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

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To anyone who knows a little of the history and nature of the oil & gas industry, it will come as no particular surprise that a couple of gas industry executives, at a 10/31 – 11/01  conference in Houston, recommended the use of military psy ops techniques and former military psy ops operatives to infiltrate and influence communities  in an campaign to “overcome public concern over hydraulic fracturing.”

Over and over, on every scale, from its dealings with everyone from homeowners to local government to state government,  the industry has demonstrated a gross sense of entitlement.  “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine.” (Links later. ) But perhaps nothing exemplifies this so simply and directly as the statement of Matt Carmichael, Anadarko representative, (see photo above) who recommended his fellow industry executives, “Download the U.S. Army-slash-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, because we are dealing with an insurgency.  There’s a lot of good lessons in there and coming from a military background, I found the insight in that extremely remarkable.”

His fellow executive, Matt Pitzarella, also pictured above, of Range Resources, seconded Carmichael’s advice:  “One employee who works with municipal governments in Pennsylvania has a background in psychological operations in the Army. Since the majority of his work is spent in local hearings and developing local regulations for drilling, we’ve found that his service in the Middle East is a real asset.”  (Story with audio clips here)

Of course, these statements reveal much that warrants commentary,  but somewhere near the top is what Carmichael’s phrase, “We are dealing with an insurgency,” demonstrates about the gas industry’s self-perception.

Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of an insurgency:  “An armed rebellion against a constituted authority (for example, an authority recognized as such by the United Nations).”

So if in the gas industry’s thinking, community resistance to the many hazards of gas extraction constitutes an insurgency, or illegitimate armed rebellion, then the gas industry considers itself a “constituted authority.”

Citizens everywhere have news for you, boys: yes, the very special treatment you’ve been getting for the last 100 years has made you a very spoiled, very  large, and indeed very dangerous child.  But you are not a “constituted authority” despite your wet dreams.  And we are not a rebellion.

You are the outlaws.  We are the citizens with whom the constituted authority ultimately rests.

One thing you got right: we are armed, with a weapon that history suggests you have little use for – the truth.

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Yes, things are looking a little discombobulated around here.  Please bear with us.  We should have it more or less back under control pretty soon.  Thanks.

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Leaked to un-naturalgas.org:

NYSDOT Draft

Transportation Impacts Paper

on natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale
for internal use with Governor Cuomo’s office and DEC

From the executive summary:

“The potential transportation impacts are ominous. Assuming current gas drilling technology and a lower level of development than will be experienced in Pennsylvania the Marcellus region will see a peak year increase of up to 1.5-million heavy truck trips, and induced development may increase peak hour trips by 36,000 trips/hour. While this new traffic will be distributed around the Marcellus region this Discussion Paper suggests that it will be necessary to reconstruct hundreds of miles of roads and scores of bridges and undertake safety and operational improvements in many areas.

“The annual costs to undertake these transportation projects are estimated to range from $90 to $156 million for State roads and from $121-$222 million for local roads. There is no mechanism in place allowing State and local governments to absorb these additional transportation costs without major impacts to other programs and other municipalities in the State.

“This Discussion Paper also concludes that the New York State Department of Transportation and local governments currently lack the authority and resources necessary to mitigate such problems. And, that if the State is to prepare for and resolve these problems it is time to establish a frank and open dialogue among the many parties involved.”

Click here for OCR’d version.

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Thank you all for coming to help preserve life in this peaceful spot in the universe. But please keep in mind: There’s no time left.

There’s plenty of time left for the earth. But there’s no time left for us. What does that mean in this beautiful setting where everything appears so calm, where we stand beside the still waters. Will they continue to restore our souls in five years? In three? Up to now they’ve been protected very carefully so that millions can drink knowing these waters are safe.

But are they safe?

Democracy is an alien concept to corporations whose only interest is profit. We’ve reached a point in this world where their influence is so pervasive — they get to decide our fate. Unless WE do something about it. There are more of us than there are of them.

