University of Buffalo found hydraulic fracturing causes uranium that is naturally trapped inside Marcellus shale to be released. According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, billions of gallons of waste water will be “produced” and will need to be trucked to a disposal site. The most common method of dumping will be Deep Well Injection Disposal, where the waste is forced underground at high pressure into dry gas wells. We take gas out and pump toxic, radioactive waste back in.
4. Air Pollution
Each well site emits constant and signifigant air pollution. Pollution comes from diesel generators, drill rigs, trucks and other equipment, condensate tanks and the flaring of wells. These are all significant sources of VOC’s and nitrogen oxide, which react with sunlight to form ozone. Proposed Marcellus Shale drilling in New York will be high density. In high-density drilling areas in Colorado and Wyoming, rural communities that were once pristine now have ozone levels higher than Los Angeles. Ozone can cause a range of respiratory health problems and lung disease.
3. Danger of Explosions and Spills
A fracking well in Canton, Pennsylvania exploded, spilling thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals over farms, fields and the private property of local families for about 48 hours. The chemicals even flowed into a creek that connects to the Susquehanna River. Unfortunately, because of Dick Cheney’s “Halliburton loophole” for the oil and gas industry, the corporation that runs the well, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, is under no legal obligation to pay for their mess or for the medical expenses of the people that may suffer health problems as a result.
2. Fracking Fluids
Fluid technology for shale gas recovery is mostly owned by Halliburton, you know the guys that messed up the concrete on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and helped cause one of the largest environmental disasters in the world.
Halliburton classifies the fracking fluids as proprietary, this means it’s a trade secret, so they cant be disclosed without damaging the company. Except those in Halliburton involved in fracking, nobody knows for sure what is in these chemicals. Just the ones we do know are horrible and possibly catastrophic. Samples from well blowouts and fluids pits in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico found fluids to contain diesel fuel and more than 200 different kinds of chemicals, over 95% of which have adverse side effects including brain damage, birth defects and cancer.
1. Water Usage
Fracking requires extremely large quantities of fresh water, which the world is running out of. It is feasible that son water could be just as valuable as natural gas or oil. Fracking the requires many billions of gallons of water over decades. It takes 2 to 9 MILLION gallons per frack, and each well can be fractured 4 to 10 times (avg. of 6). This water can be withdrawn from lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands, ponds, and wells. Because the water becomes contaminated, it may never be returned to the watershed, rain cycle, or the water supply for some of America’s largest population centers. And there is always the chance of water contamination; Halliburton and Trans Ocean said it would not happen in the Gulf of Mexico too. Fracking is exempt from the Clean Water Act, due to the aforementioned “Halliburton loophole”
How to help:
We have been on the fracking issue a lot here lately, that is because in our state of New York there has been a temporary ban on horizontal hydrofracking pending an environmental review, that ban is about to either end, or be renewed, so the fight is going strong here. The environmental report does not come out until 2012, so the moratorium is needed until at least then, we hope forever. We are up against millions of dollars in energy company advertisements and bribes, so donations are always welcome.
But even if you have no money, please write to, President Obama, your Governor, Senators, Congresspeople, and even your state Senators and local representatives, and tell them that you aren’t willing to sacrifice Americas water supply for a scant number of temporary jobs, a tiny share of the of money, and a whole lot of hot air from the energy companies. The State Senate and Gov. Cuomo renewing the temporary ban on horizontal hydraulic fracturing in New York is a big chance to deal a gigantic blow to fracking in America, and gain enough time to put a permanent ban in place. It also shows that everyone in any state CAN win.
If you fill out this form, we will print the letter on FSC certified recycled paper and send it to Gov. Cuomo, your Senator, Congressperson, or President Obama, for you, for free.
If you live in New York State:
You may also contact the Governor’s office by phone (518) 474-8390
or mail:
The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo Governor of New York State NYS State Capitol Building Albany, NY 12224
State Senators can be contacted here: http://www.nysenate.gov/contact_form
Please see your states website for more information outside of NY.
The moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is about to expire in NY. So why was there a ban in the first place?
I have to admit, though I had heard of fracking and had heard it was bad, when asked to give a specific definition or explain exactly what about it is bad, I found myself stumbling, so I decided to do a bit more investigation into the issue.
