OtegoNY.com

Of course not. 

Do they say they can? 

Of course they do. 

The story is as old as mankind. It’s called “lying.” I have no idea why people would pretend that they can protect that which they are incapable of protecting. I guess they want to protect themselves from being called “inept.” 

Here’s a story from NPR’s “Living on Earth,” from today, Feb. 20, 2009:

“…recently two scientific studies concluded there were no adverse health effects from drinking Washington DC’s tap water, even though it contained the highest level of lead ever recorded in the U.S.”

Click here to read the or listen to the full story about Washington D.C.s water pollution and how the protectors flubbed it. 

How many times do people have to see or hear that same kind of story over and over to finally realize that there is no adequate protection from health hazards once you start polluting your water and pretending you “have it under control?”

Apparently some people never get it. 

Don’t let those people lead you into the false temptation of some material gain, just because they “say it’s safe.” 

To paraphrase Upton Sinclair:

“It’s amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if he is promised a small fortune not to understand it.”

This is a parody of the Scottish ballad, The Rolling Hills of the Border. I was inspired by a version called, The Rolling Mills of New Joisey.

Clarification: The second to last verse does not mean to imply that anyone who leases their land is going to hell, or anything silly like that. I just mean that the gas companies will turn this area into a kind of hell.

No moral judgements here. We are neighbors, and I respect everyone’s rights.

This is a copy of a letter to the Oneonta Daily Star  that was published on February 13, 2009. It is reprinted with the permission of the author. 

I am responding to Dick Downey’s guest commentary on horizontal gas drilling published on Jan 17. This way of thinking is a huge mistake.

Watchdogs have great value to society, but they must have the law on their side.

Unfortunately, the laws protecting our water have been compromised. In 2004, the EPA stripped the protections of the Clean Water Act from all aspects of horizontal drilling. In September, H.R. 7231 was introduced by Diana DeGette, co-sponsored by John Salazar and Maurice Hinchey, and would have repealed the exemption for hydraulic fracturing to the Safe Drinking Water Act. This repeal would have given watchdogs some teeth.

Until this repeal can come up for a vote, there is not protection for our drinking water.

This is bound to come up for review again in the 111th Congress. Please let your congressmen know that we need to protect our drinking water supply. We are very fortunate to have great drinking water, and we should all work to keep it safe and clean.

Mike Mitchell

Otego

This is a letter to the editor of the Oneonta Daily Star newspaper, which was published on Feb. 4, 2009

Real dangers in natural-gas drilling

The natural gas industry is a creeping disease that is slowly infecting Otsego County. It has weaseled its way into leases to drill from unsuspecting landowners.

The representatives from the natural gas industry have made outrageous promises of “found money” and “it’s like you’ve won the lottery.” Then they low-ball people into selling out their land rights, heritage, property-value, possibly their health and that of their neighbors, as well as the well-being and way of life of their communities. That includes you.

Some well-intentioned but misguided people have been convinced that “it’s a done deal, and we might as well get the best out of it.”

It only becomes a done deal when they con enough people to band together to try to sell at a higher price, while trusting that there are enough protections against disaster in place.

There are no adequate safety measures, no matter what the apologists for the predators tell you. The state Department of Environmental Conservation is woefully understaffed and has shown no ability to regulate effectively. Gov. Paterson has even proposed a large budget reduction for the DEC. Obviously regulation is not a priority.

The gas companies are not even bound by the Federal Clean Water Act. So who has the safety of your water at heart? The gas companies (one of which is Halliburton)?

Some would have you believe that the drilling that is planned for this area is safe, and the people who care about the danger are over-reacting. That sounds like when Rumsfeld mocked people who thought the Iraq war wouldn’t be a slam-dunk, by saying, “Oh my goodness gracious, isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny, the sky is going to fall.”

That’s not the lottery, that’s Russian roulette.

The Following is an excerpt from an article in The Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisc.), January 24, 2009

EPA A FAILURE ON CHEMICALS, AUDIT FINDS

By Meg Kissinger of the Journal Sentinel

Warning: Chemicals in the packaging, surfaces or contents of many products may cause long-term health effects, including cancers of the breast, brain and testicles; lowered sperm counts, early puberty and other reproductive system defects; diabetes; attention deficit disorder, asthma and autism. A decade ago, the government promised to test these chemicals. It still hasn’t. The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to assess toxic chemicals is as broken as the nation’s financial markets and needs a total overhaul, a congressional audit has found.

Read the rest of the article on the EPAs Failure to Monitor Chemicals

Can this really be news? Is there anyone who didn’t expect this?