Until we do, we’ll continue to have the bank bailouts, reductions in nuclear safety standards after Fukushima, more drilling in the oceans for gas and oil, we’ll continue to live with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case that gives corporations unlimited license to “donate” to political campaigns and thus determine national policy.

The national policy the US government is pushing directly threatens the safety of the water in this reservoir, which feeds millions in NYC and surrounding areas. That same national policy actually threatens the entire world. In April 2010, the United States Department of State established GSGI — the Global Shale Gas Initiative — to promote hydraulic fracturing around the world, especially to China and India, to make money selling American technology.

So the clean waters all around us are what we have and what we stand to lose if hydrofracking seriously escalates in this state.

While we appreciate these waters, let’s not forget how this reservoir came to be. Frank & Margaret Martin were the grandparents of Nancy Martin, who sold us our farm in East Meredith in northern Delaware County.

Frank and Margaret had a dairy farm that now lies somewhere below these very waters. Farms, homesteads and villages were taken by eminent domain to make way for this reservoir. She was so attached to her farm and so angry, Margaret Martin chained herself to the porch when the sheriff came.

At least the destruction of those farms and villages, where folks built their lives, resulted in something reasonably healthy that NYC tries very hard to maintain that way. But all this is threatened by fracking.

Just look at the shortlist of the destruction fracking will bring:
• aquifer poisoning from underground migration of toxic plumes
• forest fragmentation
• spills onto farmland and into fishing streams
• air pollution that spreads as much as 200 miles, with the toxins — heavy metals, non-biodegradable chemicals and radioactive substances — settling on our lakes, streams, rivers, ponds — and farm fields that pasture our animals and grow our food.
• billions of gallons of fresh water squandered and permanently contaminated, in addition to the further billions squandered by mining for sand to be used in fracking. One mine in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, would use 3,700 gallons of water per minute, 24 / 7, year round = 1,944,720,000 gallons per year. Not to mention the silica dust that people living around the mine would be forced to breathe.

All of which leads to terrible health consequences: liver, kidney, respiratory and skin disorders, brain lesions, birth defects, cancers.

Despite all this actual experience of people in states from Colorado and Wyoming to West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, there are folks who sign leases. Who doesn’t want free money? Especially if you’ve been living near the edge for years, which is true for many in this region.

Now, sadly, there’s a growing number of people who’ve signed leases, many of them farmers, who wish they could take it back.

Three years ago, Dave Weed, a farmer in East Smithfield, Bradford County, PA, signed a five-year lease. Now he wishes he could get out of it. He said, “Everyone thought they’d be driving a Rolls-Royce, wearing pajamas and flip flops. Now most of us feel like we’d be just as happy driving our pick-up trucks, with our duct-taped work boots.”

While the folks in East Smithfield have learned a hard lesson, as have so many in other states, including our own New York, the industry promotes the few myths it can trot out:
• fracking is perfectly safe
• there’s never been a proven case of water contamination
• NY’s regulations are the best in the country
• it’ll bring thousands of jobs
• natural gas — methane — is a clean fuel that should be the transition to renewables (sometime in the distant future)
• developing our gas reserves will lead us to energy independence
These are all myths. Take just one notion — that fracking for gas will bring lots of jobs. A group called Headwaters Economics is out of Bozeman, Montana, where the extractive industries have held sway for many years. Headwaters Economics did a thorough analysis of the economics of drilling compared with places that didn’t have oil & gas extraction. One conclusion of this report: “counties that focused on [varied] development choices are better off, with higher rates of growth, more diverse economies, better-educated populations, a smaller gap between high and low income households, and more retirement and investment income.”

A similar Columbia University study of Hancock NY came to a similar conclusion. While some may temporarily benefit, the entire community loses in the end. And that’s just the economics of it.

