In the past few weeks an impetus has been building in New York to delay the commencement of the natural gas play until the EPA concludes its two-year study on hydraulic fracturing. Activist groups have petitioned the DEC to hold off issuance of its final sGEIS until the report is in. Meanwhile, a bill is circulating in the legislature providing for a two-year moratorium on gas drilling.
For nearly two years now, many of us have been questioning what the hurry was, anyway, because of the bad news on the impacts of “unconventional” gas development in Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania. We knew the gas in the Marcellus Shale, then as now, was not in danger of drying up or dribbling away. Since that time, facts have come to light about the drilling process and the industry, about international energy dynamics, and about politics, culminating in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, that have helped to reveal the forces behind the pressure to drill and to put the drilling debate in perspective. There’s no sound reason for New York to hurry.
The industry continues to pound impatiently on New York’s door and to warn that if the state gives it too hard a time it will have to hurt us all by walking away. Never mind my personal response to this threat. Even from the industry’s own point of view, it makes no sense. True, a dollar today is worth more than a dollar two years from now. But the price of gas is presently depressed, and will presumably go lower yet as more of it is recovered. That means gas companies will realize less value for each mcf of New York gas they drill now than they will if they wait until a time when it is in scarcer supply. As there is no present capacity for stockpiling gas, there is no price float to benefit them, either.
The same is true for the state, in terms of taxes to be realized, and for landowners in terms of royalties payable to them, since both are measured by the price of the gas produced. I, for one, am unsympathetic to the respective interests of the State fisc and the hard-up landowners in getting a “quick fix” now, because evidence is mounting on the extent of collateral damage that may be inflicted upon our citizens in order to provide it to them. Part of that evidence suggests that the losses to the state and its communities from an immediate gas play, even in purely economic terms, may end up outweighing the gains. (I advert here to the study that was the subject of my March 31 post, and to another look at the economics in a webinar.
So, a quick fix for the state from the riches of the Marcellus Shale is probably a pound-foolish delusion. As for the landowners who believe that “their” gas entitles them to special consideration, they need to be reminded that when they leased away certain rights in their own land, they also gave away, free of charge, many of the rights of their neighbors to enjoy their own lands, as well as the security of the water supplies of people in distant downstream regions. That somehow fails to make their needs a priority for the rest of us.
Two years will serve to cool many heads. By the end of two years, there should be some useful published statistics on the human health impacts within drilling communities in other states, and on the communities’ economic health as well. There should also be progress in the unsettled matter of how to treat and safely dispose of the large-scale toxic wastes produced by hydraulic fracture drilling.
In two years, too, technology will change. The Halliburton formula could by then be superseded by something far safer. Whatever happened to fracking with propane, the process tested in eastern Canada and alleged to be safer and more efficient ? Could it work in deep shale?
In the meanwhile, two years lost to gas drilling will mean two years of confidence that the water we drink won't have stuff like toluene in it, and two years for safer sources of energy to take hold in New York.
By way of a postscript, I add that moving precipitously ahead with drilling in New York will NOT aid U.S. efforts to become energy-independent. Gas will not supplant mid-eastern oil until such time as gas applications become as broad as oil’s. We will need to keep importing oil until we’ve got natural gas cars and trucks. We’re not there yet. In the interim, New York’s supply , given the current glut in the U.S., will doubtless flow overseas: perhaps (who knows?) to Saudi Arabia.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
DRILLING IN THE MARCELLUS SHALE: IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY. BUT WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Here's a paper on the economic potential for gas drilling in New York's Marcellus shale region, prepared by an economist, Dr.Janette Barth, who's really done her homework. She urges that officials take the time now to look beyond the gas industry's projections of prosperity at some hard, cold statistics that point in another direction. These come both from New York's own history with natural gas exploitation and from the recent experiences of other states with deep-shale drilling using the hydraulic fracturing techniques to be used here.
None of this comes as a surprise to me. The only surprise is that no one in government seems willing even to verify the economic realities before setting our ship of state on such a dangerous course.
