Unless the New York State Senate passes a ban on risky new gas drilling ASAP, permits for “hydro-fracking” could be issued in New York as soon as this August.
If enough New Yorkers speak out, the State Senate could pass a hydro-fracking moratorium next week. We have to push them to pass this now, or drillers will begin blasting chemicals into the ground that could poison our drinking water.
The Working Families Party is sending a letter to every single single State Senator, signed by thousands of New Yorkers, insisting that they pass a moratorium while they’re still in Albany.
“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
- Lily Tomlin in The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.
You really have to have the I.Q. of Joe the Plumber to believe that state regulators have a handle on high-density, high-pressure horizontal hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in shale.
Here’s another case that intentionally ignorant and deviously disingenuous gas-drilling proponents will ignore when they insist that this process is safe enough, and you should “let the D.E.C. do it’s job.”:
Notice these back-to-back paragraphs from the article:
In northeastern Pennsylvania, state environmental officials said construction flaws in gas wells were responsible for allowing gas to seep into the area’s groundwater.
Hey! That can’t be true because gas-passing know-nothings insist that that has never happened. Not once.
DEP Secretary John Hanger said in an e-mail message that the well where the accident occurred Friday is not part of the lucrative Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that drillers have begun tapping only recently.
Well, that settles it - since it wasn’t part of the Marcellus, there must be no danger there. Buncha’ mealy-mouthed misdirection. You can trust these guys as far as you can fart a bowling ball.
Of course there are no disasters from natural gas drilling* (in the areas where it’s not done at least).
Here’s a little gem from Indonesia. A drilling company caused a disaster that is putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk. The drillers released a volcano of mud that has created a pool of mud larger than 50 football fields and is threatening to overflow a barrier that would release it to destroy villages and the only rail-line that serves the area.
Yes, the report is from Al Jazeera, which may not be considered the most respected name in political news. There is nothing political in the report, though. I would have rather seen or read the report from an American news outlet, but they don’t report on things like this. Only when it hits here.
Want to wait till hit happens here?
Oh, yeah – one of Indonesia’s most powerful politician’s family owns the drilling company.
* Before the intentionally ignorant say that we’ve had this kind of drilling since the forties, let me remind them (once again) that we are talking about high-density, high-pressure, horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which we have never had in NY state. Read the whole sentence again if you don’t understand that.
Meet in front of the County Office Building, 197 Main Street, Cooperstown
Tell our county government we are concerned about:
· Contaminated ground water
· Decreased property values
· Industrialization of our rural way of life
Conserve energy and CARPOOL!
Parking is tricky. Leave in time to park and arrive at the County Office Building by 9:30!
United We Stand, Divided We’re Fracked!
Above is a poster devised and posted locally by Jeri Wachter with info regarding a rally at Wednesday’s county board meeting. Please try to come so we can show our county government the depth and breadth of concern over the threat of hydrofracking. Try to enlist others to come with you. Carpool if possible.
Parking in Cooperstown is problematic in the summer. The spaces immediately in front of the building have a 2-hour limit (which should be enough, provided you find a space). Nelson Ave and Pine Blvd are good options for parking, with no time limit. You may wish to arive extra early. Cooperstown Diner and Doubleday Cafe have great breakfasts. The Stagecoach and Danny’s cafes are nice, too. Another option is to go via Oneonta, park in the public parking, and take the bus. Buses leave every hour, on the hour, so it’s recommended to take the 8 a.m. bus. Get your pass in OPT office, just across from Vic’s Service on Main St. Tell the bus driver you’re going to the county office building, and he/she will know where to let you off.
The coalitions of landowners who have fallen for the gas-industries propaganda like to say that high-density, high-pressure, horizontal hydraulic fracturing extraction natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale is “highly regulated.” Of course that is baloney. The regulations are meaningless when you can’t enforce them, and the gas industry laughs at them.
Big companies outsource to smaller companies, most of which are from out of state and somehow just don’t feel beholden to the interests of the locals or our area. If the big companies have certain screenings for their employees (and that is a big “if”), they can always hire smaller companies to do the dirty work. If the smaller companies are not rigorous in screening their employees, the bigger ones feel insulated against responsibility. This is what’s called “plausible deniability.” It works against the interests of the suckers who think the industry regulations are sufficient. It also works against everyone in the communities that are affected.
