Hulk, he’s my hero but Fractivist Barbie totally rocks! Our dear ole’ petroleum-based gal tackles Fracking fabulously, taking to the streets of Trenton, NJ to fight intrepidly for what she knows is right.
“Unlike my plastic composition, the human beings I love are made of water, and rely on water for their very existence. Contaminating drinking water with known toxic chemicals for the supposed benefit of natural gas made no sense at all.” Video uploaded by BarbieAndKenSpeakOut for wordsforabetterworld.com (more…)
“If you were looking for a way to poison the drinking water supply, here in the Northeast you couldn’t find a more chillingly effective and thorough method of doing so than with hydraulic fracturing,” wrote Paul Hetzler, a former environmental engineer with the NY Department of Environmental Conservation in The Watertown Daily Times in December, 2011.
Paula Clair of Garrison, NY cites Hetzler in her thoughtful Op-Ed piece, Don’t Sacrifice Water For Profits, in TimesUnion.com on March 31, 2012, writing: “Water is life. There is no life without it. Don’t let big oil/gas sacrifice our state, our homes and our health for their profit.” Clearly, Clair gets it. She’s awake, and questioning the source of her water. Her words reflect the growing public concern for watersheds, fresh air and food supplies. The Natural Gas Industry may be saturating our commercial airwaves with slick ad campaigns, but we the people have YouTube!
Everyone cares about water. Luckily, there’s new information on watershed protection everyday, making it relatively easy to comprehend the urgent issues confronting the 15.6 million people who rely on the Delaware River Watershed. The “Little Giant” generates $22 billion in revenue for eastern Pennsylvania each year, according to The University of Delaware, and gas drillers should not underestimate how much the City of Brotherly Love loves this 333-mile long river.
Yesterday, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission approved 48 more water withdrawal permits despite vocal protests and the lack of public comment. According to StateImpactPA, there were Protests, But No Arrests at the March 15, 2012 Hearing in Harrisburg.The Wall Street Journal also picked up the story by the Associated Press.
Unlike other utilities and recreations large-volume water uses, withdrawals for unconventional gas drilling – fracking – become permanently toxic and are largely un-returned to the watershed. They forever deplete the hydrological cycle. (more…)
Clean Water Action Gas Drilling Discussion Series at Radnor Memorial Library on Mon, March 26, 2012
PennEnvironment Marcellus Shale Citizen Empowerment Project Comes to Bryn Mawr College on Thurs, March 28, 2012
Sixty-five percent of the U.S. public favors greater regulation of hydraulic fracturing, according to a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted March 8-11, 2012. Pennsylvania now leads the nation in unconventional gas production. The shale gas boom effects us all. Learn from a local perspective at two upcoming local events where experts will lead public discussions on the environmental and economic impacts of industrial shale gas drilling in our region.
[Original Post]: Gas drillers want you to think Pennsylvania’s water supply was rife with shallow methane before they began fracking the Marcellus Play. Obviously methane deposits can migrate, but why would these towns have been settled in the first place if the water table was bad? Listening to residents in these Northern and Western gas drilling locales, you hear recurring themes about a whole new kind of water problem.
“Up until November, I could drink my water.”
“It’s black.”
“It’s really slimy.”
“Up there, a coupla houses, they’re starting to have some issues.”
“No matter how powerful and well-heeled the gas industry lobbyists may be, when people come together to defend our environmental values, we almost always find a way to win.“
Ads Cost Money But The Truth About Shale Gas Drilling Is Free
I laugh a little when I hear Gas Industry folks complain about how well-funded the anti-fracking movement is. To which groups are they referring? I’m a fractivist. I volunteer, and I’m in very good company. The organizations I support are transparent about their funding, too, even if it’s the wrong brand of donor, as was recently the case with Sierra Club. Difficult as it must have been, Sierra came clean about Chesapeake Energy underwriting its Beyond Coal campaign. Now, I suspect, they’re working doubly hard to get beyond Gas.
It’s true, there’s a growing list of major environmental groups who want to ban or limit Unconventional Gas Drilling, (more…)
Current Drinking Water Impact Study Emphasizes “Scientific Integrity”
Many fractivists think EPA Chief Lisa Jackson isn’t doing enough to protect citizens from the environmental ravages of Fracking. Iris Bloom, Director of Protecting Our Waters, recently posted that EPA is falling short in its duty “to ensure our rights under the Pennsylvania Constitution to clean water, air, and a healthy environment.” Bloom is putting out the call to rally EPA officials to use their authority to compel Rex Energy to continue delivering replacement water to families in Butler County, whose water has become toxic since drilling began. These families have found no satisfactory recourse with the PA Department of Environmental Protection who, characteristically, insists their water is fine.
Governor Corbett and DEP Secretary Krancer have made it clear they think EPA is overstepping when it regulates Pennsylvania’s shale gas drilling. They routinely refer to EPA’s oversight actions as “duplicative” and “unnecessary.” DEP can manage just fine on its own, thank you. There’s no need for EPA to investigate why the water in Connoquenessing Township suddenly began running red, orange and gray. (more…)
Clean Water Action * Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania * Delaware Riverkeeper Network * Earthworks * PennEnvironment * Sierra Club, PA Chapter
February 8, 2012: PENNSYLVANIA SENATE AND HOUSE VOTE FOR PREEMPTION OF MUNICIPAL ZONING TO FAVOR GAS DRILLING AND OPERATIONS; INDUSTRY INTERESTS DOMINATE THE PUBLIC INTEREST Organizations decry lack of concern for communities, health, and property… (more…)
Is frack waste in the soil sickening Lower Saxony?
