NEW YORK—Concerned New Yorkers unfurled banners on the steps of City Hall Wednesday, calling for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing.
Hydraulic fracturing is the mining method proposed by several natural gas companies to extract underground natural gas deposits in Chenango, Tioga, and Chemung counties.
In hydraulic fracturing, water at a pressure 300 times greater than a garden hose, combined with sand and chemicals are pumped into horizontal well holes. The intense pressure cracks the surrounding rock allowing natural gas to seep into the well.
“Hydraulic fracturing injects toxic chemicals underground,” warned rally sponsors, Safe Water Movement (SwiM), in a press release.
“Scientists examining the fluids have determined that they universally include extremely dangerous chemicals, some of which can cause severe health problems and irreversibly contaminate ground and surface water,” the release said.
Monica Hunken, rally organizer, said that although the gas from hydraulic mining would generate enough energy to power the entire U.S. for two years, it would irreversibly contaminate clean drinking water. In Colorado where hydraulic drilling is used, people can light their [tap] water on fire, Hunken said.
Farming communities where drilling has occurred have experienced incidences of brain lesions, animals with malformed placentas, leading to stillbirths, and a lost sense of smell.
Fracking [fracturing] fluids contaminate farmland damaging organic and local food productions. Gas drilling would undermine New York State’s regional food sovereignty and force many New Yorkers to rely on industrial agriculture.
Vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, Lee Fuller, said in a separate interview that hydraulic fracturing has been used for over 50 years.
“There’s a very effective regulatory system in place, and has been for decades,” Fuller said. “It’s been used well over a million times.”
Recently, a house blew up in Ohio and it was investigated to find if fracking was the cause. Fuller said subsequent state investigations cleared fracking as the cause.
“The reason why that occurred was that the well had not been properly cemented when it was originally drilled,” Fuller said. “And therefore when it was put under some pressure, it caused gas to move outside the well-bore.
“The failure was not a result of fracking, it was a failure of the well not being properly constructed.”
In the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Bush administration amended the Clean Water Act allowing gas and oil companies to inject “Fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations.”
Fuller said more than 90 percent of the fluid involved in fracking is water, most of the rest is sand, and less than 1 percent is chemicals.
In 2008, Governor David A. Paterson of New York, signed a bill upping the number of wells permitted to operate on a given area of land on the basis that “New horizontal drilling techniques will likely be used.”
The shale formations that are being developed near New York, are 10,000 feet below ground, said Fuller. “So you’re not talking about something that is in any proximity to groundwater.”
Ken Gale a rally attendee as well as producer and host of an environmental radio show on
WBAI FM said, “We can do without natural gas but we cannot do without water.”
New York City mayoral candidate Tony Avella attended the rally, Avella said he is introducing a resolution to the City Council that would ban hydrofracking because the current risks outweigh the gains. “Let’s come up with a better way to do this,” he said.
Hydraulic fracturing is the mining method proposed by several natural gas companies to extract underground natural gas deposits in Chenango, Tioga, and Chemung counties.
In hydraulic fracturing, water at a pressure 300 times greater than a garden hose, combined with sand and chemicals are pumped into horizontal well holes. The intense pressure cracks the surrounding rock allowing natural gas to seep into the well.
“Hydraulic fracturing injects toxic chemicals underground,” warned rally sponsors, Safe Water Movement (SwiM), in a press release.
“Scientists examining the fluids have determined that they universally include extremely dangerous chemicals, some of which can cause severe health problems and irreversibly contaminate ground and surface water,” the release said.
Monica Hunken, rally organizer, said that although the gas from hydraulic mining would generate enough energy to power the entire U.S. for two years, it would irreversibly contaminate clean drinking water. In Colorado where hydraulic drilling is used, people can light their [tap] water on fire, Hunken said.
Farming communities where drilling has occurred have experienced incidences of brain lesions, animals with malformed placentas, leading to stillbirths, and a lost sense of smell.
Fracking [fracturing] fluids contaminate farmland damaging organic and local food productions. Gas drilling would undermine New York State’s regional food sovereignty and force many New Yorkers to rely on industrial agriculture.
Vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, Lee Fuller, said in a separate interview that hydraulic fracturing has been used for over 50 years.
“There’s a very effective regulatory system in place, and has been for decades,” Fuller said. “It’s been used well over a million times.”
Recently, a house blew up in Ohio and it was investigated to find if fracking was the cause. Fuller said subsequent state investigations cleared fracking as the cause.
“The reason why that occurred was that the well had not been properly cemented when it was originally drilled,” Fuller said. “And therefore when it was put under some pressure, it caused gas to move outside the well-bore.
“The failure was not a result of fracking, it was a failure of the well not being properly constructed.”
In the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Bush administration amended the Clean Water Act allowing gas and oil companies to inject “Fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations.”
Fuller said more than 90 percent of the fluid involved in fracking is water, most of the rest is sand, and less than 1 percent is chemicals.
In 2008, Governor David A. Paterson of New York, signed a bill upping the number of wells permitted to operate on a given area of land on the basis that “New horizontal drilling techniques will likely be used.”
The shale formations that are being developed near New York, are 10,000 feet below ground, said Fuller. “So you’re not talking about something that is in any proximity to groundwater.”
Ken Gale a rally attendee as well as producer and host of an environmental radio show on
WBAI FM said, “We can do without natural gas but we cannot do without water.”
New York City mayoral candidate Tony Avella attended the rally, Avella said he is introducing a resolution to the City Council that would ban hydrofracking because the current risks outweigh the gains. “Let’s come up with a better way to do this,” he said.
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