None of this comes as a surprise to me. The only surprise is that no one in government seems willing even to verify the economic realities before setting our ship of state on such a dangerous course.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
EPA TO THE RESCUE
It seems that, of all Obama’s appointments, the EPA’s Lisa Jackson is emerging as the best friend of the people who elected him – albeit under considerable pressure from Congress and demonstrators. Lately the agency has not only undertaken to review the environmental effects of hydraulic fracture gas drilling nationwide, but, in West Virginia, has proposed to veto a permit that the Army Corps of engineers had already approved for a large mountaintop-removal coal mine. This is a big reprieve for poor West Virginia. In recent years it has had to endure the despoliation of its land and communities by both Granddaddy Coal and its fat and gassy stepchild, which is now drilling in southern edge of the Marcellus shale. Of course, that’s in part because West Virginia is ... poor. But the fact of politics is that this kind of large-scale despoliation happens in rich states, too.
I listened this morning to a WBAI interview with Jeff Biggers, author of a new book about coal, Reckoning at Eagle Creek. A journalist and the grandson of a coal miner, Biggers outlined the deceptive mantras of the coal industry which, together with massive political contributions, successfully kept legislators and regulators off its back for generations. Jimmy Carter, having promised to ban strip mining during his campaign, apparently learned how difficult it was push back against such a powerful industry, and never acted on his promise.
Coal was cheap as long as no one tallied its environmental and health consequences or gave any thought to cleaning up its messes, and it’s been long embedded in our national culture as the principal source of electric energy. The “jobs” mantra has played a substantial role in the schmeer effort by Big Coal even though it has turned out that jobs have considerably shrunk over time, owing in part to the mechanization of the strip mining process. Over the same time, the governmental response to coal issues, Biggers says,-- even where the causal connection between strip mining and environmental or health damage was demonstrated -- has been a predictable compromise: to minimize the environmental damage rather than to curtail the particular practice that perpetuates it.
Now, Coal has convinced many, including Obama himself, that it can be “clean”. The industry has spent not one dime, says Biggers, to develop clean coal, but it claims that underground sequestration of carbon will curb the emissions that contribute to global warming. The industry doesn’t mention that the sequestration process in itself requires considerable energy, and thus more coal to burn and more money in Coal pockets.
Here in New York’s portion of the Marcellus region, the not-so-flush southern tier, West Virginia history seems about to repeat itself with natural gas. Gas may be cleaner than coal, but not while it’s being produced. The promise of tax revenues and other income to the state from gas drilling, and the deceptive promises of local community revival which I have reviled in previous posts, have blinded officials to the vast environmental damage that will result if anything like the officially projected quantity of deep shale wells is ever realized. Our New York regulator is firmly rooted to the compromise strategy of minimizing environmental damage from natural gas drilling by, e.g., providing setbacks measured in 100 or fewer feet (your pond must be at least 50 feet downstream of a gas well), and resolutely ignoring the compounding of negative impacts where more than one well is sited in a particular environment. The spills, methane migrations, and illegal dumpings across the border in Pennsylvania and in other gas-rich states, the unusual concentrations of disease symptoms within drilling communities, the economic ill health of many post-drilling communities – none of these things is leading toward any official determination in New York that drilling should be banned or limited. It seems instead to have brought on one-upmanship – Hey, our guys (all sixteen of them) can do this better than you!
We can hope that the EPA’s promised new study of “hydrofracking” won’t be too little and too late to avert serious toxic disaster. It is an entirely new EPA from the one under the Bush administration which simply cleared the path for whatever industry wanted to do. The agency’s 2004 study of the process, which concluded that hydraulic fracturing posed “little or no threat to drinking water”, did not even involve
water testing. It is that flawed conclusion that the gas industry touts every time it fears that state officials will wise up to the true facts.
If you are a New Yorker, be sure to sign the petition to the DEC demanding that it wait for the EPA study results before issuing any permits for hydraulic fracture drilling.