There is no time left. It’s no exaggeration to say that our very survival is at stake. The London Guardian published an article just last Monday describing a new scientific study that says our seas are in a shocking state from overfishing and pollution. Fish, sharks, whales and other marine species are in imminent danger of an “unprecedented” and catastrophic extinction at the hands of humankind, and are disappearing at a far faster rate than anyone has predicted up to now.

The American West has been in increasing drought for decades. The Colorado River has so much removed from it for agriculture as well as Phoenix golf courses and extravagant Las Vegas fountains, that the Colorado River no longer empties into the ocean. Remember, it was the Colorado River that made the Grand Canyon.

Another recent study shows that sea levels are rising at the fastest rate in 2,000 years.

Across the top of the northern hemisphere, permafrost is melting, sending ever-growing amounts of methane directly into the atmosphere. Remember, methane is 107 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

There’s no time left.  But we can — and must — turn this around. A report issued in 2000 was entitled “A Sustainable Energy Future Is Possible Now.” The opening line of the summary reads, “Today’s world energy systems, relying on fossil and nuclear fuels, endanger the very existence of humanity.” This report, now 10 years old, describes how we can remake our world into a place that is livable and sustainable:
• Sustainable energy is inexhaustible and can ultimately satisfy 100% of the world’s energy needs.
• The technology is available now.
• Sustainable energy offers enormous economic advantages in terms of job creation and continuous economic growth.
• Sustainable energy is cost-competitive if we level the playing field by eliminating direct and indirect government subsidies for fossil fuels, including nuclear.
• Conservation, efficiency and renewables give us the only path to true energy security.
Further development of fossil fuels is irrational to the point of — to be perfectly precise — insanity.

Maude Barlow is head of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization. One of her 16 books is Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.  She says that by 2030 the demand in our world for water will be 40 percent greater than the supply!

What can we do? First, we must continue to grow the ban fracking movement so that this scourge is stopped dead on our doorstep. If enough of us become mobilized, we can bring enough pressure on officials and politicians so that Senator Avella and Assemblymember Colton’s Ban Bill will get passed in Albany. Then we must change our way of looking at the world, our way of being in the world.

The CEOs of the powerful corporations — the Monsantos, the Exxons, the GEs, the Rio Tintos and Anadarkos, Peabody Coal or Massey Energy — these power brokers don’t realize that they’re suicidal. They don’t realize that they’re committing suicide for all of us. They’re not going to change. We must change the way we look at the world, at agriculture, at society, at water, air and soil — the very fundamentals that allow us to live — to exist.

Two South American countries have set an example that is both lofty and down-to-earth. They asked the simple question, Does Mother Nature deserve the same protection as your own mother?

In 2008, Ecuador’s Constitutional Assembly approved new articles for their constitution that recognize the rights of Mother Earth.

Bolivia passed a law that grants nature equal rights with humans. Known as the Law of Mother Earth, the legislation created 11 distinct rights for the environment, including the right to
• life and to exist
• continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration
• pure water and clean air
• be free of pollution
The General Assembly of the United Nations approved a resolution presented by Bolivia called “Harmony with Nature.” It recognizes that “human beings are an inseparable part of nature, and that they cannot damage it without severely damaging themselves.”

At the UN two months ago, the ambassador from Botswana spoke as Acting President of the General Assembly. “We should all recognize that we are part of nature. We should create a society in balance with nature if we want to survive.”

What can we do?

The Keystone XL pipeline is set to be approved by the Obama administration to bring yet more tar sands oil down to the US. Most observers agree that the Alberta tar sands exploitation is the most polluting form of extraction on the planet. If this administration has its way, a brand-new tar sands deposit — in Utah — will soon be exploited.

So what can we do? This action today is one of many taking place across the State of New York. More are planned.

What can we do? Some fairly well-known folks are calling for a Tar Sands campaign this August: Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, author Wendell Berry, Danny Glover the actor, Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, Bill McKibben, who started 350.org and several others, including James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Inst for Space Studies at Columbia Univ, who has said, “. . . if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over.”