This is a guest essay by David J. Cyr

It makes a lot of sense, and will give you a great overview of what drilling for natural gas entails, and it’s consequences. 

To download a .pdf flyer of this essay, right-click on this link and click save: Un-Natural Natural Gas Essay

Natural gas isn’t so clean, natural or green when the externalized costs are considered. Yes, gas burns cleaner in a boiler and therefore greener than oil, and way cleaner and greener than coal. However, its politicized “Energy Independence” usage is producing an un-clean net result; and the post-peak extraction process is un-natural. The rush to use natural gas as a “transition” fuel has serious negative environmental consequences. Merely relabeling dirty fossil fuel dependence to now be “green” and to represent “independence” doesn’t actually make it green, nor provide real independence. Whenever a corporate solution to an environmental problem seems remarkably green, look into it again… much more carefully. 

The Un-Clean Side: 

On a burned BTU basis, gas produces 29% less carbon dioxide than oil, and 44% less than coal. When it comes to sulfur dioxide, gas is 1,122 times cleaner than oil and 2,591 times cleaner than coal. However, natural gas only seems green, when compared to those other fossil fuels. It burns cleaner, but it is not clean. While natural gas produces a smaller amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) per joule delivered than oil or coal, gas emits a lot of GHGs too. Burning as much as possible of something producing relatively less GHGs is not the best way to reduce GHGs. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has determined that, in the absence of policies to promote low-carbon emission sources (which policies are effectively absent), by 2030 oil demand will have increased by 44% and gas demand will be approximately double what it was in 2002. CO2 emissions will consequently have then increased by 62%. So energy independence through an increased dependence on natural gas is not going to clean up the atmosphere and cool the planet. 

The Un-Natural Side:  

The gas that’s now being unconventionally extracted isn’t lying there underground in big natural pools near the earth’s surface, and it’s not easy to collect. The days of getting natural gas the way it was done back in the 19th century are over. Easily gotten old conventional supplies of gas have been declining since 1973. That’s why Halliburton developed a deep, high pressure, multiply horizontally bored and hydrofractured drilling process. It uses extreme measures to release remnants of gas, which while pervasive are locked very tightly within the actual matrix of dense stone deposits, such as shales. The Halliburton process essentially — rather like alchemy — converts stone into gas. But that’s not all it does. Those unconventional natural gas drilling sites are hazardous waste production facilities. 

Old conventional gas wells were not much different than water wells. They were simply vertical holes drilled not very deeply into the earth to tap into reservoirs of gas within cavities, or flowing through a relatively porous and permeable subsurface material. Some limited hydrofracture stimulation was done in the past to increase production in conventional gas wells. But compared with current techniques, those old wells used negligible quantities of chemicals, small quantities of water, and much less pressure. 

Unconventional shale gas drilling is something totally different. The vertical holes are drilled far deeper. The bits are then turned to bore multiple horizontal holes over great distances. A large number of hazardous chemicals are combined with enormous quantities of good fresh water. That “slick water” mixture is used to flood the drilled holes. By means of huge diesel fuel burning air compressors, it’s then pressurized up to 8,000 psi. That converts as much as a thousand times more water than traditionally used into toxic waste; while using 2 to 4 times greater pressure than any fracking done in old conventional wells. Far higher volumes of toxic fluids, and much higher pressure is used to make those fluids behave as powerful explosives to shatter stone formations that lie beneath water supplies. Those are important factors regarding the potential for unconventional drilling to contaminate water supplies, which it too often has done. 

While the post-peak conventional gas production has been in continuous decline, energy companies have ramped up their hydrofractured horizontal drilling in western states. Use of the Halliburton process has increased by more than 300% from 1990 through 2008. The gas industry has already Iraqified much of the western states. While it continues to expand extraction there, it is also now invading and occupying the more populated east. It’s moving up the Marcellus Shale Play, from West Virginia (the extraction industry friendly home of mountaintop removal), through Pennsylvania, and coming into Ohio and New York. The scale of the environmental assault is rapidly increasing. The cumulative effect of what would eventually be hundreds of thousands of hazardous waste producing natural gas well sites must be considered. 

In western states where it has been used for decades, the atrocious environmental impacts of the Halliburton process have become clearly evident in air, ground and water contamination. Effects upon plants and animals are more insidiously revealed over time. Government environmental agencies, which should protect us, have enabled industry to deny that this process has adverse health consequences, because its causative potential for harm hasn’t and isn’t being adequately studied before those agencies permit the harm to be done. As the use of that environmentally destructive process now spreads into the more densely populated eastern states, under current (reactive to economic collapse) political conditions that favor maximum extraction, its impact upon the lives and health of people will be far greater than ever before… greater both in the degree of negative health impact and greater in the number of people effected. 