The otherwise bucolic north German region of Neidersachen has become the epicenter of coal bed methane gas drilling activity – or “fracking” as it is known there, too. Sadly, ARD Munich reports that Benzene leakage from Exxon Mobil’s waste pipelines may be causing cancer clusters among residents in nine households. Since 2007, the company has known of problems with the PE pipelines used to transport produced frack waste water underground. Over the span of four years, ExxonMobil has remediated over 2,500 tons of highly carcinogenic, polluted soil yet waste transport continues unabated as Germany, like so many other nations, strives for Energy Independence. (more…)
It’s not 10am on the East Coast, yet much has been made of President Obama’s State-of-the-Union address last night. The president not only promoted Natural Gas, he essentially gave the government credit for developing Fracking technology! OMG. If there was one line that gave me Hope…
“America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.”
Sooner or later, President Obama will have to recognize the fact that Fracking is already putting the safety of our citizens at risk. (more…)
“You Can’t Drink Money”
Our kids have these placemats with the world map, the flags and the presidents. One has a colorful map of the states, and it reminds me how big America is. Few values, beyond freedom, justice and democracy, are ubiquitous to us all. Apparently, the right to clean water is one them. As gas drillers and misguided public officials are now discovering, when you mess with this basic, unifying element, people push back. One thing all shale gas drilling states have in common is that the Clean Water movement is rapidly building momentum. Across the Union, opposition is springing from all quarters, growing deeper and more diverse. Anti-fracking groups may have differing ideas about what to do with all this shale gas, and if fracking is ever okay, but together they’re galvanizing new interest in the environment, and the level of government protection our shared natural resources receive.
One point on which all groups can agree is perhaps best put by Ohio fractivist, Jenny Morgan, when she sings, “You can’t drink money.”
“Colossal Failure” of Governor Corbett and The PA Department of Environmental Protection
The EPA began delivering water to four families in Dimock PA on Friday, January 20, while they conduct further testing on 61 more households. The move signals a failure of Tom Corbett and the PA DEP to safeguard the water supply of citizens. Peacegirl posted a video of the Press Conference on Sunday, January 20, 2012 in Dimock, PA. Among the speakers introduced by Julia Walsh of FrackAction were Craig Sautner, who will be receiving EPA water, and Victoria Switzer, who will not.
“Let science speak for itself… Well, I guess it has, hasn’t it?” Sautner said. (more…)
“Fifty Percent of Pennsylvania’s Land Mass (22,835 square miles) will become an heavily industrialized zone over the next fifty years…” *
“Wellbores, even perfectly sealed, will be thousands of times more porous than the rock between the shale and the surface, a multi-generational legacy of pollution could be the result.” *
“Three EPA studies have found that the migration of fracturing fluids into groundwater is unpredictable or has already happened.” *
POW! Bam!! Free Facts Fuel Democracy
Regularly circulating valuable links, articles and information, the venerable people at Protecting Our Waters are ever satisfying the public’s right-to-know about the impacts of industrial shale gas drilling on our fresh water supply. The group demonstrates that no matter how much money the gas industry spends on media and lobbying, they cannot captivate the national conversation. (more…)
The Bay Daily is published by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which is deeply concerned with the immediate and cumulative environmental impacts of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. The Susquehanna River is the primary watershed for this already beleaguered, though no less beloved, bay. A recent Bay article by Tom Pelton, Video Investigation of Gas Drilling Sites Reveals Invisible Air Pollution, drew a lot of national attention because it is chock full of infrared footage of compressor stations and drilling sites, clearly showing what we can’t see with the naked eye but nevertheless inhale.
Throughout Pennsylvania, drillers are venting potent yet invisible toxins – Volatile Organic Chemicals like formaldehyde, benzene and toluene – into the very air we breathe. The infrared photos prominently display plumes of carcinogens billowing upwards into our skies. These chemicals are also condensing on our land, frosting our windshields, and finding their way into our crops and streams. (more…)
I love it when the EPA asserts itself. Inevitably, state officials accuse them of “overstepping” their “bailiwick,” but I take comfort knowing the feds’ attention is on the shale gas industry, scrutinizing their activities in our state, ensuring that the PA DEP is getting the job done right. Pro-gas conservatives have called the EPA “a jobs killer.” I say, let them hire more scientists! My fondest wish would be for the PA DEP and the EPA to do more than simply play nice in the sandbox, I’d like to see them work together in serious and concerted tandem. That would represent a truly functioning Republic, to my mind, though it seems less likely everyday. Luckily, we don’t have to pick a winner – yet.
Laura Legere, Staff Writer for The Times-Tribune has been covering Marcellus Shale drilling from the start. In her last article of what must have been a crazy-busy year, she reports on the EPA’s final salvo of 2011. (more…)
Lately, I’ve become obsessed with simplifying daily life. Simplicity, it seems, may be the only way to collectively solve the world’s energy crisis. I’m all in with this steadily growing, common-sense movement. I’m ready to conserve, tread more lightly, and live with less stuff in better balance. It’s not about rainbows and unicorns, though I do secretly wonder if it’s possible to “go off the grid” in suburban Philadelphia. Rather, it’s an urgent awakening to the dire need for a fundamental change in the patterns of human consumption. I can only speak for myself, but I‘m actively seeking more realistic solutions. (more…)
The more I learn about the shale gas boom, the more I respect the pioneer spirit of Pennsylvanians, and the more disgusted I am by the frontier mentality of the gas drilling industry. We’re a commonwealth, after all, and I equate wealth with a healthy society and a flourishing ecology. I often think of Ben Franklin’s famous quote: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”When it comes to the cumulative environmental impacts of pollution from Fracking, I’m afriad we all live downstream. (more…)
Keep Tap Water Safe 