I listened this morning to a WBAI interview with Jeff Biggers, author of a new book about coal, Reckoning at Eagle Creek. A journalist and the grandson of a coal miner, Biggers outlined the deceptive mantras of the coal industry which, together with massive political contributions, successfully kept legislators and regulators off its back for generations. Jimmy Carter, having promised to ban strip mining during his campaign, apparently learned how difficult it was push back against such a powerful industry, and never acted on his promise.
Coal was cheap as long as no one tallied its environmental and health consequences or gave any thought to cleaning up its messes, and it’s been long embedded in our national culture as the principal source of electric energy. The “jobs” mantra has played a substantial role in the schmeer effort by Big Coal even though it has turned out that jobs have considerably shrunk over time, owing in part to the mechanization of the strip mining process. Over the same time, the governmental response to coal issues, Biggers says,-- even where the causal connection between strip mining and environmental or health damage was demonstrated -- has been a predictable compromise: to minimize the environmental damage rather than to curtail the particular practice that perpetuates it.
Now, Coal has convinced many, including Obama himself, that it can be “clean”. The industry has spent not one dime, says Biggers, to develop clean coal, but it claims that underground sequestration of carbon will curb the emissions that contribute to global warming. The industry doesn’t mention that the sequestration process in itself requires considerable energy, and thus more coal to burn and more money in Coal pockets.
Here in New York’s portion of the Marcellus region, the not-so-flush southern tier, West Virginia history seems about to repeat itself with natural gas. Gas may be cleaner than coal, but not while it’s being produced. The promise of tax revenues and other income to the state from gas drilling, and the deceptive promises of local community revival which I have reviled in previous posts, have blinded officials to the vast environmental damage that will result if anything like the officially projected quantity of deep shale wells is ever realized. Our New York regulator is firmly rooted to the compromise strategy of minimizing environmental damage from natural gas drilling by, e.g., providing setbacks measured in 100 or fewer feet (your pond must be at least 50 feet downstream of a gas well), and resolutely ignoring the compounding of negative impacts where more than one well is sited in a particular environment. The spills, methane migrations, and illegal dumpings across the border in Pennsylvania and in other gas-rich states, the unusual concentrations of disease symptoms within drilling communities, the economic ill health of many post-drilling communities – none of these things is leading toward any official determination in New York that drilling should be banned or limited. It seems instead to have brought on one-upmanship – Hey, our guys (all sixteen of them) can do this better than you!
We can hope that the EPA’s promised new study of “hydrofracking” won’t be too little and too late to avert serious toxic disaster. It is an entirely new EPA from the one under the Bush administration which simply cleared the path for whatever industry wanted to do. The agency’s 2004 study of the process, which concluded that hydraulic fracturing posed “little or no threat to drinking water”, did not even involve
water testing. It is that flawed conclusion that the gas industry touts every time it fears that state officials will wise up to the true facts.
If you are a New Yorker, be sure to sign the petition to the DEC demanding that it wait for the EPA study results before issuing any permits for hydraulic fracture drilling.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
RUMBLES FROM THE MARCELLUS SHALE REGION
Renewable energy sources are a long time in developing, and some of them already have their critics. Windmills are unsightly, some say. Solar just isn’t powerful enough. Geothermal isn’t right for everyone’s needs. Meanwhile, we’ve got great quantities of mile-deep natural gas (“Cleaner than coal!” “Cleaner than oil!”) to keep our nation’s busy engines churning. Why not just grab what there is and face up to our energy problems when it runs out?
Well, lots of reasons, most of which have been thoughtfully enumerated. Aside from fossil fuel emissions that contribute to global warming, Americans need to reconsider the profligacy with which we have come to consume energy, which is out of whack with our awareness that we have only a diminishing supply of fossil fuel to use to perpetuate the consumption.
Natural gas is being seen, especially by that wheeler-dealer, Mr Pickens, as the replacement for oil, not just for preparing the way for renewables but for heating and so that trucks can continue criss-crossing the country to deliver food and other products from remote centers to places where they could just as easily have been produced. As long as we keep thinking this way, we will continue turning up the thermostat to keep our leaky houses warm. The availability of gas, in other words, allows us to ignore both reality and common sense. It’s time to think both smaller and smarter.