Public Seduction By Obfuscation And Bribery: 

Drillers and government regulatory agencies facilitating the surge in use of the Halliburton drilling process claim that chemicals are used in insignificant quantities. They say various combinations of the many chemicals used for numerous purposes only amount to a total of about 1% of the “slick water” hydrofracking fluids used. But, while an old style conventional gas well drilling would use a few thousand gallons of water, and little to no chemicals; by contrast, an unconventional deep horizontal shale gas well uses (dependent upon various factors) between 2 and 9 million gallons of fresh water. Only 1% of the “slick water” fluid volumes being chemicals may seem insignificant, but it is 1% of truly enormous volumes. 1% of the 2 to 9 million gallons of water used per well becomes between 20,000 to 90,000 gallons of chemicals used for each well site. And all the millions of gallons of fresh water, being the 99% ingredient in ”slick water” used per well in the Halliburton process, is converted into toxic waste by the 1% of “proprietary secret” chemicals added. Then that toxic “slick water” recipe is mixed in with a lot of very nasty stuff that lies down there deep within the earth, which the hydrofracturing releases from the stone along with the gas. That nasty natural stuff like benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene; radioactive materials; hydrogen sulfide; arsenic and mercury is pumped up out of the drill holes as so called “produced water” (highly hazardous liquid/solid waste). Those contaminants are dumped into open evaporation pools used to reduce the volume of hazardous waste to be inconveniently and expensively disposed of somewhere else, other than in the air. Gas men filter into communities in advance of drilling to privately proffer lease agreements. Signing landowners get up front bonus money and promises of great riches to come from future gas production royalties. That incites a feverish greed, particularly in economically depressed areas. The possible lessors and local officials are blinded to the negative environmental and societal impacts which will accompany that money. People who warn of hazards are labeled “extremists” for being cautious. 

Bright and cheerfully optimistic TV advertisements assure viewers that gas corporations are going to bring about a wonderful energy independence for America, by using new technologies providing amazing quantities of domestic “green” energy production. They don’t mention the invasive scale of the number of well sites that will be required to achieve that; nor their expropriation from the Commons of enormous quantities of fresh water, which water is more valuable than the gas it will be squandered to get; nor the staggering amount of hazardous waste that their “new technology” produces. 

Having been fossil fuel dedicated for nearly two centuries now, the energy industry’s new and improved “green” solution is to extract as much cleaner (natural gas) fossil fuel as possible, as soon as possible, by any means possible; and to get it all profitably burned up as fast as possible. With its relentless media saturation advertising campaign, the energy industry has greenwashed its government facilitated plan to stubbornly maintain our national dependence upon fossil fuels. Natural gas is not carbon neutral. And an extraordinary increase in the extraction rate of natural gas, using the Halliburton process, will also extraordinarily increase the production of pollution from hazardous waste. That will make what was less dirty, when used less, far more dirty, when used excessively. Petroleum corporations, and the political campaign contribution purchased governments they own, are using a misinformation campaign promoting the use of natural gas for the purpose of delaying, for at least another generation, any really serious societal effort to either conserve or truly transition away from fossil fuels.  

David J. Cyr is a retired Land Surveyor who lives in the Town of Hamden, in Delaware County, NY. He is a State Committee member in the Green Party of New York State (GPNYS), and a member of the Chenango Delaware Otsego Gas Drilling  Opposition Group (CDOG). www.un-naturalgas.org

This graphic is from an Idea thought up by Megan Byrnes. I think it says it as well as anything else.
 

I just came back from the DEC meeting at the Ballroom at S.U.C.O., where many well-spoken and well thought out Ideas were presented by people who were pleading the case for a sane and thorough vetting of the drilling process before considering permitting it.

One speaker who I did not find fit in with the well-spoken, nor well-thought-out deliveries was a flunky from the gas industry. He spoke for about 15 minutes and basically said, “Don’t worry, we have it under control. There’s been hydro-fracturing in NYS since the fifties with no incidents.”

Well, that kind of misleading tripe is proof-positive that you shouldn’t trust these windbags as far as you can spit a rat.

As I left the venue I saw him in the lobby, and I couldn’t help but tell him he was the best speaker our side could have. He smiled, then asked, “Uh, which side are you on?”

I told him I was on the side opposing his. He was taken aback, and asked what he had said that I had a problem with. I told him that I, like most of the other people in the room, were livid as he spoke and misrepresented the entire situation.

It was readily apparent to most people in the room that the “gentleman” had left out the word “horizontal” in his entire statement. Comparing the hydrofracking that is being discussed today with the vertical drilling that was done in the fifties is like comparing apples to codfish, and he knew it.