This call is for non-violent direct action this summer in Washington, DC, probably during the last two weeks of August. Watch for the announcements.

Soon after that, in Philadelphia, there will be a national anti-gas-drilling demonstration on Sept 7 & 8. Again, watch for the announcements.

It’s time to stop letting corporate power make the most important decisions our planet faces. Because there’s no time left.

The NYS Dep’t of Environmental Conservation will be in charge if drilling goes ahead. This agency has already shown that it’s completely incapable of coming up with regulations that can realistically ensure the health and safety of New Yorkers. This agency has already shown that it’s completely incapable of enforcing whatever regulations it may dream up.

Yet on the DEC website there’s a surprisingly exact comment on the larger meaning of a watershed. And I quote: “Everyone lives in a watershed. It might be large or small. All watersheds are part of the bigger environment. What you do at your house affects everyone downstream and around you. You can set a good example for your family, friends and neighbors. Simple actions you take make big differences.”

We must stop hydraulic fracturing. We must ban it. We must stop mountaintop removal and the tar sands. We must end nuclear power — before all of these end us. As a society, we must embrace conservation, efficiency and renewable sources of energy as a way to live decently and sustainably — and as a way to continue to live.

Remember, Mother Nature bats last. We must change our way of looking at the world. We must change our way of being in the world. We must stop seeing nature as something to be conquered and recognize that we are nature, nature is us, and nature is our sustenance. We must collaborate with her and cherish her.

There’s no time left! What’s at stake is our very survival. We are all connected.

— Carl Arnold

In its Executive Summary of the revised SGEIS released yesterday, the DEC states clearly that groundwater is at sufficient risk from gas drilling to restrict gas drilling to protect  those drinking groundwater. But they only afford that protection to those drinking from primary aquifers. The DEC leaves the great majority of drinkers of groundwater in the Marcellus unprotected. They have some explaining to do.

I’m looking forward to hearing the DEC’s logic and science—their risk assessment strategy— used to assess that only some drinkers of contaminated groundwater need protection.

Primary aquifers are used as drinking water for some municipalities.

The list is on  on page 5: http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/togs213.pdf

The list includes about 300,000 people in those municipalities drinking water from these primary aquifers in counties in the Marcellus shale. (see attached spreadsheet and chart at bottom.)

Page 18 of the new DEC doc describes the exclusion of primary aquifers. It’s pasted below, bold face added.

No HVHF Operations on Primary Aquifers

Although not subject to Filtration Avoidance Determinations, 18 other aquifers in the State of New York have been identified by the New York State Department of Health as highly productive aquifers presently utilized as sources of water supply by major municipal water supply systems and are designated as “primary aquifers.” Because these aquifers are the primary source of drinking water for many public drinking water supplies, the Department recommends in this dSGEIS that site disturbance relating to HVHF operations should not be permitted there either or in a protective 500-foot buffer area around them. Horizontal extraction of gas resources underneath Primary Aquifers from well pads located outside this area would not significantly impact this valuable water resource.
- http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/administration_pdf/execsumsgeis072011.pdf

As the DEC says, this is in addition to the exclusion of drilling in the watersheds of NYC and Syracuse.

Now, one can make an argument, as the DEC has, that the exclusion of drilling in the NYC and Syracuse water supplies is based on their being unfiltered surface water (as opposed to ground  water), with a risk of “turbidity” from surface drilling activity.  And because there have been rules in place for years restricting industry and development  in unfiltered surface watersheds to avoid having to build  super-expensive filtration plants, as  for NYC.  A more clear eyed assessment of carving out the NYC watershed is that the DEC wants to excise the political opposition of NYC, which could easily create a critical mass of opposition in the state.  But they do have the surface water “turbidity” argument  to fall back on to explain this preferential exclusion, even if politics is the underlying reason.

