on any kind of public project.

Sifting & Winnowing

Volume 2, Number 2 by Audrey Newcomb July 2012
Gov. Cuomo floats 5-county fracking proposal for Southern Tier
It is not known whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo s decision to Chemical, IBM, and Endicot
t Johnson tanneries. The sci
try out fracking in five struggling communities was suggested by National Resource
s Defense Council attorneys,
or whether he thought it up himself. But journalist Tom
Wilbers s June 13th blog found it remarkably similar to a
January 11th memo from NRDC attorneys to DEC, referring
to the five counties with Marcellus Shale concentrations as
geographically limited areas. These counties, it turns out,
are experiencing high levels of poverty. Two of them are ac
tually begging to be fracked: Steuben and Chemung have
10% unemployment rates, the state s highest. Historically,
locating dangerous industries is an easier sell during tough
economic times, as was the case with Appalachia s mountaintop coal extraction remo
val. On July 9th, Cuomo assured
New Yorkers that he would not allow drilling in the more
than 100 communities that have passed no-fracking bans or
moratoriums. That would include the Town of Avon in Livingston County, which pas
sed a one-year moratorium on gas
drilling and hydraulic fracturing June 28th.
Barely skipping a beat, Lenape Resources announced less
than two weeks later that it would shut down the more than
5,000 acres under lease and 16 wells in production in Avon
beginning July 9th. Town Supervisor David LeFeber said
Lenape s shutdown wasn t required by the moratorium. We
were careful to word our moratorium to protect existing gas
wells. This is a moratorium, not a ban. But Lenape s attorney Michael Joy argues th
at a moratorium will hurt business.
Lenape s owner, John Holko, has lobbied against moratoriums in Caledonia and other
towns considering passing their
own legislation. Local ordinances against drilling in Middlefield and Dryden were challenged in court but upheld by local judges. The gas in
dustry is appealing the decisions, argu
ing that state law specifically says that local ordinances are
trumped by state regulations in the case of oil and gas drill
ing. Cuomo expects to make his decision after DEC finishes
its environmental review, expected by the end of summer.

Among those responding to Cuomo s five-county proposal

was Sandra Steingraber, PhD biologist, Ithaca College Distinguished Scholar in R
esidence, author of Living Downstream, and founder of New Yorkers Against Fracki
ng:
Partitioning NYS into frack and no-frack zones based on
economic desperation is a shameful idea, and we will ac
tively oppose its implementation.
Steingraber fears that Cuomo s limited fracking would turn
residents of counties desperate for economic development
into guinea pigs for shale gas development. Many of these
residents are not only disproportionately impoverished but
already disproportionately exposed to environmental pol
lutants left behind from previous industries, e.g. Monarch
ence is clear: fracking is a carcinogen-dependent industry
that offers temporary employment with high risks for injury
and death. The young people of Broome, Chenango, Che
mung, Tioga, and Steuben counties deserve jobs that do not
kill, maim, or poison them. Governor Cuomo, you need a
better plan! Potential health impacts of methane also concern Steingraber No studi
es have been done on what it
means to drink methane. Of course, methane is explosive.
I m concerned that, as a biologist, when we haven t done
the studies, the wrong implication is that there is no evidence for harm. But we
haven t ever looked before, because
people have never drunk methane in large quantities before,
because we have never blown up the bedrock beneath our
feet and sent methane into our drinking water before. This
is an unprecedented situation. One of my concerns is what
happens when you chlorinate this water, as in public drinking water systems. We
know that when you have carbon in
water and you chlorinate it, you can create carcinogens, such
as trihalomethanes, linked to colon and bladder cancer.
Steingraber s Huffington Post comments on a recent Food
and Water Watch report: Fracking threatens the world s vital water resources by usi
ng prodigious amounts of water
as a high-pressure hose to blow apart bedrock. The goal is
to liberate the wisps of oil or bubbles of gas trapped inside.
The gas or oil flows up and out of the bore hole. But in the
process, the water used to free it becomes caught within the
fractured rock. Entombed a mile or more below the water
table, the water is removed from the Earth s hydrologic cycle and now resides in t
he geological underworld. Permanently. It will never again fall as rain. Or irri
gate a field. Or
cap a mountain with snow. Or flow through an aqueduct to

a city full of people with sinks and bathtubs and teakettles

and toothbrushes. In essence, fracking is a hostage exchange
program: to release fossil fuel from the subterranean grip
of limestone or shale, water takes its place. To be sure, a
portion of fracked water returns to the surface once the pres
sure is released. But the flowback water is now contaminated
in ways that make it undrinkable. The technology to make
it pristine again doesn t exist. So it s ruined. Moreover, it s
poisonous enough to necessitate permanent containment
somewhere. This problem has no good solution. ( Potential
disposal options... are currently unclear,

concludes one of

ficial analysis.)
Just to review: Most of the planet s water is salty. A mere
thimbleful 1% of the world s aquatic resources is available to us as liquid, drinkable
water. Global climate change
is quickly siphoning away that slim amount, putting us on
track for widespread water shortages. Millions of gallons of

