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Tags: gas drilling, hydraulic fracturing, Marcellus, natural gas, unconventional play
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Read about Rancho Los Malulos on this blog
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Elizabeth has now been subpoenaed by Chevron
for publicizing their poor performance..
Tags: blogger, Coronado LLC, El Paso Corp, ExxonMobil, gag order, intimidation, judge, lawsuit, McGill, Rancho Los Malulos, suppression, Texas
Every Drop Counts
How can I conserve water? My answer may surprise you.
Last week , a City of Longmont water board member commented that he has a fiduciary responsibility to sell Longmont’s ‘surplus water’. Currently, Longmont leases out 600 acre feet of water per year to big oil for fracking and drilling.
Oil fracking and drilling within our community will swell to consume thousands of acre feet of clear water per year.
Simultaneously, Longmont is encouraging its citizens to reduce their use of treated water by 3500 acre feet per year.
So, if I have a leaky faucet I have two choices:
1. I can repair the faucet to reduce my consumption. This will increase Longmont’s ‘surplus water’. The ‘surplus water’ from my leak will be sold for fracking. The water will be mixed with toxic chemicals to produce fracking fluid. The fracking fluid will be injected miles under the ground into the Niobrara tight sand formations. Toxic water spurts back from the well, and needs to be quarantined. It is trucked hundreds of miles to disposal sites to be forced into two mile deep isolation wells. The mountain stream water that Longmont sold to the drilling company is irrevocably removed from the hydrological system (assuming that everything goes well). It will never again runoff the surface. It will never again soak down or
evaporate up into the water cycle.
2. I can let the faucet continue to drip. In this case my leaked water will soak down into the soil or evaporate into the atmosphere or drain to the treatment system. It is conserved within our natural environment.So, what is the best way for me to conserve the water that is leaking out of my faucet?
Maybe I should just let it drip. Every drop counts.
Joseph Bassman
Longmont, CO
Tags: conservation, consumption
Deputy Commissioner Leff takes the position that the best way to proceed with HVHF in New York State is to make a firm commitment to minimizing all exposures to harmful chemical substances released into
the environment by shale gas exploitation. I argued that considering the history of shale gas exploitation throughout the United States and the limited ability of the DEC to enforce laws and regulations already in existence it would not be possible for DEC to act in a sufficiently substantial manner upon any commitment to minimization of exposures. There are many pollutant carcinogen exposures associated with shale
gas exploitation that have not been addressed in those areas where this activity exists, including: (1) benzene, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and soot particulates emissions of diesel trucks and compressors; (2) chemical carcinogens present in fracturing fluid and disposed of so as to contaminate surface and ground waters; (3) chemical carcinogens evaporating into the outdoor atmosphere from holding tanks utilized at gas well sites; (4) chemical carcinogens evaporating from HVHF waste water and entering the outdoor atmosphere; and (5) radioactive nuclides brought to the surface of the Earth in HVHF waste water.Shale gas exploitation is not currently possible without imposing a relatively large quantity of exposure to pollutant carcinogens upon New York State residents. At a time when cancer incidence is already far above an acceptable level as a result of exposures to pollutant carcinogens released into the environment by past and current polluting activities, shale gas exploitation is not acceptable. Our organization advocates for a ban on shale gas exploitation throughout the United States.
Please utilize the powers of the DEC to set about insuring that the public is provided with a scientific knowledge based portrayal of shale gas exploitation impacts on health. Will the DEC work in concert with the New York State Department of Health to produce a Health Impact Assessment for shale gas exploitation? Provision of such a document to the residents of New York State will build political support for the banning of shale gas exploitation in our state. Knowledge must be used to protect public health. We find ourselves living in a time of pollutant carcinogen exposure cancer epidemic. This is the time for minimizing exposure to all pollutant carcinogens. Please assist with the effort to reject shale gas exploitation in New York State.
Donald L. Hassig, Director
Cancer Action NY
Cancer Action News Network
P O Box 340
Colton, NY USA 13625
315.262.2456
www.canceractionny.org
EDITOR: At 7 p.m. on Nov. 14, 2011, in spite of 22,094 comments objecting to this project, 35 bi-partisan Pa. state representatives, 2 state senators, the EPA, the Sierra Club, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, and many other organizations across Pa., the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved and granted a certificate to Inergy/CNYOG to begin construction on the MARC-1 Pipeline Project. With this certificate, FERC has granted them the power to exercise eminent domain on private property owners who can not agree to their terms, or simply chose to say No to having a 30″ pipeline run across their property, even if it means the loss of use of that property by the property owner for agriculture, farming, recreation, or simply to have a safe, quiet property where we can raise our families, or pass on to future generations.
To add insult to injury, the environmental protections, setbacks from residential areas, upgraded materials and safety standards have apparently been removed from their application. They will primarily be using “class one” safety standards, which means minimum safety precautions and materials, minimum noise control [if any], and emission/pollution controls.
It will also be the enabler for virtually hundreds of unregulated gathering lines, an unknown number of compressor stations, and turn New Albany, Monroeton, Dushore, Laporte, Lake Mokoma, Sonestown, Muncy Valley, Beech Glen, Glenn Mawr, Picture Rocks, and Hughesville into a drilling corridor for the gas industry. This signals the end of agriculture, tourism, fishing, hunting, new home building, small businesses, as well as our way of life in the Endless Mountains. It will also have a devastating effect on property values, quality of life, public health and safety, while ultimately increasing property taxes to offset the damage to our already fragile infrastructure. Corporate profits will socialize the cost to those who live in the most heavily impacted areas.