Harvesting gas is not clean, as many commentators have noted. Nor is it economical, broadly speaking. It clearly pays off for the industry itself, or players would not be darkening the sky above shale formations like crows over a cornfield. They, of course, need not live with the dirty consequences of their work; when their feast is over, they can fly home. Newly rich land lessors, also, can take their money and run. I think many of the rest of us have wised up to the seductive promises of prosperity and have come to realize that the economic costs of coping and cleanup can equal or exceed the income to be realized. Last month, Calvin Tillman, mayor of Dish, Texas, told listeners in Callicoon, New York that his initial hopes of economic benefit for his little town were quickly dashed, that the tax base had dropped, and that he couldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to live in a place where breathing is a health hazard. The economic calculation does not begin to address the health and environmental consequences that simply can’t be cleaned up.
One of these days, clean and green technology will take hold. But if Mr. Pickens has his way, it will be too late for it to restore quality of life to the shale regions that will have given their all to the energy market. The money and the jobs will have moved away, leaving a sad landscape which a photographer from Syracuse, Laura Brazak, has envisioned as the dystopian future of the Marcellus:
What a shame not to have slowed down and concentrated on renewables in the first place. These may ultimately include different technologies we haven’t heard so much about, such as....algae farms. I read
that the chemical composition of at least some algae is identical to that of gasoline. Apparently algae as potential fuel is quite efficient, besides being eminently cultivable. Who could find this objectionable? There is something deeply satisfying about the notion of being able to apply what has been regarded as a pestilence to the solution of a major worldwide problem. And the best part? The wastes can be fed to cows!
Stay tuned.
Well, lots of reasons, most of which have been thoughtfully enumerated. Aside from fossil fuel emissions that contribute to global warming, Americans need to reconsider the profligacy with which we have come to consume energy, which is out of whack with our awareness that we have only a diminishing supply of fossil fuel to use to perpetuate the consumption.
Natural gas is being seen, especially by that wheeler-dealer, Mr Pickens, as the replacement for oil, not just for preparing the way for renewables but for heating and so that trucks can continue criss-crossing the country to deliver food and other products from remote centers to places where they could just as easily have been produced. As long as we keep thinking this way, we will continue turning up the thermostat to keep our leaky houses warm. The availability of gas, in other words, allows us to ignore both reality and common sense. It’s time to think both smaller and smarter.
Harvesting gas is not clean, as many commentators have noted. Nor is it economical, broadly speaking. It clearly pays off for the industry itself, or players would not be darkening the sky above shale formations like crows over a cornfield. They, of course, need not live with the dirty consequences of their work; when their feast is over, they can fly home. Newly rich land lessors, also, can take their money and run. I think many of the rest of us have wised up to the seductive promises of prosperity and have come to realize that the economic costs of coping and cleanup can equal or exceed the income to be realized. Last month, Calvin Tillman, mayor of Dish, Texas, told listeners in Callicoon, New York that his initial hopes of economic benefit for his little town were quickly dashed, that the tax base had dropped, and that he couldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to live in a place where breathing is a health hazard. The economic calculation does not begin to address the health and environmental consequences that simply can’t be cleaned up.
One of these days, clean and green technology will take hold. But if Mr. Pickens has his way, it will be too late for it to restore quality of life to the shale regions that will have given their all to the energy market. The money and the jobs will have moved away, leaving a sad landscape which a photographer from Syracuse, Laura Brazak, has envisioned as the dystopian future of the Marcellus:
“All the money is gone. We're living in an industrial wasteland that used to be our pristine environment. We're waiting for the first of many water treatment facilities to come online and in the meantime we're drinking bottled water. Somewhere down the road, we're trying to fix the roads which got ruined from the truck traffic. There are clusters of cancers and respiratory issues and skins rashes. The air smells funny. And there is no money to even begin cleaning up the mess. Mortgage companies cancel your mortgage insurance because your well water has become contaminated. People start to move away. Agriculture suffers and the vineyards and wineries close. Tourism tanks. Rich people stop sending their kids to Syracuse University and our other fine colleges until the "water situation" is rectified. The organic farmers have left and what was beginning to be a slow food movement dies on the vine. The plan to revitalize downtown gets put on hold again and all the money goes to clean up the sites of old drill pads and to try to find companies capable of dealing with environmental disasters of this magnitude--but they are all busy in Pennsylvania....”
