Be The Change. Public interest was so great that event organizers from Frackbusters shared the video online. This is part three of four parts. Video is courtesy of GrowthBusters.org.
“One horizontal well takes 5 million gallons for water… That’s enough water for the domestic needs for 150 people for one year.”
For information about “other events and happenings related to this issue” visit Frackbusters on Facebook.
Open Letter To A Notorious Gas Propagandist
Dear Mr. Shepstone:
I’m a fractivist and you don’t know me at all.
You are correct in only one of the seven sweeping generalizations you listed in your recent, hugely offensive blog post, Why Shale Gas Fractivists Are Doomed to Lose, NaturalGasNow, July 28, 2013. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but it’s actually not cool to catalog your dislike for people who don’t share your opinions, then list your misapprehensions like sociological observations. Please allow me to introduce myself…
1) “The typical anti doesn’t have to earn a living off the land he or she insists on protecting.” (more…)
Dear Governor Wolf,
Montgomery and Bucks are the only counties in Pennsylvania where there’s a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. We don’t see rigs from our front porches, or continuous flares. We don’t get headaches from strange odors, or drive on crumbling roads clogged by endless truck traffic. In the Philadelphia suburbs, it’s easy to ignore the health and environmental impacts of Marcellus shale gas drilling.
When the shale gas industry arrived nearly a decade ago, it was still somewhat plausible to insist that there’s “no proof” gas drilling has ever polluted water supplies. Today, there’s plenty of proof. In 2014, The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection reported 248 cases of water supply contamination since 2007. Nationwide, there are more. (more…)
Fracking Bans Sweep Across North America, And That Was Just The Month Of December
A steady uptick in citizen activism, and a broadening awareness of hydraulic fracturing’s negative impact on everything from climate to wildlife to water, resulted in successful anti-fracking measures on ballots across North America in 2014. Then, in mid-December, the state of New York banned it. They’re not the first, Vermont holds that distinction, yet they are the first state with significant shale gas reserves to do so. People are pumped.
Naturally, the issue is emotionally charged. Shale gas development not only damages land, air and water, it destroys people’s lives. Fracking promises to be a factor in the upcoming 2016 Presidential race. Let’s make of sure of it.
Despite customarily downplaying the successes of the anti-fracking movement in the media, activists across the county have racked up a handful of amazing, longshot victories. Fracking bans were won, far and wide, and they can be found in the unlikeliest places.
All through the year…
This share extraordinaire is via fellow fractivista, Kim Triolo Feil, a self-described “Detective for Loopholes in our Gas Drilling Ordinance” and Arlington TX Shale Blogger. Thanks, Kim! Follow Feil on Twitter: @kimfeil
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Frack Mess
Video by Defend Community Rights, posted on December 24, 2014.
Maile Bush commented on the Facebook share: “Christmas in a frack mess. Yes, my neighborhood is featured in this lovely song.”
Keep On Keepin On, Fractivists and Fractivistas
Warmest Wishes for a Clean, Green 2015!
New York will ban fracking — huzzah!
Despite the media’s subdued coverage, fractivists will always remember where they were when they first heard the news. I was sitting at my desk, reading emails.
Citing Health Risks, Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York State, by Thomas Kaplan, New York Times, December 17, 2014.
New York State Prohibits Fracking Delaware Riverkeeper Network Applauds New York’s Assessment and Conclusion, Press Release, The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, December 17, 2014.
Cuomo’s announcement was not only momentous, it was a surprise gift, and it was met with gratitude, tears of joy, and dancing in the streets. A spontaneous gathering thanked Cuomo, who merrily took one of the activist’s signs with him to commemorate the historic occasion. This very festive video was posted on Facebook by Sabrina Artel.
On msnbc, however, Alex Wagner characterized Cuomo decision like that of a reluctant, job-killing environmental anti-hero who was shying away from the limelight for the sake of appearing politic. I think she sells Cuomo short. I get the sense that the governor simply preferred to let science have its day.
“He Don’t Own The Sun”
Some of Ohio’s most talented musicians came together on Earth Day, 2014 to record this bluesy, planet-loving song, written by Jenny Morgan of “You Can’t Drink Money” fame. I love that it echoes a strong current among fractivists. Fighting fracking is not simply about stopping the boom/bust cycle of shale gas development, it’s about getting real, and actively moving toward a healthier, more sustainable fossil-free future.
Play it loud.
“He can make his billions, but he don’t own the sun.” Video share by Carolyn Harding, radioactivewastealert.org and Cinublue Productions in Columbus, Ohio. Thank you!
