A Fracking Shame

Marcellus shale formation, NY State's southern tier and Catskill Park- targeted for gas drilling

Twenty five (25) years ago, as a graduate student at Cornell, my master’s thesis topic was titled: “Local Land Use Controls to Protect Groundwater Resources“. I applied that topic in Big Flats, NY, a portion of NY State’s southern tier border with Pennsylvania. (full disclosure: thesis never completed or approved, due to events beyond my control)

One of my objectives was to develop a model local ordinance for towns located over sensitive river valley aquifers. The ordinance would help to prevent certain land uses and development practices from polluting groundwater and water supplies with toxic chemicals.

Today, those same portions of NY’s southern tier are part of the Marcellus shale formation targeted for gas drilling, using a controversial mining practice known as “fracking”.

Fracking injects highly toxic chemicals under the ground to fracture shale and liberate natural gas for extraction.

Gas and oil industry lobbyists have convinced a corrupt Bush EPA (read EPA Report here) and Congress to exempt this polluting practice from the Safe Drinking Water Act. NY State’s Legislature and Department of Environmental Conservation appears to support the practice as well.

Ah, Progress!

NYSDEC hearing officer faces standing room only crowd of over 300 passionate and well informed opponents of fracking gas drilling plan.

I attended the first of 4 public hearings on the NY DEC draft Environmental Impact Statement in upstate NY on October 28.

This all makes me too weary to write about it right now (I will soon, when I can recover, and explain how and why NJ has a big dog in this fight).

Interested readers can learn more here:

Serious Investigative journalism and coverage by Propublica

NYSDEC – Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program

NY Times Editorial – A Watershed Decision

NY Times editorial – Shale and Our Water

Sign petition to ban drilling here