But when you are dealing with groundwater sources, how can you rationally and scientifically exclude some aquifers and not others? Again, the actual rationale appears overtly political, rather than based on the science or risk.  The DEC is trying to carve out the opposition of the  municipalities drinking from primary aquifers—including Jamestown, Elmira, Cortland, Binghamton, Corning, Salamanca.  After all, these municipalities  are really organized entities of people…….. who would otherwise likely oppose drilling.

Problem is, there are at least 1,140,000 people drinking groundwater in the Marcellus shale.   What’s up, DEC? You’ve determined that groundwater is at risk. You’re going to protect 300,000 people from ground water pollution, but not the other 840,000.

Who are those people? Hello, it’s us, the people of rural NY State who will be drinking from polluted wells. It’s us,  people who will not be receiving equal protection against the very threats that the DEC assesses are too risky for the people of upstate municipalities.

I think I’m going to call my lawyer.

Ken Jaffe, MD
Slope Farms
Meredith, NY
www.slopefarms.com

Source material
http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/36164.html
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/305bgrndw10.pdf
http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/46381.html
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/togs213.pdf

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…b u t. . r e m e m b e r. . w h o. . w i n s. . i n. .t h e. . e n d .

Gas Drilling in Beautiful Susquehanna County, PA from VeccVideography on Vimeo.

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The gas industry talks the talk about being a good neighbor.  But do they walk the walk?  What are they really like to live with?  Calvin Tillman and Tim Ruggiero know firsthand from living up close and personal with the industry in Texas, and they’ve formed ShaleTest to help people across the country document the pre-drilling condition of their water.  The Truth Tour is a chance to learn what we can expect from the gas industry and how we can protect ourselves.

On the tour: Friday, 4/29

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From Ron Bishop, 4/11/2010:

“A few “eco-friendly” fracturing schemes are out and about, but they all come with some* issues.”

“Propane is a gas at ordinary pressures, but can be fairly easily liquefied with pressure.  It is, of course, a fossil fuel itself.  Using propane would get around using millions of gallons of water, but would not deal with some real technological challenges.  First, in order to suspend sand or other proppants, liquid propane needs to be thickened, typically by foaming agents like peroxide.  Using peroxide requires the addition of even more corrosion inhibitors than when water is used, and biocides are still required to control microbe growth.  (I’ve heard misinformation that fracking with propane requires no chemical additives; that’s just not true.)

“The use of propane introduces new problems with controlling a pressurized liquid that quickly turns to a gas when the pressure is released.  It’s not easy or cheap, and a lot of gas escapes into the atmosphere.  This is a greenhouse gas, though not as potent as carbon dioxide (another [so-called] “green” fracking fluid candidate) or methane.

“And none of these exotic “fluids under pressure” help with the toxicity of the deep brines that still flow out of gas well bores.  These brines continue to be among the greatest waste problems faced by the industry.”

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Some further observations:

• The only benefit of propane fracking would be the apparent elimination of water usage for the hydraulic fracturing phase of well development.
• Water would still be required for parts of the drilling phase.
• Frequently, one of the key problems caused by gas extraction, groundwater  contamination, takes place during the drilling phase, prior to fracking.  There are multiple opportunities for groundwater contamination to occur during the drilling phase, starting with the very first stage, which necessarily takes place with no casing in place yet as the lengths of casing can only be inserted as sections of the borehole are drilled out.
• Regardless of the method used to complete (or ‘frack’) a well, the overall footprint of industrial impacts on the landscape, and on future options for land use, remain the same:  the same number of pipeyards/chemical storage sites, access roads, well pads, compressor stations, pipelines, and gas processing units.

So:

merely reducing the amount of water hauled to the site for fracking
would leave in place most of the major problems
associated with petro-methane extraction.

Keep your eye on the big picture, New York:
hydro (i.e. water) fracking is only one of many ways
petro-methane extraction can ruin us.

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*Ron specializes in understatement.

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It’s not free money.
Landowners and communities must count the costs.

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Thanks to  Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition for this outstanding video

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