Funny how Exxon owns half the world but they still can’t control the conversation about fracking. Shale gas producers leave themselves wide open. They persist in underestimating the intelligence of average consumers, and we can’t help but ridicule them in return. Of course, there was Chevron’s infamous pizza party after a fatal well explosion in Pennsylvania, and last week the fracking industry attempted to throw itself a 65th birthday party. Never mind that it was low volume, vertical fracking which was invented decades ago, and that high-volume horizontal hydraulic slickwater fracturing wasn’t developed until 2003. “Happy 11th!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Here’s another history of fracking, one this behemoth industry doesn’t particularly want told, let alone illustrated by some of the country’s wildest minds. The pen is mightier still, thank heaven, and naturally the ink is fossil free. 
(more…)
Take Note: DRBC Wants To Vote On Shale Gas Drilling Regulations
It’s time once again to save the Delaware River basin from the toxic impacts of shale gas drilling.
At the next public hearing of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), on Tuesday, December 3, 2013, a coalition of concerned advocacy groups will present a scrapbook entitled The Delaware Is Me.
The idea is to celebrate the Delaware River and commemorate another year without fracking. The point is to show the commission why this high-value, highly productive watershed ought to be spared from the ravages of industrial shale gas drilling.
The magnificent, historic Delaware River touches 15.6 million lives, and extraordinary photographs has been literally flowing in. As you may have guessed, no two images – or reasons – are alike. You can glimpse some of the photos and join the event on Facebook at The Delaware Is Me, or follow on Twitter #TheDelawareIsMe.
Better still, attend the public hearing and stand behind watershed advocates and activists in Trenton on December 3rd.
The Delaware Is Me project is co-hosted by Green Door Magazine, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy.
Phil Doe Covers The Water Issue “To The Point Where You’re Gonna Be Pretty Angry” ~ Frackbusters
This short video, Truth About Fracking, features retired U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official, Phil Doe, speaking about fresh water protection to a packed house in Colorado Springs, Colorado on January 10, 2013. It’s part three of four in a series on YouTube.
Doe is concise, yet his message is sobering and universal. He opens with a quote from British poet, W. H. Audin: “Thousands have lived without love, but nobody has lived without water.”
“You should all be concerned about where your water is going… You should protect it.” ~ Phil Doe. Uploaded by GrowthBusters.org.
Being The Change
Public interest in the event was so great that organizers shared the series online. Thanks to educational outreach events like these, environmental groups in the Rocky Mountain State have successfully raised awareness about the impacts and dangers associated with fracking.
Recently, Colorado voters in three cities approved moratoriums or bans, as was reported by Michael Wines in Colorado Cities’ Rejections of Fracking Poses Political Test for Natural Gas Industry in The New York Times on Sunday, November 7, 2013; and in Colorado Voters Tell Fracking Industry to Frack Off, and by John Upton in Grist, November 6, 2013.
For information about “events and happenings related to this issue” in Colorado, or simply to find some inspiration, visit the Frackbusters Facebook page.
When it comes to the fight for a sustainable, frack-free future, environmental activist, Daryl Hannah, and United For Action founder and New Yorkers Against Fracking lead organizer, David Braun, are in it for the long haul. Pictured here, in October, at the 23rd Environmental Media Association Awards, these two dynamic friends of the earth got a lot of attention for the fashion they’re promoting.
Everybody Wants One
Braun posted the photo a few days ago, and now fractivists are clamoring to get their tees. Sorry, I don’t have a link, but you can follow this Facebook thread and ask Braun for one personally.
I can share Braun’s eloquent video in which he calls on President Obama to quit fracking around with our nation’s energy policy.
“President Obama, I Worked For You. Listen To The Science!”
I can also share this cool word cloud. It was texted out by Food and Watch Watch after the recent 2013 worldwide Global Frackdown. I don’t think you can ever have too many anti-fracking images, what with the latest gas industry advertising blitzkrieg. Wonder if those shirts come in kid’s sizes…
“So many great reasons people supported the Global Frackdown…” These are most commonly used words describing their reasons:
Pennsylvanians Take A Local Stand To Support People Impacted By Fracking
“Imagine finding your tap water has suddenly turned milky, red, or black and sludgy. Imagine taking a shower and finding that it burns your nostrils and stings your skin. Imagine learning that your well water is laced with industrial pollutants such as benzene, toluene and formaldehyde.” –ShaleGasOutrage.wordpress.com
Over 1,000 complaints like these have been filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection through the end of 2012. PA DEP has determined that 161 water wells have been contaminated as a result of hydraulic fracturing, with more tests results inconclusive or disputed. And the complaints keep coming. In these impacted households, tap water is no longer safe for consumption, yet the nearest water utility line is often many miles away. People are forced to rely on bottled water to meet their daily water needs. Large blue “water buffalos” have become ubiquitous across the Marcellus Shale region. (more…)
There are two kinds of people in Philadelphia, those who oppose a Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export facility, and those who don’t know about it yet. Oh, right, and then there’s a few who’ve been quietly getting LNG done for years.
