Food & Water Watch
If you’ve seen our commercial (above) running in New York State, you know that 6 percent of hydraulic fracturing wells fail immediately, and 50 percent—yes, that’s half—fail over 30 years. That means if Gov. Cuomo proceeds with his proposal to open up five counties in New York State to fracking, our water will be contaminated by this dirty process within a single generation.
That’s why we’ve teamed up with Josh Fox, Oscar-nominated director of Gasland, on this ad running on network and cable TV stations in the Southern Tier—which will cover the five counties that the Governor is considering handing over to the oil and gas industry as sacrifice zones. The ad urges New Yorkers to call Gov. Cuomo and tell him that there is no such thing as “safe fracking.”
This past Tuesday 11 national groups, including Greenpeace, Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation, signed a letter to Cuomo urging him not to allow fracking “unless and until the impacts to New Yorkers’ health, environment and economy have been comprehensively and properly addressed.”
It’s not just New Yorkers that the Governor needs to hear from. He has political ambitions beyond New York State, and needs to hear from all Americans that the road to the White House is not lined with drilling rigs.
And fracking is not just an issue of concern here in the U.S. The oil and gas industry has its sights set on exploiting gas reserves throughout the world using this riskier process of injecting millions of gallons of fluid—typically a mix of water, sand, and chemicals including known carcinogens—underground at high pressure to fracture the shale formations surrounding a well, which then release the gas. Communities across the globe are banding together for the Global Frackdown, an international day of action, on Sept. 22 to ask their leaders to ban fracking.
As Cuomo’s decision on opening up New York to fracking looms, citizens here are ramping up the pressure to combat the overwhelming industry influence on his decision. Advocates plan to confront Cuomo at the State Fair this week—as well as continue regular vigils in Mount Kisco, where Cuomo lives.
The pressure on Governor Cuomo is increasing by the day. Will he do the right thing by protecting the health and safety of all New Yorkers? Time will tell.
Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.
Fracking presents a clear and present danger. Not only to the environment and ecology, but to human health and safety. In addition, the resources and time spent on fracking is further delaying action towards addressing climate change issues. Everyone on the planet should have the right to safe drinking water.
Foresight. Think out the results of your actions. The evidence is there for all to see. Check out Pennsylvania or any other place where `fracking’ has been permitted. Disaster, expensive in money and especially in lives.
Leon Hammer, M.D.
Water is life.
Focus on SUSTAINABLE CLEAN energy. Not the filth and horror of natural gas.
The Binghamton (NY) Press & Sun-Bulletin (pg. 13A, 7/21/2012) reports that the drinking water of Albuquerque, NM is currently under threat from a 40-year old jet fuel leak from nearby Kirtland AFB, which was not even detected until about 12 years ago, when jet fuel was found to be coming out of the ground at an old fuel storage site.
Moreover, even at this point, after digging more than 130 monitoring wells around the site, estimates of the size of the spill, now as much as 24,000,000 gallons, only continue to grow! Despite the work of personnel such as Air Force civil engineers, the state geologist, The Shaw Group, a world-class leader in spill remediation, with a commitment from the Air Force of $50,000,000, no one even knows the contours or extent of the plume. The Air Force estimates that their pumps have pulled only about 400,000 gallons out of the ground, since 2004. And furthermore, the story indicates that the experts still don’t know what to do. No one knows when the plume may reach two of the city’s key wells, the closest of which is two miles from the site of the original leak. The experts believe that the leading edge of the plume is now a little over a mile from the nearest well. And, in addition, there is concern that the process of sucking the fuel out may cause the plume to accelerate in speed, or change direction so that it would be heading toward some of the city’s some 100 other wells.
This illustrates both how painfully little we are able to tell about the composition and structures of the earth’s interior, even near the surface, much less at greater depths, and how little we could do to remediate such spills, even if we did know the structures. This should be wake-up call that we cannot be assured what any fluids we pump down will do, nor do we know what those fluids, or any other fluids released in the fracking will take to percolate.
In any rational world, this tells us that we don’t know enough about the interior of the earth to be able to judge whether or not fracking would be safe. And furthermore, we have no idea of the time frame needed to conclude that the process had been safe. As some of the recent fracking leaks have documented, the gases, fracking fluids and the products released have shown up in a matter of days, weeks or months. But is frightening to note that in the case of the Albuquerque spill, it has taken over 40 years for the spill to cover a distance of approximately a mile and a third.
Under these circumstances, it would be criminal to begin fracking in New York, or any other unfracked region under an assumption that the process would be safe.