What a shame not to have slowed down and concentrated on renewables in the first place. These may ultimately include different technologies we haven’t heard so much about, such as....algae farms. I read
that the chemical composition of at least some algae is identical to that of gasoline. Apparently algae as potential fuel is quite efficient, besides being eminently cultivable. Who could find this objectionable? There is something deeply satisfying about the notion of being able to apply what has been regarded as a pestilence to the solution of a major worldwide problem. And the best part? The wastes can be fed to cows!
Stay tuned.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Fueling Un-Food
Michael Pollan, the food writer, was a guest on Democracy Now this morning. He commented that U.S. agribusiness is well on its way toward completing its conversion of our food supply from farm produce to “food-like” substances manufactured with heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Evidently, oil and gas play important roles in all the complex processing that goes on in giant centers around the country. Maybe worse: oil and gas could be the very stuff Americans are buying to eat.
I won’t get into the ugly particulars of what Pollan had to say about what agribusiness has done to small farmers and school food programs, because his observation is ringing other bells with me. The pressure that’s coming from the incorporated un-food industry to keep Americans eating more while eating worse, seems to be related to the pressure that’s coming from the incorporated energy industry to drill for gas in our back yards. We’re being told we need more energy now and we need fossil fuel to keep America humming. We need it for...Monsanto? Cargill? To step up the manufacture of un-food ? To distribute un-food across the country, push more farmers out of business, increase the work load for the already bloated and warped health care industry (diet-related diseases accounting for a great proportion of the nation’s ill-health), all the while making the globe hotter? Not from my back yard we don’t.
Pollan said the industry is finally getting some backtalk now, from organic growers and co-ops and from people who actually prefer real food. There’s hope that the unnatural chain agribusiness has constructed can be severed before it chokes us all. Those of us living here above the Marcellus Shale can help that effort and ourselves by eating right and supporting our remaining farmers. But we can also do our part by refusing to contribute the energy that lies under our feet to the ignoble cause of agribusiness.
I won’t get into the ugly particulars of what Pollan had to say about what agribusiness has done to small farmers and school food programs, because his observation is ringing other bells with me. The pressure that’s coming from the incorporated un-food industry to keep Americans eating more while eating worse, seems to be related to the pressure that’s coming from the incorporated energy industry to drill for gas in our back yards. We’re being told we need more energy now and we need fossil fuel to keep America humming. We need it for...Monsanto? Cargill? To step up the manufacture of un-food ? To distribute un-food across the country, push more farmers out of business, increase the work load for the already bloated and warped health care industry (diet-related diseases accounting for a great proportion of the nation’s ill-health), all the while making the globe hotter? Not from my back yard we don’t.
Pollan said the industry is finally getting some backtalk now, from organic growers and co-ops and from people who actually prefer real food. There’s hope that the unnatural chain agribusiness has constructed can be severed before it chokes us all. Those of us living here above the Marcellus Shale can help that effort and ourselves by eating right and supporting our remaining farmers. But we can also do our part by refusing to contribute the energy that lies under our feet to the ignoble cause of agribusiness.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
How They Do Lie
GXYBAU4G29S5We knew it all along: Shale boom leaves industry considering US gas exports | FT Energy ...
Energy independence is the "national need" footing of the bullshit pulpit from which the industry has been preaching the virtues of gas drilling. So much for that pledge. The very least we should have been able to expect was that our plundered harvest would be reserved for use here at home.
The other pulpit props, the promises of community prosperity and good jobs, are proving just as unsturdy. The landowners and businesses that stand to benefit are few. And here's how the industry treats the people who work for it: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields — High Country News.
