Michael Krancer, the new Secretary of the PA Deptartment of Environmental Protection, is perilously close to becoming a part of the fracking pollution problem. In his new three month “Pilot” program, all pollution violations must go through his office BEFORE they can be reported and become part of official public record.
Say What?? Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a lot of information about Fracking for Natural Gas out there, and more everyday. In February, the EPA Science Advisory Team announced that it will be further studying the relational impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water supplies. Great! Waiting to pass regulations is not in either side’s interest.
The only logical answer is to weigh all the facts, and address the issues one by one. There is a lot of hard work involved, both by scientists, and lawyers. Large Philadelphia law firms like Blank Rome already have legal frack teams rolling out their defense strategies for possible polluters. Big money is now pumping through the legal and business sectors, paving the way for a sonic speed gas boom.
No one wants to wait for Science, but quality, peer-reviewed data must at least exist and have an “at-bat.” And it would do anyone who stands to profit from the Natural Gas Boom in Pennsylvania well to remember:
Nature Bats Last!
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February, 2011
The EPA proposes to characterize toxicity in almost every stage of the hydraulic fracturing life-cycle. EPA also plans to summarize all available data obtained on chemicals and naturally occurring substances used and released during the hydraulic fracturing process in order to characterize and understand potential human health effects.
1) Water Acquisition
2) Chemical Mixing
3) Well Injection
4) Flowback and Produced Water
5) Wastewater Treatment and Waste Disposal
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March, 2011
Among other supposedly soft and unnecessary programs, politicians in Washington DC aim to slash EPA funding and regulatory reach. The Clean Air Council has pushed back hard as Clean Air attacks are being led by a few members of both the House and the Senate who are especially cozy with polluter industries: Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), James Inhofe (R-OK), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Max Baucus (D-MT); and Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI) and Ed Whitfield (R-KY) in the House. In the House, the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee passed its own so-called Dirty Air Act authored by Reps. Fred Upton and Ed Whitfield, with help from Sen. James Inhofe. This bill is expected to come to the House floor for a full chamber vote in the next few weeks. It is critical to stop the House and Senate from passing these Dirty Air bills and amendments! We must take action now to tell them that obstructing these protective pollution limits is not only hurting us, but threatening our environmental security, and our very way of life.
To Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC TV:
Dear Rachel:
The waste water produced by hydraulic fracturing, which many on the MSNBC network now refer to with the innocuous industry term “flowback,” is not merely toxic, it’s radioactive. Disposing of the massive volumes of this carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting “flowback” has become a major industrial dilemma.
In Southeastern Pennsylvania, gas companies have been illegally dumping frack waste water in our rivers and streams.
With 2,755 frack wells in Pennsylvania in 2010, there were 2,486 documented violations including illegal discharges into streams and tributaries, explosions, frack water spills and toxic air pollution. The source of the drinking water for the 15.6 million people living in Philadelphia and the Lower Delaware Region is at serious risk. I’m a resident, a parent and an environmental blogger, and I don’t want to raise my children in a Disease Cluster.
We need viable solutions, and we need them now!
Of course, this issue is not limited to pollution. The average single frack well pulls nearly 4.5 million gallons of water from an aquifer. We might have hundreds of years’ worth of gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale but we’ll run out of fresh water long before we burn through it all. Also, we’re not seeing the landscape merely “change,” we’re seeing it destroyed.
Sincerely,
Liz R.
KeepTapWaterSafe.org
Don’t Frack With The Delaware River Watershed!
In 2010, The Delaware River was named “The Most Endangered River in America” by AmericanRivers.org due to the threat of pollution posed by fracking for Natural Gas in the Upper Delaware River Watershed.
Unless we learn more about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing – fracking – and start taking action now, people in the Southeastern Pennsylvania will be at far greater risk of developing serious diseases from chemicals in our tap water. It may already contain more pollutants than we realize, including a variety of carcinogens, endocrine disruptors and other known toxins. Our drinking water supply is in jeopardy, it’s time to wake the village. Read the rest of this entry »
Keep Tap Water Safe 