It’s sort of how the mafia works. Lenny the Shark contacts Joey the Fish who hires Sammy the Clam to hit Elmer the Yokel. Sammy is caught, but doesn’t rat on Joey. We all know that Lenny knew what he was doing, and is responsible. But just try to pin it on him.
It’s also similar to terrorist cells. Smaller groups are sacrificed to do the dirty work, but you can’t trace it back to the source. In our case you can trace it back, but convoluted laws and exemptions from laws protect the real perpetrators.
So what is happens when a small company hires someone who screws up? What happens when the person who screws up disappears from the scene? What happens if the company has been cited for violations before, but it keeps operating the without much accountability? What good are the regulations? Not much good, it appears.
The tractor trailer, driven for 5J Oilfield Services, LLC out of Texas, was in violation of its permit and weighed in at nearly 53,000 pounds over the limit. The driver was fined more than $16,000 and released.
A $16,000 fine to the gas industry is a joke. That’s less than their lobbyists spend influencing local government officials and industry collaborators all over NY state in the time it takes to rent hotel space for a supposed “information conference”.
Less than 24 hours later, police stopped two more trucks from the same company at that same location after people called in traffic complaints.
Is there no end to this?
Then read about how a few months later how this Texas company’s truck ran off the road while speeding through Owego, NY, shearing off several telephone poles and a guardrail before resting the cab in a stormwater drainage ditch near a Family Practice office, and cut of local power to the area, including a nursing home, for hours.
The driver left the scene and wasn’t found by the police until hours later, after an extensive search. He was charged with fleeing the scene of a property damage accident, Driving While Intoxicated, imprudent speed, and criminal mischief 4th degree. According to Owego Police officer Brett Kobylarcz, Mohr was arrested and remanded to the Tioga County Jail in lieu of $5,000 cash or $10,000 property bond. (Another joke!) (Thanks to Wendy Post at the Owego Pennysaver for her coverage of this incident.)
How serious is this industry? Just look at the website of the company they outsource to. Is it a sham?
After all of the egregious BS this industry hands out, and after we’ve all seen how lax regulations work (or don’t work) from the Gulf of Mexico to Wall Street, how is it that some flunky from the gas coalitions still think anyone will take them seriously when they try to pretend that the “DEC and a good lease will protect us?”
Josh Fox (left) and James Hermann (right) at the screening of "Gasland" in Cooperstown, June 16, 2010
Josh Fox presented Gasland – The Movie last night in Cooperstown to a packed house and several standing ovations.The presentation was sponsored by the remarkable groups Sustainable Otsego and Otsego 2000.
Josh fielded questions from what was obviously a very well-informed public. A lot was learned this evening. I must say, it was one of the few times when I left the meeting not feeling disheartened. Combine that with the fact that one of two bills before the New York State assembly, each calling for a moratorium on gas drilling in the Marcelllus Shale, had a good chance of passing the following day.
A call to action was made by Josh and the sponsoring organizations for audience members to call their representatives and the next morning expressing their support for the bills.
What can I say about this amazing film? It was a labor of love by a filmmaker who obviously loves where he lives and labored hard on this prize-winning film. Gasland is the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
Gasland is premiering on HBO, Monday, June 21 at 9 PM Eastern / 8 PM Central time. If you live anywhere in New York State, including New York City, you will really want to see this film. Natural gas drilling is the next environmental disaster waiting to happen. This film will inform you of the dangers, and what you can do about them.
There has been some talk about a “debunking” of this film. That “ebunking is so lame as to be laughable, except that some people fall for it.
It nit-picks at some facts that Josh didn’t get perfectly right. That is a red herring. Nothing gets everything perfectly right, but Gasland is so right about the big picture, and almost every small detail is correct.
On the other hand, the oil and gas industries screw up in major ways frequently. The fact that they pay off government agencies with money, drugs and sex (or haven’t you been reading the newspapers?) to hide their screw-ups, doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. This is a really bad problem. The industry pays out millions if not billions, to cover up disaster after disaster, and then in its press releases says, “Hey look–we been doing this for so many years without a disaster!”
It would be nice if, at least by now, everyone understood how these industries work, especially after the glaring example of BP (Beyond Pollution) in the Gulf of Mexico. Keep in mind that Halliburton developed the casings to that oil well. They also developed the casings that will be used (if we don’t stop them) in the proposed gas wells. Halliburton also developed high-pressure horizontal hydraulic fracturing for gas. They pioneered new techniques in Iraq (covertly) during the First Gulf War.