'Nuf said.
Energy independence is the "national need" footing of the bullshit pulpit from which the industry has been preaching the virtues of gas drilling. So much for that pledge. The very least we should have been able to expect was that our plundered harvest would be reserved for use here at home.
The other pulpit props, the promises of community prosperity and good jobs, are proving just as unsturdy. The landowners and businesses that stand to benefit are few. And here's how the industry treats the people who work for it: Disposable Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields — High Country News.
'Nuf said.
Monday, February 1, 2010
We Shale Overcome, Together
The City has definitively spoken out against any natural gas drilling in its watershed which involves the contemplated hydrofracking process. Some, but not all, of its spokesmen have also urged that no such drilling should take place in upstate regions, either. As a part-time resident of both places, I fervently hope they mean that. Given the powerful forces that have been aligned to make this “done deal” a reality, it’s essential that the City and upstate opponents maintain a common front until they both get what they want and need.
The watershed. Almost all the talk about watershed protection has centered on buffer zones, and how big they need to be. I believe buffer zones will not be enough; they can’t guarantee the degree of safety the City has said it requires. Out west, it has been shown that surface waters have transported contaminants long distances from wellsites, distances much greater than any of the protective boundaries for the watershed (no more than five miles) that have been discussed. All water is connected, it has been said, and our state has more of it than perhaps any other. Flooding is common within the Marcellus region, and low-lying bodies such as reservoirs are instant targets of stormwater, plus anything it has swept along with it. That can include chemical spills and overflows from waste pits on distant hills.
Underground contamination is no less a threat. Not even water experts can predict with accuracy the movements of the voluminous, chemical-laden waste water (some 70 percent of used fracking fluids) that operators do not pump back to the surface. Its migration through faults and seams, natural or induced, has no timetable. Migration could occur even long after all drilling operations cease.
In the event the watershed region proves to be treasure trove of gas, then the margins of any protective zone for the City’s water supply will predictably become jammed with as many wellpads as the law allows. The DEC’s steadfast refusal to analyze environmental impacts cumulatively will virtually assure that. The potential for wastewater contamination is such that, for the level of protection it requires, the City must demand a region-wide ban on the chemical hydrofracking process. Now, owing to recent revelations of high radioactivity in the Marcellus Shale, see the 2008 OGAP report, it may need to demand more than that. The health risks posed by gas drilling in radioactive rock may not be abated solely through the elimination of hydrofracking . The OGAP report states that gas production operations can concentrate naturally-occurring radioactive materials (“NORM”) through changes in temperature and pressure, thereby releasing toxicity that would otherwise be dormant. A ProPublica article has reported that radioactivity is particularly high in the New York Marcellus. If the watershed region is high in NORM, then the City’s concerns may need to go beyond hydrofracking.
Both advocates for the watershed and upstate activists need to insist on much better protection for the City’s water than a buffer zone offers. There should be a ban on drilling throughout the region at least until the known toxic threats can be controlled and the DEC can demonstrate that it is able, and also willing, to control them. If the City should go off satisfied with anything less, we will all be sorry, and that will be especially true for the residents of the largely rural Marcellus area. For them to be able to preserve, not their water alone, but their quality of life, their livelihoods, and the health of whole upstate communities, they will need the continuing power of the City’s voice of support.
Upstate communities. I choose to believe that City officials have spoken out for protection for upstate aquifers not purely out of self-interest, but out of an appreciation of the terrible burden that the state is placing on unsophisticated communities in the name of energy development. Water contamination is only one of many threats. Cash-strapped local governments and their citizens are totally unprepared for large-scale air and soil pollution, for constant noise, for (night) light pollution, for the fragmentation and flattening of their landscape, or for the prodigious impacts on their roads and weak infrastructure that are in the offing. The survival of rural towns will mean adapting to boom-bust economics, getting by on short-term money gluts and population spikes while watching their long-term assets – revenues derived from property taxes, agriculture, fishing, sporting, and tourism - decline. Some of these traditional assets may disappear entirely.
