landowner

Officials Suggest Gas Drilling Technique is Safe, Then Acknowledge Lack of Evidence

NY State Admits Ignoring Threat to City’s Drinking Water

Well Duh! Like I said: If hydraulic fracturing is so damn safe, why does Big ...
In two documents released last October and earlier this month, the Department of Environmental Conservation declared that it “does not…find a significant environmental impact associated with [hydraulic fracturing], which has been in use in New York State for at least 50 years.” Yet when EWG sent a FOIL request asking the DEC to disclose details of tests of surface and underground waters for contamination by hydraulic fracturing chemicals, department officials responded that “the division of Mineral Resources does not maintain any records which are responsive to your request.” EWG senior analyst Dusty Horwitt placed a follow-up telephone call to a state official, who confirmed that the state had done no testing and had no test results.

“The Department of Environmental Conservation violates the public’s trust when it says that hydrofracing is safe for the environment,” Horwitt said. “New York’s taxpayers and property owners have a right to know exactly what happens when tons of water laced with carcinogens and other toxics are blasted into the earth near their water supplies. Whether out of ignorance or deceit, the DEC’s policy amounts to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.”
How could it be safe to pump these chemicals into the ground with the possibility that they could find their way into our drinking water.
EWG recommends that New York state authorities reject applications for hydrofracing permits until natural gas companies have publicly disclosed the chemicals they plan to use and until the state has conducted tests on whether past instances of hydraulic fracturing have contaminated New York water supplies. The state should also obtain reliable tests from hydrofracing operations similar to those contemplated for New York, to determine whether those operations contaminated water supplies.
H.R. 7231 will reinstate basic federal standards for hydraulic frac.... Please contact your representatives and ask that they support this bill!

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Oil & Gas Pro Comment by Dion Warr, CPL on February 23, 2009 at 12:28
TX Sharon:

Do you not already keep a blog of some repute?

If you are going to take on another one, would you at least have the consideration of not cutting and pasting from your other one, or stop constantly linking to your other blogspot?

As far as the proposed bill being characterized as a reinstatement of basic federal standards for hydraulic fracturing, under the 1974 USDW Act, the text originally stated the inclusion of subsurface emplacement of fluids by well injection, and was silent as to hydro frac process (which includes injection and subsequent withdrawal of injected fluids. The 2005 amendment cleaned up the statute by addressing the issue of hydraulic fracturing insofar as same was related to oil, gas, or geothermal activities was excluded, but did not mitigate the injection of diesel fuels, and did not interfere with the general proviso against "underground injection [which] endangers drinking water sources if such injection may result in the presence in underground water which supplies or can reasonably be expected to supply any public water system of any contaminant, and if the presence of such contaminant may result in such system’s not complying with any national primary drinking water regulation or may otherwise adversely affect the health of persons.

I realize that this interferes with your logic that 'no one can define the risk or find a significant environmental impact, therefore, the practice should not be allowed', fueled by a presupposition that 'fracing is bad', but generally legislation and regulation grows out of society recognizing and quantifying a problem, not the mere presupposition of an anticipated or possible problem.

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