Are we to trust our futures to the company that ripped off the American military in the Persian Gulf? How warm and cuddly does the word “Halliburton” make you feel?
What you have is a predatory industry who’s bottom line (their only line) is profit, no matter what the cost to the people they lie to. Even most of the landowners who think they’ve “won the lottery” (really – some of them actually believe the BS that the landmen shoveled on them) soon regret their decision to despoil their land, heritage and health for a scam.
Somebody pointed out that the natural gas industry’s shills have spent more possibly ten times more money on damage control from the film Gasland than Josh Fox did on making it.
Of course there’s another side to the story of Gasland. But it is weak and disingenuous at best. It’s paid for by the industry and their flunkies. On the other hand, Gasland was made and is promoted by people who care about their homes, the environment, and the real good of the general populace, not just expedience and greed for a few.
Josh Fox releases response to industry attacks on GASLAND,
“AFFIRMING GASLAND”
co-written with Weston Wilson, EPA, Professor Anthony Ingraffea, Cornell University, and Barbara Arrindell of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and others.
41-page document addresses industry attacks point by point.
It’s working! The NYS Assembly may well pass a moratorium
Quick report:
A few days ago the Senate’s Environmental Conservation (EnCon) Committee passed the 1-year moratorium as proposed by committee chair Sen. Antoine Thompson. That’s certainly better than nothing!
Sen. Thompson has told us that he doesn’t think the Addabbo bill would pass on the floor of the full legislature; he thinks his bill has a better chance. He may be right, but the folks calling our senators have been getting increasingly positive responses! If we keep the pressure up FOR ADDABBO, in other words FOR SCIENCE BEFORE DRILLING, we just might push them into doing the right thing!
Thompson himself told me that if the Addabbo bill is the one that comes to the floor, he will vote for it!
So here are TODAY’s ACTION STEPS from our friends who know Albany:
BOTTOM LINE: WE NEED A MORATORIUM BILL TO PASS
WHAT TO SAY: ASK the Senate leadership to make sure we get a moratorium bill. Explain that you prefer the Englebright/Addabbo bill (Senate 7592A, which links the moratorium to the EPA study), or register your desire to at least see the Thompson bill pass (that’s the one-year moratorium, not tied to the EPA). But, keep pushing, we are almost to the end of the session. Senate majority leadership is the key target.
Simple message in support of the Addabbo bill: Do the science before the drilling!
CALL THESE SENATORS: (I just called them all and it only took a few minutes. All the receptionists were friendly, helpful, and thankful for the support. – Brian)
Sen. Sampson 518-455-2788 or 718-649-7653,
Sen. Malcolm Smith, 518-455-2701. They have started a petition that people can sign to push the Addabbo Bill! PLEASE CALL AND SIGN. It only takes a minute. THEY SAID THAT THEY ARE RECEIVING MANY CALLS! It’s fantastic that they’ve done this!
Sen. Espada 518-455-3395 or 718-652-4329,
Sen. Klein (co-sponsor of Addabbo bill, so thank him!) 518-455-3595 or 718-822-2049
Sen. Addabbo – 518-455-2322
Sen. Hassell-Thompson 518-455-2061 or 718-547-8854
CALL THE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE — 518-474-8390 Remember, if one of these bills passes, we have to make sure that Governor Paterson signs it!
In a nutshell: The Englebright/Adabbo bill should be passed to establish a moratorium on conducting unconventional gas drilling in NYS until 120 days after the issuance of a report thereon by the federal EPA.
Thanks to Laurie from the weblog at un-naturalgas.org for turning me on to the great cartoons, illustrations and commentary about New York State by Mark Wilson at EmpireWire.com.
The prize for public service went to the tiny Bristol Herald Courier of southwestern Virginia, circulation 29,000, for revealing that many energy companies failed to pay required royalties on natural gas drilling, and that the royalties that were paid were not reaching the local people who deserved them.
“The right to own property does not convey with it the privilege of harming people, communities or the environment. Law pretending to uphold property rights while empowering corporations or property-owners to destroy community, the environment on which all life depends, or the enjoyment of community and property by others, is illegitimate law.”