The economic picture for the Marcellus region and most of the people in it is, in short, looking uglier by the day, eroding any credibility in the gas industry’s unsecured promises of prosperity. The new wealth of landowners and retailers will not brighten the picture, because the rich won’t linger in a damaged place; they will take their money and run. For the rest, resistance to gas drilling as championed by the State is growing, and can no longer be dismissed as NIMBY sentiment. It is something that we, as communities both large and small, simply cannot afford.
City and country folk, keep up the fight!
The watershed. Almost all the talk about watershed protection has centered on buffer zones, and how big they need to be. I believe buffer zones will not be enough; they can’t guarantee the degree of safety the City has said it requires. Out west, it has been shown that surface waters have transported contaminants long distances from wellsites, distances much greater than any of the protective boundaries for the watershed (no more than five miles) that have been discussed. All water is connected, it has been said, and our state has more of it than perhaps any other. Flooding is common within the Marcellus region, and low-lying bodies such as reservoirs are instant targets of stormwater, plus anything it has swept along with it. That can include chemical spills and overflows from waste pits on distant hills.
Underground contamination is no less a threat. Not even water experts can predict with accuracy the movements of the voluminous, chemical-laden waste water (some 70 percent of used fracking fluids) that operators do not pump back to the surface. Its migration through faults and seams, natural or induced, has no timetable. Migration could occur even long after all drilling operations cease.
In the event the watershed region proves to be treasure trove of gas, then the margins of any protective zone for the City’s water supply will predictably become jammed with as many wellpads as the law allows. The DEC’s steadfast refusal to analyze environmental impacts cumulatively will virtually assure that. The potential for wastewater contamination is such that, for the level of protection it requires, the City must demand a region-wide ban on the chemical hydrofracking process. Now, owing to recent revelations of high radioactivity in the Marcellus Shale, see the 2008 OGAP report, it may need to demand more than that. The health risks posed by gas drilling in radioactive rock may not be abated solely through the elimination of hydrofracking . The OGAP report states that gas production operations can concentrate naturally-occurring radioactive materials (“NORM”) through changes in temperature and pressure, thereby releasing toxicity that would otherwise be dormant. A ProPublica article has reported that radioactivity is particularly high in the New York Marcellus. If the watershed region is high in NORM, then the City’s concerns may need to go beyond hydrofracking.
Both advocates for the watershed and upstate activists need to insist on much better protection for the City’s water than a buffer zone offers. There should be a ban on drilling throughout the region at least until the known toxic threats can be controlled and the DEC can demonstrate that it is able, and also willing, to control them. If the City should go off satisfied with anything less, we will all be sorry, and that will be especially true for the residents of the largely rural Marcellus area. For them to be able to preserve, not their water alone, but their quality of life, their livelihoods, and the health of whole upstate communities, they will need the continuing power of the City’s voice of support.
Upstate communities. I choose to believe that City officials have spoken out for protection for upstate aquifers not purely out of self-interest, but out of an appreciation of the terrible burden that the state is placing on unsophisticated communities in the name of energy development. Water contamination is only one of many threats. Cash-strapped local governments and their citizens are totally unprepared for large-scale air and soil pollution, for constant noise, for (night) light pollution, for the fragmentation and flattening of their landscape, or for the prodigious impacts on their roads and weak infrastructure that are in the offing. The survival of rural towns will mean adapting to boom-bust economics, getting by on short-term money gluts and population spikes while watching their long-term assets – revenues derived from property taxes, agriculture, fishing, sporting, and tourism - decline. Some of these traditional assets may disappear entirely.
The economic picture for the Marcellus region and most of the people in it is, in short, looking uglier by the day, eroding any credibility in the gas industry’s unsecured promises of prosperity. The new wealth of landowners and retailers will not brighten the picture, because the rich won’t linger in a damaged place; they will take their money and run. For the rest, resistance to gas drilling as championed by the State is growing, and can no longer be dismissed as NIMBY sentiment. It is something that we, as communities both large and small, simply cannot afford.
City and country folk, keep up the fight!
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