water are required for each well. And fracking is underway

or under consideration all around the world Argentina,
China, Poland, and South Africa. Fracking will only exacerbate the global water
crisis and, were this technology to con
tinue its advance across the world, could actually drive it.
In his 2011 book Ripple Effect, Alex Prud homme writes
that hydrofracking was originally developed by Halliburton,
the oil-field-services company once headed by Dick Cheney.
But it had never been subject to federal regulations, and state
oversight was spotty. In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the
contested energy bill crafted by Vice President Cheney in
closed-door meetings with oil and gas executives, fracking
was granted an explicit exemption from the Clean Water Act,
the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. This is
known as the Halliburton Loophole. The act exempts drilling companies from havin
g to disclose what chemicals are
added to the frack water, millions of gallons of which can be
pumped into the ground near aquifers during drilling.
Prud homme cites a 2010 study by Cornell University ecologist Dr. Robert Howarth,
which says that the air pollution
generated by drill rigs and by the trucks used to move fluids,
waste rock, and supplies is dirtier than drilling for oil and
possibly dirtier than mining for coal (usually considered the
dirtiest

hydrocarbon).

Also quoted in the book is former

ARCO planning manager James Northrup, who compared

fracking s intensive blasting to a very powerful hydrobaric underground bomb, in wh
ich pressures aproach 15,000
pounds per square inch, equivalent to 30 times that of an air
bomb. When shale is exploded by fracking, powerful jets of
fracking fluid break up rock indiscriminately for a considerable distance underg
round. This can allow release of natural
gas, made up of methane, butane, propane, and benzene into
drinking water supplies, along with toxins in the fracking
fluid itself, which contains chemicals that would be illegal
under the Geneva Convention banning chemical weapons.
Non-disclosure of chemicals was part of the Halliburton
Loophole, but thanks to endocrine disruptor scientist Dr.
Theo Colborn, who literally followed fracking trucks around
and collected samples, we have a good idea of what some of
the more than a thousand of them are: barium, arsenic, stron

tium, diesel fuel, ethylbenzene, toluene, napthalene, zylene,

carbon disulfide, petroleum distilates, aromatic hydrocarbons, reagents, and sur
factants all necessary to reduce
friction and eliminate algae underground under pressure
to fracture shale and release natural gas. Colborn estimates
that 30-70% of liquid injects can resurface at any time, any
place because no two places are geologically alike. This is
why fracking cannot be said to be safe, even if regulated.
Proponents argue that the 60-year-old technology has stood
the test of time, but traditional gas-drilling did not produce
a million gallons of hazardous flowback that would strain
the capacity of municipal water treatment facilities. That
technology needed but a fraction of the pressure and chemi
cals required in today s fracking. Although companies like
Chesapeake and Cabot have been around a long time, the
Halliburton Loophole has been in force for just eight years.
Fracking has been pursued aggressively by an industry desperate to get started r
ight away before everyone wakes up
and realizes what it s going to mean. Ten companies or trade
groups spent $4.5 million lobbying in Albany during the
past three years, according to a NYPIRG analysis. Propaganda also emanates from
university research departments.
A recent report from the State University at Buffalo, a major
research center as well as SUNY s largest campus, asserts
that state oversight has made natural gas drilling safer. According to a June 11
th article, the report also claims that af
ter examining violations by shale drillers in Pennsylvania,
polluting environmental events were found to decline by
more than half over three years; the report added that un
der NYS s tougher rules, future problems would be avoided
or mitigated. The claim was refuted by the watchdog group
Public Accountability Initative, which said the rate of major violations had act
ually gone up. The group also charged
that entire passages were taken word for word from a report
written last year for the conservative Manhattan Institute.
Critics doubt the report s accuracy and note the authors ties
to the oil and gas industry. The report s academic research
status, later retracted by school officials, was even described
as peer-reviewed. All four authors had ties to fossil fuel
industries. It s one of many instances where the decline of
government grants has opened doors for industries to borrow

a university s prestige to promote their products.

Heating costs are not likely to lessen, because New Yorkers
will not be heating their homes with Marcellus gas; Dominion Resources plans to
ship it to Europe for a bigger return
on corporate investment, which is why Avon s gas provider
wants the big bucks or nothing. It s actually what this is all
about. Furthermore, industry plans to stick it to taxpayers.
Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column last November 7th, said that industry
has no plans to internalize the costs
fracking inflicts on the public s health, air, water, or roads.
Pro-fracking politicians decry subsidies to failed solar panel
company Solyndra. But Solyndra s failure was caused by
technological success. The price of solar panels dropped and
the company lost out to the competition. The result has been
rapid growth in solar installations. Krugman sees no reason
to doubt that the day is coming soon when solar panels will
be cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal and
natural gas. But will our political system delay the energy
transformation now within reach? A large part of our political class is deeply i
nvested in an energy sector dominated
by fossil fuels and actively hostile to alternatives, and which
will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of foss
il fuels, directly with taxpayers money
and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, whi
le ridiculing technologies like solar.
Here comes the sun, if we re willing to let it in.

