For Immediate Release Contact: Austin Kelly, Protecting Our Waters October 15, 2010 646-244-5634
Philadelphia City Councilman Curtis Jones sent a letter to the Delaware River Basin Commission yesterday, formally requesting the DRBC to wait until a cumulative impact study has been completed before issuing rules governing any projects related to gas drilling in the Basin. "Clearly more time is needed for scientific study and evaluation of the new technology," he said, referring to hydrofracking in combination with horizontal drilling. "The horse of science" should pull the cart of policy, he commented, adding that to issue rules without a cumulative impact study is analagous to driving a car which has not passed auto-safety inspection.
"We are delighted both with this letter and with Council's September 30th resolution calling for a three-year moratorium statewide," said Austin Kelly of Protecting Our Waters, a Philadelphia-based organization critical of gas drilling's impacts on water, air, climate, the economy, and human health. "People have gotten sick from exposure to water and air contaminated by gas drilling, and we believe every effort to slow down this shameful rush will protect life and health."
On September 29th, New York City Council also passed a resolution calling for the DRBC to refrain from issuing regulations prior to a cumulative impact study, leading activists to send messages to the Commission asking, "Are you listening to the ten million people asking you to study first?" (link and title of NYC Resolution below).
In the first week of October, PA DEP fined Seneca Resources for destroying a wetlands in Tioga County. Yet DEP had issued the permit, like so many others on the gas drilling fast-track, without adequate review. At the Philadelphia City Council hearing September 28th, listeners were surprised when PA DEP officials explained that PA DEP has a 45-day fast-track limit on the time available to review any gas drilling permit; if technical review is not performed, the permit is automatically approved. "Expecting the industry to be self-policing is absurd," commented Amy Wilson of Protecting Our Waters. "The industry will absorb fines as the price of doing business, but a wetlands cannot be restored in the course of a human lifetime. These are not acceptable risks."
On October 9th, a frack fluid spill in Cumberland County was reported to reach up to 30 miles (Sun-Gazette, October 10th). The company responsible claimed not to know exactly what substances were in its frack fluid barrels, reinforcing concerns raised at Philadelphia City Council's September 28th hearing regarding potential impacts from toxic chemicals reaching waterways and human populations through multiple channels, including spills and accidents.
And an Academy of Natural Sciences study by senior scientist David Velinsky suggests that, even without spills or accidents, unconventional gas drilling degrades water quality (Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/12/10). Velinsky first presented his preliminary findings in public at the Philadelphia City Council hearing on September 28th, chaired by Councilman Curtis Jones.
"It may be that there is no way to drill for gas in unconventional deposits without severe environmental destruction and human health impacts," commented Austin Kelly. "Rules and enforcement are wildly inadequate in Pennsylvania so far, which is why we are pressing for a statewide moratorium. In this watershed, at the very least, we need a cumulative impact study before any rules are issued for drilling ."
Resolution calling on the Delaware River Basin Commission to refrain from issuing regulations governing gas exploration and production using hydraulic fracturing and for water withdrawal for the purpose of hydraulic fracturing within the Delaware River Basin until a cumulative impact study is completed to assess the risks and inform the development of adequate regulations for hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware River Basin.
I'm sorry to be the one that brings this up, but... Pennsylvania: You have a gas problem.
I'm probably not the only one that's noticed the layer of rock a mile deep in the earth under you, filled with little bubbles of....well, to put it politely, "natural gas."
And I'm probably not the only one that's noticed that there are multiple gas companies with heavy pollution records drilling mile-deep holes to crack that rock open with chemicals that cause nerve damage and leukemia and kidney damage...which are now beginning to leak into waterways that all run right to Philly.
I'm sorry. But it's a problem, and we can't really ignore it anymore. It's not just the pollution... it's also the quantity. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection expects that over the next 10 years, the state will be punctured with 30,000 of these unsightly drill wells, which each suck 4 million gallons of water from our rivers to let the gas out!
It's too much for those of us who live on the Delaware. Especially since Congress exempted the gas drillers from the Clean Water Act in 2005 after being lobbied from Dick Cheney...and not to mention the Clean Air Act...
Can you just stop for a little while? There might be a way to let all that methane out safely. But right now, fracking is polluting our water supply so bad that we can set it on fire....and this gas problem, if not properly regulated, is going to do long-term damage to all the other industries Pennsylvania holds dear: agriculture, tourism, hiking and fishing, dairy, etc. More info here.http://www.landandwater.org/index.html
Penn Action and Conservation PA are co-sponsoring a statewide conference in Harrisburg on Saturday, October 16 to talk about what to do about our gas problem. We will come up with strategies on how ensure the voices of real people are heard in the debate - not just gas companies.
Pennsylvania: we can help you deal with your problem. We can prevent blowouts. Methane leaks. Poisonous water.
For more info or for questions, please email or call Hannah Miller at
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
or 215-888-8036.
A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.
The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.
Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.
It takes brute force to wrest natural gas from the earth. Millions of gallons of chemical-laden water mixed with sand -- under enough pressure to peel paint from a car -- are pumped into the ground, pulverizing a layer of rock that holds billions of small bubbles of gas.
The chemicals transform the fluid into a frictionless mass that works its way deep into the earth, prying open tiny cracks that can extend thousands of feet. The particles of sand or silicon wedge inside those cracks, holding the earth open just enough to allow the gas to slip by.
Gas drilling is often portrayed as the ultimate win-win in an era of hard choices: a new, 100-year supply of cleaner-burning fuel, a risk-free solution to the nation’s dependence on foreign energy. In the next 10 years, the United States will use the fracturing technology to drill hundreds of thousands of new wells astride cities, rivers and watersheds. Cash-strapped state governments are pining for the revenue and the much-needed jobs that drilling is expected to bring to poor, rural areas.
Drilling companies assert that the destructive forces unleashed by the fracturing process, including the sometimes toxic chemicals that keep the liquid flowing, remain safely sealed as much as a mile or more beneath the earth, far below drinking water sources and the rest of the natural environment.
More than a year of investigation by ProPublica [1], however, shows that the issues are far less settled than the industry contends, and that hidden environmental costs could cut deeply into the anticipated benefits.
That assessment contrasts sharply with the picture presented by an environmental review released by state officials last week [3]. Aside from clauses that ban some waste pits and promise additional consideration for drilling within 1,000 feet of the city’s reservoirs and water infrastructure in upstate New York, the environmental review does little to respond to New York City’s long-standing concerns [4] that the watershed deserves special environmental consideration and instead paves the way for drilling to proceed throughout the watershed.
The issue appears to be emerging as a point of controversy in New York City’s mayoral election.
City comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson criticized the state’s environmental review in a news release and said Mayor Michael Bloomberg should be more outspoken. "I am also concerned that the City and the Water Board have been extremely lax in responding to this threat," he said.
Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Bloomberg’s office, said the mayor will withhold judgment until he sees the final version of the report the city commissioned from Hazen and Sawyer, a New York City-based environmental engineering firm. The full report isn’t expected to be delivered until December, after the public comment period for the state environmental review has ended.
LaVorgna emphasized that the Bloomberg administration has invested heavily in the city’s water system and would not rule out a protracted fight to protect it.
"This is not a fringe issue for this administration," LaVorgna said. "This is a mayor that adamantly orders tap water every night he dines out."
In one of his few statements on the subject, Bloomberg, who has generally supported the idea of energy development, told WNYC radio Thursday [5] that "if this has the danger of polluting, we will fight it."
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