Think About It – LNG Is A Bad Idea
Sierra Club Wants to Stop LNG Exports and they’re not mincing words. The new “Beyond Natural Gas” campaign website states: “EXPORTING LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS (LNG) TO OVERSEAS MARKETS IS A DIRTY, DANGEROUS PRACTICE THAT LETS THE INDUSTRY MAKE A KILLING AT THE EXPENSE OF HUMAN HEALTH –
“Exporting natural gas would increase fracking and carbon emissions, put sensitive ecological areas at risk, and do nothing to address our country’s energy challenges. Natural gas companies envision a network of winding pipelines and noisy, polluting compressors that connect the drills to the docks, slicing through wild lands, rivers, and backyards. Pipelines and gas wells will inevitably leak or rupture, risking lives and fouling the environment where people live and further polluting the air we breathe and the water we drink.”
Included in the post is the link to a recently published Sierra Club report entitled, LOOK BEFORE THE LNG LEAP: Why Policymakers and the Public Need Fair Disclosure Before Exports of Fracked Gas Start by Craig Segall, Staff Attorney, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program, with research assistance by legal fellow, Philip Goo.
Basically, Sierra researchers conclude that “The United States is sleepwalking through one of the biggest energy policy decisions of our time.” (more…)
GrowthBusters wants you to know “what’s cooking in the public debate about fracking” so they made this “fair use sampling” of video clips about one the most important public debates currently raging across Colorado and the United States.
Frack-Free TV: Lives and groundwater are routinely destroyed yet the shale gas industry keeps on drilling, spending millions to buy the silence of those impacted, and often their real estate, too. Big Gas has also been spending hundreds of millions in advertising to convince you that these Americans don’t exist.
#ThinkAboutIt
Pine Creek Valley, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
Doug Shields, the former Pittsburgh city councilman who most recently appeared in Gasland II, and a tireless advocate for Pennsylvania’s natural resources, recently posted this Postcard From The Sacrifice Zone on several anti-fracking facebook pages:
“[Pine Creek] isn’t too far from Williamsport, PA, the self-named ‘Energy Capital of Pennsylvania.’ I was there on June 19th for the screening of Gasland Part II later that evening. On the morning of, I took off for a drive up into the Pine Creek Valley with a backroad map of the area provided to me by a local who had marked out the drilling fields for me.
Shields included a link to this clip from the ever-upcoming documentary Groundswell Rising in which Pennsylvania’s scenic Pine Creek Valley is overrun with 24 hour heavy duty truck traffic due to hydraulic fracking.
Groundswell Rising: Protecting Our Children’s Water
“Heavy Fraffic equals to 400 to 600 water trucks to frack one natural gas well!!” says Elizabeth Greico, a Northeastern Pennsylvania resident. “Where will they get all this water? Extract it from local streams and ground wells? How long can the environment support this kind of aggression? Can you believe 80,000 gallons of toxic chemicals injected into one fracked well? Benzene? Fight back and write to you Congressmen, Representatives and local elected officials! Ban Fracking in your Town! Go CELDF.org ! They will help you organize! Don’t wait! Do it now!“
Can A Watershed Get A Little Respect?
[Updated]
Few headlines instill more angst among Delaware River watershed activists than the one I read this morning:
Wayne County Commissioners Urge Quick End To Drilling Ban by Steve McConnell, The Times-Tribune, June 22, 2013.
Who are these people? And why do they think they have the right to force a heavily industrial deep shale extraction process into a highly protected watershed which supplies drinking water to 17 million people from New York City to Wilmington, Delaware? It would seem this handful of county commissioners is ready to risk it all, for roughly 5% of the U.S. population, while shushing valid environmental concerns with the vague promise of jobs. Who’s gonna want the jobs if you can’t drink the water?
Tell DRBC: Pennsylvania’s Last Frack-Free Watershed Deserves A Permanent Ban!
(more…)
Energy From Shale is yet another generic new front group created by America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) to advertise the illusion that the highly polluting process of shale gas production is really shiny, clean and green. They recently launched their first PR effort, asking us to “Think About It.” Believe me, ANGA, I have.
Even when done correctly, fracking cannot be done safely.
All cement wellbore seals, every last one of them, will fail over time. Cement simply doesn’t last forever. Steel can crack. Even if drillers get everything exactly right the first time, cement will become porous due to heat and pressure. Earthquakes, whether caused by nature or deep waste injection wells, hold the potential to damage seals. In about 50-60 years tops, according to gas industry estimates, most wellbore seals will fail, eventually enabling pathways for fluids and gases to communicate with aquifers, geological formations or the environment.
Image Credit: George E. King Engineering, March, 2009
This is an aspect of the drilling issue that simply cannot be ignored. When it comes to the future security of our drinking water supplies, this is the crux of it.