This permit, along with HB 1950 and SB 1100 that will remove, and prompt the right of municipalities to enact their own regulations, ordinances, laws, protections, and safety standards regarding oil and gas development in and around our communities.
In short, life as we’ve known it is now over for Bradford, Sullivan and Lycoming counties, and life across rural Pa. This change will not be for the better. A 7- to 10-year “boom/bust” cycle, which we are already 3.5 years into, will leave rural Pa. a toxic and unlivable industrial and economic wasteland when all those “industry jobs” move on.
We owe our children, and our children’s children yet to be born, an apology for leaving this world in far worse shape than we received it, and for the burdensome financial responsibility for it they will inherit.
I’d like to remind everyone to take the opportunity to appropriately thank our obtuse local (Sullivan County Commissioners; Darla Bortz, Betty Reibson, and Bob Getz,) (Bradford County Commissioners John Sullivan and Doug McLinko) and state/federal lawmakers (Senator Pat Toomey and Congressman Tom Marino), who went out of their way to “urge FERC to overlook the concerns and interests of local citizens and approve the MARC-1.”
At this point, considering the FERC approval, and the horrific legislation poised to be passed, I no longer see a political solution, legislative remedies, or effective legal recourse to what is being forced upon us by the gas and oil industry with the consent of our elected leaders. Beyond an environmental problem, and a health and public safety problem, the bigger issue is that we have a democracy problem and a leadership problem in Pennsylvania that is bi-partisan.
Our system of government has morphed into a corrupt “corpocracy” whose goal is to control us by taking control of the essential ingredients of our existence: affordable and sustainable energy, pure water, clean air, and our sense of place.
This morning, I awoke in the security of my “home.” Tonight, I will lay down in just a “house” that I happen to own that has not had safe potable water for two months, and may never have again. I no longer have a “sense of place,” or a feeling of “home” here, knowing that I have no voice, no rights as a PA citizen/property owner, and am of no concern to political/corporate the powers that be. I am, as we all are now in Pennsylvania, politically insignificant, and simply “in the way” of the gas industry’s corporate special interests.
John Trallo
Sonestown
Our neighbors in Tonawanda, on the Niagara River in western New York State just south of Buffalo, were being poisoned for decades by a company that, unlike the gas/oil industry, does not enjoy exemptions from clean water, clean air, toxic waste laws and other regulations set in place to protect our environment and health.
For many years regulatory agencies DEC (NYS) and EPA (federal) ignored residents’ complaints of foul air and physical ailments, outrageously high rates of cancer and other diseases, and benzene levels 500 TIMES HIGHER than what is considered the highest acceptable level in state guidelines. Not only benzene, but other highly toxic chemicals were being released over decades into the air and water by a company called Tonawanda Coke Corporation. (No doubt others of the 50 or so industrial polluters that have PERMITS in Tonawanda contributed even more.).From the piece:Joe Martens, commissioner of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, defended the record of his agency, which eventually set up high-tech air quality monitors that documented extremely elevated benzene levels, leading to the enforcement actions. But he said such sophisticated equipment had not been available previously. So state officials had no way of knowing about the benzene, formaldehyde, and other toxic emissions seeping from leaks in equipment and piping at the plant, Martens said. “Hazardous air pollutants are difficult to detect. We didn’t have the equipment to do the type of detection — you know, police work — that EPA was able to do” later.After reading this, what kind of idiot would say, “Hey, sure the DEC and DEP and EPA will protect us from being poisoned by industry”? Ask the people of Tonawanda, many of whom have become very sick and some of whom have died because of the toxins dumped on them by this single iron-smelting factory..Yet we are to trust that the DEC and other flaccid regulatory agencies will protect us from Big Gas and related industries and their fracking and related machines? No way, Jose! We must tell the DEC and the governor that no amount of regulation is acceptable. DEC (and DEP and other states’ agencies) regulations are not acceptable. Only a full and total ban on industrial poisoning from fracking and other industries is acceptable..Read the great investigative piece on Tonawanda citizens who fought back against the polluting company, which was FINALLY CHARGED IN CRIMINAL COURT because poisoning us and our communities IS A CRIME and thus should be in the criminal code. Every one of the corporate officers and senior staff should serve serious jail time and pay heavy financial damages to those they poisoned. Not that any amount of money could restore the poisoned people’s lives or adequately compensate for their losses.
This piece is part of a fine, scary, and eye-opening new series by the Center for Public Integrity in concert with Slate and NPR, called “Poisoned Places.”As often happens during in-depth investigations — an unexpected discovery. Reporters learned that the EPA maintains a “watch list” that includes serious or chronic Clean Air Act violators that have not been subject to timely enforcement. Two versions of the internal list, never previously made public, were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. (More about the watch list here.)Congratulations to the investigators, researchers, writers, editors, publishers, and funder of these important pieces. May they awaken people to the dangers we face and help them force change to protect and sustain the places we live, the air we breathe, and the lives we hope to continue leading.
- Maura Stephens, independent writer, associate director of the Park Center for Independent Media, and a cofounder of Coalition to Protect New York
Tags: DEC, EPA, statewide ban, Tonawanda
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