In its most general sense, fracking (short for hydraulic fracturing, also called hydrofracking , due to its use of large amounts of water) is a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling. Once a well is drilled (natural gas wells used for fracking are usually between one and three miles deep), millions of gallons of water, sand, and proprietary chemicals are injected into it under high pressure, fracturing the shale and opening fissures freeing the flow of what is often relatively minimal quantities of natural gas that were previously trapped in the shale. This pressure used in pumping the water-chemical mixture used in fracking has been compared to exploding a series of pipe bombs deep underground. To understand the ongoing debate about fracking, it is important, first of all, to understand that there are two types of fracking: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical fracking has been going on for nearly 40 years in dozens of states, contaminating water, air, and food. It is pretty much what it sounds like: fracking which is done in a vertically drilled well. Horizontal fracking is a relatively new technology developed by Halliburton in 2003. It starts with a conventionally drilled vertical well, but after drilling down to the desired depth, the drill bit is turned 90 degrees and continues to drill horizontally under shale deposits. This horizontal drilling usually goes out from the original well by sometimes as much as a mile after which the fracking process can begin. A well can be horizontally fracked as many as fifteen times in different trajectories (think of the well as the center of a wagon wheel and the horizontal drilling as spokes) devastating a very large area. While some of the toxic fracking fluid (called “produced water” in the doublespeak language used by corporations and politicians) remains underground, most of it is pumped back up to be stored in slurry ponds or storage containers where it is left to evaporate, contaminating the air for miles around till nothing is left but a thick toxic sludge which is then hauled off to a landfill.
Here are six major problems with hydraulic fracking:
1. In 2005 Congress passed an Energy Act that included (thanks to meddling by former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney) an exception for hydraulic fracturing from the protections of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. It’s called the “Halliburton loophole” and it is quite the loophole indeed! Thanks to this loophole, fracking is, for all intents and purposes, entirely unregulated.
2. This state of being basically above the law, has allowed, up until very recently, for Halliburton and other energy companies to keep the list of chemicals in the concoction pumped into the ground for the purposes of fracking secret from the public. Thanks to a recent subpoena from the EPA, a partial list has been released. Here is that list along with details about each chemical’s effect human health (and keep in mind that the released list is probably the nicest substances in the concoction):
3. Despite energy company claims that the fracking process occurs beneath and is insulated from the water table, people who live near fracking wells, have found dangerously high levles of methane and other deadly chemicals in their water supplies. Check out this news brief about tap water on fire at a Colorado home near a well. This is only one example out of hundreds. People, pets, and livestock have gotten sick from drinking water contaminated by fracking and where the methane levels are high enough, there have even been explosions. What is particularly interesting is that while officially stating that such contamination has nothing to do with fracking, energy companies pay to truck in bottled water for homes whose water has been effected. For example, Victoria Switzer, a resident of Susquehanna County, PA, stated that after Cabot Oil and Gas Company started drilling deep underground and fracking for natural gas in her area, water from her well started coming up “bubbly, smelly, and foamy” and undrinkable. Though Cabot insisted that it didn’t cause the problem, they did start trucking in bottled drinking water for her and 22 other families whose wells were also fouled. If fracking truly had no effect on groundwater, why would Cabot (and other energy companies) pay to replace local drinking water?
4. Speaking of water, the process of fracking uses millions of gallons of clean usable water. In a world where clean drinking water, in many regions, is becoming an increasingly rare resource, it seems incredibly wasteful to destroy the water we are lucky enough to have here in the US.
5. The fracking process for even one well, involves tens of thousands of diesel engine semi trucks to bring in the chemicals, the water, and the equipment. This means a lot of noise, a lot of road destruction and traffic, and a lot of pollution and carbon emissions to the regions where these wells are drilled.
6. Some geologists are saying that horizontal drilling and the fracking process exhaust the well within as few as 8 years with a 75% decline in output after the first year. This means that the safety of our water and air are being endangered in exchange for a quick payoff to the industry which in the long run, will not help America with its energy crisis. Halliburton and gas companies will take the money and leave taxpayers with the devastation and clean-up.
So… why is this issue particularly important at this moment in time?
The southern half of the state of New York (as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and West Virginia) lies on one of the world’s largest natural gas stores buried in what is called the Marcellus Shale. This is a thick seam of horizontal shale which cannot be tapped into without the use of horizontal drilling and fracking.
In December of 2010, New York state’s Governor David Paterson, signed a seven month moratorium which while allowing vertical fracking, restricted the use of horizontal fracking (necessary to access the Marcellus Shale). This has kept us temporarily safe from fracking, but that moratorium is due to end on July first here in just a few weeks. New York’s current governor, Andrew Cuomo had stated that he was pro-fracking during the gubernatorial debates, but we need to convince him otherwise!
Below is an email form and a model letter. Please feel free to tailor the letter as you see fit, and then we will print it on FSC certified recycled paper and mail it for you. Let’s encourage the Government, and especially Gov. Cuomo, to do the right thing!
You may also contact the Governor’s office by phone (518) 474-8390 or mail:
The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of New York State
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224