Now, It’s About Gas. Ultimately, It’s About Water.
“It’s not roulette. It’s a certainty,” Gasland II filmmaker and citizen of the United States, Josh Fox, recently said on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher. “This is a problem the gas industry can’t fix.”
Headless Fed: EPA Punts Fracking Study
The good news is, drillers have the technology to reseal and replug failed wellbores. The bad news is, they have to do it fairly often. More than 5% of wellbore seals fail immediately. (more…)
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but apparently it says a lot more when it’s a photo of frackers fracking. In Pennsylvania recently, the battle to control the images used to depict the national debate over shale gas drilling has officially heated up.
In February, 2013 PA House Bill 683 was proposed by nine Pennsylvania lawmakers – Reps. Gary Haluska [D-73rd], Carl Metzgar [R-69th], Stephen Barrar [R-160th], M. K. Keller [R-86th], Dick Hess [R-78th], Dan Moul [R-91st], Mike Fleck [R-81st], C. Adam Harris [R-82nd] and Tom Murt [R-152nd]. Steve Todd was among the first to report it in his February 26 post, PA State House Judiciary Committee: NO on HB683. This bill would prohibit people from photographing oil and gas operations because they are occurring on agricultural lands. By fracking farmland, gas drillers would gain new impunity under a piece of anti-whitsle blower legislation, commonly known as an “Ag-gag.”
Yes, you’re reading it correctly. PA HB683 would make it illegal to photograph images of gas drilling operations – the good, the bad, the mundane and the incendiary.
And in case you’re wondering, Pennsylvania has about 63,163 farms. That’s roughly 7.8 million agricultural acres out of the total 29.5 million acres in Pennsylvania, which ranks 20th in the U.S. for agricultural production.
“HB683 makes it illegal to photograph a farm, a cow, a horse, sheep, goats, pigs, haystacks, tractors, chickens, corn fields, pumpkin patches, vegetables, fruits, and natural gas wells. Fracktivists have been filming frack sites, FROM PUBLIC ROADS, their videos are invaluable in documenting fracking’s destruction of PA.” ~ MarcellusProtest.org
Credit: Marcellus Protest
The bill is currently in committee, but environmentalists are keeping an eye on it. HB 683 is exactly the sort of legislation the PA GOP tucks into other bills and passes late at night.
Unsurprisingly, HB 683 has its roots (tentacles?) in similar ALEC-sponsored legislation proposed in other states. Dory Hippauf relates its absurdity in Arresting Monet – AG-GAG Pennsylvania House Bill 683, Blog.ShaleShockMedia.org:
“HB683 is modeled after ‘proposed legislation’ written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wish lists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC’s operations.”
PLEASE SIGN ON to the PETITION To Say NO to HB 683 HERE.
And if you have more time, please CONTACT YOUR PA STATE REP.
Meme’s The Word (more…)
Now We’re Cookin! (But Not With Gas)
CALL TO ACTION!
Rally In Harrisburg With Gasland II Filmaker Josh Fox
Tell Pennsylvania Governor Corbett, “No More Cover Ups for the Drillers!”
Tuesday, June 18 – 12 Noon
Pennsylvania State Capitol Rotunda, Harrisburg PA
Please join Clean Water Action, Delaware Riverkeeper Network and many others. (more…)
UPDATE via Mark Dodel: June 16 2013
SUCCESS!!
” Yesterday in Lancaster, PA, the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee voted 115 to 81 for a resolution calling for a moratorium on all frack drilling in Pennsylvania. This was a vote for the health and safety of Pennsylvanians and our environment against the out of state billionaires and corporations who own Corbett and the DEP.”
Resolution can be read here:
http://www.monroepadems.com/images/files/Moratorium_Fracking_Resolution.pdf
Read More:
6.15.13 PA State Democratic Committee Passes Resolution to Support Fracking Moratorium by Wendy Lee, Raging Chicken Press.
And here:
FIRST STEP: PA DEMS PASS FRACKING MORATORIUM by Dory Hippauf, Shaleshock
[ORIGINAL POST:]
CALL TO ACTION!
Tell the PA Dems, “STOP FRACKING NOW!”
Saturday, June 15th – Lancaster Convention Center
A coalition of concerned democrats will deliver a widely supported resolution to the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee which is meeting on Saturday, June 15th in Lancaster, Pa. They will address the party’s emerging policies towards shale gas production, urging them a second time to support Senator Jim Ferlo’s proposed Statewide Natural Gas Drilling Moratorium. Scroll down, or click here for a link to the action and resolution, written by Sue Lyons of Monroe County, Pa.
Use Discretion, Win Elections!
It’s time for the PA Dems to stop being out of step with the majority of Pennsylvanians and out of touch with the damage fracking is doing to our communities, natural resources, health, safety and climate! (more…)
Keep Tap Water Safe 