Everyone who cared to actually consider what he was saying was aware that he was being “disingenuous” to say the least.

He assured me that they are “virtually the same procedure.”

I love that. To these guys, “horizontal” is virtually “vertical.” That is their logic, and they expect you to swallow it.

It’s like saying, “Hey, in 1925 there were airplanes, and there wasn’t a single case of spewing burned jet-fuel into the atmosphere, so why are you worried about airplanes doing that now?”

People like that give me gas.

There was a nice local gentleman standing with him, who was trying to defend him. He tried the same old, tired argument that, “Well, we need to get energy from somewhere. You need to drive your car, don’t you?”

I have no argument with that. But that is precisely the point: He can’t win an argument I am not fighting him on. The argument is about how they extract gas from the ground with hydro-fracking, and why not to trust them, not about if gas is a good fuel or not. I mean, I like to eat potatoes, but if they had to poison my well to get them, I don’t think I’d be eating them for very long.

If the horizontal drilling that the industry is lobbying for were truly safe, would they have to revert to double-speak to defend it? Why don’t they address the issues we bring up and show us logically that there is no problem?  (Um, because they can’t?) It’s the same crap argument the cigarette companies used for years. “There’s not proof that it’s harmful.”

That’s what the guys in Chernobyl said. That’s what they told the soldiers and sailors they had witness the first a-bomb tests (you know, the guys that developed elephantitis of the testicles…)

We have met the enemy, and this time it is them.

What do you have to do to let people know when they are being shat upon by people who live far away and will make money off their misinformed decisions?

There were many things to be gotten out of this meeting.

One, was now we can put a face on the faceless bureaucrats that blow gas at you. (Damned if I remember the guy’s name, though – but if you were there, there is not much of a chance you don’t know who I mean).

Another is that it was great to see the ballroom packed with concerned neighbors who are so passionate about protecting the great area in which we live.

My admiration goes out to all those who did such in-depth research and who presented their cases so well.

Hotcha!

Brian

Petition for a Moratorium for the Town of Otego

Petition for a Moratorium for Otsego County

How is natural gas drilling like a game?  It is frequently referred to by the oil and gas companies as a “play,” only it is a game in which there is no level playing field, no clear-cut winners, and no ”do-overs” if mistakes are made.

In this game, New York State, by way of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), is required to be the referee and regulate natural gas wells as they are drilled, yet there are not enough inspectors (currently there are only 19 inspectors to regulate 6,683 pre-existing vertical wells across the entire state), nor is there necessarily money to train and hire more during the state’s budget crisis.  The federal government is primarily a benchwarmer, since the 2005 Energy Policy Act exempts the oil and gas companies (and horizontal drilling, by extension) from the clean water, air, and safe drinking water acts.

There are also at least two divisions, or tiers, in the game of natural gas drilling and extraction; us (i.e. the majority of New York State) and New York City.  In the DEC’s draft scope document for the

Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, or dSGEIS, New York City and its drinking water are provided with a special “1,000 ft. wide protective corridor” around aqueducts and a 1-mile buffer around reservoirs.  In contrast, we are expected to be content with a minimum of 50 ft. from public streams and rivers, 100 ft. from wetlands, and 100 ft. from private homes and water wells. (To give you a visual image, 100 ft. is about 1/3 the size of an average football field.)  Why is the clean drinking water of New York City considered to be more important than our own?

Cities like Oneonta, and larger towns and villages should not be complacent, either.  While the scoping document apparently thinks that municipal water should have more protection than private water wells

(around 1,000 ft.), the DEC and the private gas companies reserve the right to obtain special permits to drill closer if there is a lot of natural gas to be extracted.  Drilling can also take place a short distance from public buildings like schools (150 feet away), and even in densely populated suburbs, as in Fort Worth, Texas.  Airborne pollutants like diesel fumes, methane, and evaporated fracking chemicals from open pits, and 24-hour noise from compressors and drills, recognize no boundaries or exclusive addresses.

So, what can you do to level this “playing field?”  For starters, attend the Department of Environmental Conservation’s scoping hearing on December 2 in the Hunt Union Ballroom at SUCO. (Doors open at 4:30 pm.)  Learn more online and talk to your friends about the issue. Hold off on leasing your land.  Attend your local village and town board meetings and remind them, the DEC, and Governor Patterson who they are working for—not private gas companies, but YOU.  Only by standing up now can we prevent the “Marcellus Gas Play” from turning into a game of Russian Roulette.  Or a New York State version of the movie Erin Brockovich.

Megan Byrnes, Concerned Citizens for Otego