Role of climate change on political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere

Only here in the US do citizens have the luxury of opposing
ptocratic president, or Christians and

It ll be about some kle

government aid to the poor, regulations to prevent the private

sector from destroying the economy and the environment,
and instituting measures to deal with climate change. If they
lived in most developing countries, their wishes would be
granted; in fact, in most poor countries they already have
been granted, thanks to systematic dismantling and priva
tizing of these governments by World Bank and IMF. As a
result, the capacity of third-world governments to deal with
devastation caused by extreme weather has been greatly reduced. In a July 3rd De
mocracy Now interview, Christian
Parenti, author of the book Tropic of Chaos, noted the recent
numbers and intensity of fires and floods across the US. No
FEMA-like institutions exist in countries such as Kenya and
Afghanistan. Disaster victims are on their own to figure out
what to do next. If they lose their land, they often engage in
rural food raids or migrate to cities, where lack of jobs and
housing might tempt them into urban drug economies or into
religious and ethnic fanaticism. Despite a generation-long
assault on the public sector and on government itself here in
the US, there still does exist a public sector that comes to our
aid when these disasters strike.
Parenti links the assault on the public sector to the assault on
climate change science. The more obvious it becomes that
the climate is changing, the more brazen the voices denying
it become. The greater the number of disasters (doubled in
the last decade), the more insistant Congress is to defund
FEMA and fire public workers who are trained to handle
these crises, even though it is obvious that the private sector is not equipped
for disaster control, beyond offering
help. FEMA actually worked before it was downgraded by
Pres.Bush II (Remember Hurricane Katrina and the weakened FEMA s failure there? Co
rporations stepped in, shock
doctrine style, and privatized schools, housing, and hospitals). FEMA works better
now to help people and regional
economies recover at vulnerable disaster moments.
Parenti reminds us that the Arab Spring was partially triggered by climate chang
ing disasters in grain-producing
areas: in the US and Canada, floods; in Australia, Russia,

Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, droughts. In 2010, when Russia

banned its wheat exports, Egypt was its second largest wheat
importer. By 2011, food prices skyrocketed. Egypt s 2011
protests originated with high food prices, not of course the
only factor, but certainly an exacerbating one in the unrest.
Recent US fires, heat waves, and floods will likely result in
corn, wheat, and soybean price increases that could have enor
mous global consequences, Parenti says, likely compounded
by the two largest commodity speculators, Cargill and Glencore, who have the power to increase prices even further. Egyptians, who already
spend 40% of their wages on food, will be
further squeezed, leading to more food riots and protests. At
first it won t look like it s about climate change , says Parenti.
Muslims fighting each other in northern Nigeria. The role
of climate change in political situations is rarely acknowledged. The frightenin
g thing is that one of the only institu
tions in the US that seems to think about this is the Pentagon.
Their job is to fight wars and prepare for wars, so they see
this coming, and are preparing for open-ended counterinsur
gency on a global scale indefinitely. To their credit, they also
say they can t handle this. Right now, the preparations are
for policing this crisis, which can only exacerbate it.
EPA moves forward in big ways
A series of groundbreaking triumphs that allow EPA to take
actions that will benefit all of us have recently taken place.
p In mid-June, the Senate rejected the toxic air legislation
pushed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), which would have
permanently blocked the Mercury and Air Toxics clean air
protections. In 2009, EPA s endangerment finding held that
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases constitute a danger to public health a
nd should therefore be regulated under
the Clean Air Act. The judges said EPA s reading of its authority had been unambigu
ously correct and that the agency had based its case on careful research and soun
d science.
p On June 27th, a federal appeals court upheld EPA s climate emission standards, r
ejecting four legal challenges that
had been filed by industry groups and several states attorneys general.This unani
mous, unambiguous ruling affirmed
the importance of rigorous, independent science as the bedrock of efforts to pro
tect environmental and human health.

The court also upheld three related regulations,including the

first round of clean car and fuel economy standards covering
model years 2012-2016, issued by EPA and Transportation
Department in 2009 to significantly reduce greenhouse gases
from cars and light trucks while improving fuel efficiency.
It also upheld rules establishing a timetable for controlling
emissions from stationary sources like power plants.
p On June 29th, Congress passed the RESTORE Act as
part of the Surface Transportation Extension Act, which
dedicates 80% of Clean Water Act fines from BP and other
parties responsible for the 2010 Gulf oil spill to locations
where they are most needed to restore the fragile Gulf Coast
environment and economy.
At a time when the environmental movement in general and
climate change science in particular are under attack, the
administration s strategy to achieve regulation through the
courts rather than Congress offers protections to those who
accept the science as well as to those who do not.
Sifting & Winnowing, written and produced by Audrey Newcomb,
is registered with the IRS as a non-profit environmental outreach
organization. It is emailed to those who wish to receive it online
and mailed to those who prefer hard copy. Occasional small donations help with m
odest expenses. Contact: 10 Landing Road South,
Rochester NY 14610, or audreynewcomb@frontiernet.net
f