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Please Help! Horizontal Drilling to Start in New York. Water Supply in Jeopardy; My home in Jeopardy.
I know this kind request is not usual for TPM; however, please indulge me.
I ask for help from anyone who cares about water and the land.
Central New York and Northern Pennsylvania sit on the Marcellus Shale Formation. Beneath this is a huge deposit of natural gas. Right now companies are pushing landowners in this area to sign over leases allowing companies (one, I hear, may be a Halliburton affiliate) to drill in this area. People here are poor. They have family farms and have been hit hard by the economic mess we are in. They will sell.
What we need is to slow the process down. Right now, it is being called “a rush.” Indeed, the New York State assembly will be voting this week on legislation (Horizontal Drilling A-10526) that will exempt companies from required variances – variances that would allow for investigation, fact-finding and public hearings.
This drilling is extremely intrusive. The companies will need hundreds of millions of gallons of water for what is called hydraulic fracturing. They inject chemicals into this water. Because of the Cheney energy legislation, we are not allowed to find out what chemicals are being used, but they may include biocides, diesel fuel, acids, metals, etheylene glycol, corrosion inhibitors and other chemicals. We don’t know how long these will remain in the water table. We don’t even know what we will do with the millions of gallons of toxic wastewater once it is created.
If you live in New York City, bear in mind we are just about two hundred miles up-river from you, and your water comes from our area.
Please Help!!
What can you do?
Call your New York Assemblymembers and ask them to vote No on Horizontal Drilling A-10526. Ask that a thorough environmental impact study be done before any action is taken.
If you wish, ask them to vote YES on A11527: This is a bill by Assemblymember James F. Brennan of Brooklyn which would place a two year moratorium on new permits for new gas drilling, and would direct the DEC to study the effects of drilling.
Ask that the assembly also investigate ways to help farmers who cannot afford to live right now. They see this money as their only means of support. (Rationale: Now is not the time to pit environmental interests against individual's economic interests – as soon as we do this, the gas companies win. We need to work with people in this area who need money.)
Call Governor Patterson at 518-474-8390 and ask him to veto Horizontal Drilling A-10526. Suggest that an impact study be done.
Spread the word. Copy this post to other blogs.
Thanks. If you want
to see the horror that may be unleashed on our area, check out these.
Comments (8)
The video link did not print. Here they are:http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?s=Lte_ixipW2M
June 19, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
After creating an account in order to view that link (as it told me I had to do), I found the reason is that it evidently takes it to your own personal subscriptions, which for me is empty.
So, you might want to post a different link.
June 19, 2008 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry about that. I am fairly new to YouTube myself.
This should be a direct link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3ZJ9Hp56w
Thanks,
Laura
June 19, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
The link works, and it's a fine story (er, in a sad sense, that is), but I'd like to see more emphasis on the enormous environmental damage. That might just be my bias showing through, however, as a lot of libertarians would be more interested in how this person's personal property rights are being infringed.
If I were in NY, I'd definitely write my congresscritter.
We're facing a different type of environmental crisis here in VA. That said, I'm open to the possibility of compromise in our case, but it'd need some pretty damn strong assurances.
June 19, 2008 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Ben,
In case you read this, I am sorry you have to deal with uranium mining, though I'm glad that you seem to have scored a legislative victory. (Hooray!) Nonetheless, that's scary stuff.
I agree with you. The environment concerns me most; however, sometimes environmentalists make the mistake of not articulating the economic. As an Obama organizer once told me, identify the stakeholders, and try to understand what they need. Don't ignore them.
Small family farmers, hunters and environmentalists should be natural allies, but they get torn apart by bad rhetoric. If environmentalists just answered some of the day-to-day survival needs of the people on the land as they defend the land, I think they'd have more success.
Anyway, that's just my thinking.
June 19, 2008 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Holy crap, Laura! That's scary!
We get crap railroaded through in Texas, but I didn't know it was happening in New York, too. And such reckless, transparently negligent tactics--"a rush" indeed!
What are the chances this thing will actually pass? Have any feel for it at this point?
Best of luck with this Laura. I'm going to keep up with this story and watch for developments.
June 19, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Laura,
Thank you for your kindness. My husband and I live in a beautiful place -- we have a pond with lots of bass, and we are surrounded by fields and mountains. We're not rich, just lucky to have found this old house.
Now, if the companies get their way, it could be a nightmare. I think this bill will pass, unfortunately. However, I'm still praying Patterson (our governor, a guy I like) may have the courage to veto it.
The good news is that people are forming community organizations so that they can get the best protections possible by contract.
But still . . . when I think that all the bass in my pond could be killed, my drinkwater left undrinkable, the mountain behind me deforested, the smell of sulfur and methane in the air . . .
Well let's just say, I feel more than a little sad.
The scary part is that to my knowledge no one has investigated how this might affect the drinking water supply to NYC. It's as if that weren't an issue. It may not be, but I'd sure as heck want to find out with a clear study before the water supply for millions of people became tainted.
Anyway, I so appreciate your graciousness. You've made my day brighter.
All the best,
Laura
June 19, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I found the website catskillmountaineer.org, which has a "news aggregator" that will help me follow this story.
Yeah, my concern extends beyond the individual landowners (I'm concerned for them as well, of course); but what scares me is the hurried, reckless push to have variances waived so that they can avoid having the period of inquiry and discovery this situation seems to warrant, and the danger this poses to the water supply, environment and ecosystems.
June 19, 2008 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
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