Earth Day Press Release

LUZERNE COUNTY GREEN PARTY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Contact: Carl Romanelli, 570-574-0829 cjromanellii@yahoo.com
Jay Sweeney, 570-587-3603 jnln@epix.net

Green Parties of Northeastern Pennsylvania to join citizen groups for Earth Day press conference/rally/protest regarding gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale region. Events are part of statewide events on drilling scheduled throughout Pennsylvania.

On Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, 2010; groups from all over Northeastern Pennsylvania will come together on Public Square, Wilkes-Barre; beginning at 11 AM; for a press conference on the environmental threats of gas drilling in Pennsylvania. The event is being coordinated by the Green Parties of the northeastern section of the state. Greens from Luzerne, Lackawanna, Wyoming, Wayne and Susquehanna counties participated in the planning of the event, along with members of various citizen groups concerned about this issue.

Among the activist groups supporting the Earth Day protests are: The Sierra Club, Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC), Citizens for Clean Water, No Drill NEPA, Energy Justice; to name a few. Speakers will include Dr.Gere Reisinger of GDAC, Dr. Richard Aston of the Green Party, Atty. Frank J. Muraca from the PA Sierra Club and Jay Sweeney of the Wyoming County Green Party and candidate for State Representative in the 111th District.

Speakers will address the unified demands of environmentalists concerning drilling issues, which include:

* an immediate moratorium on all horizontal hydrofracturing in the Commonwealth, including in our state forests and on floodplains,
* an immediate freeze on all new Marcellus Shale drilling permits throughout Pennsylvania,
* the immediate suspension of the Delaware and Susquehanna River Basin Commissions’ authority to approve drilling-related water withdrawals anywhere in their respective watersheds, and, if necessary,
* the immediate resignation of DEP Secretary John Hanger.

Similar protests and rallies will be held throughout Pennsylvania on Thursday. They are planned for Norristown, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Meadville, and Williamsport. Speakers will be available to answer questions for the media from 11:00 to noon. Speakers and activities commence at 12:00 noon.

Cabot remains Arrogant

The Pennsylvania DEP posed as DEP for a day and it felt good to those of us who have been exceedingly frustrated about this juggernaut of stupidity that is the Marcellus Shale play. But looking more closely, it will be business as usual for the industry tomorrow, while a little section of the play gets some relief and corrective action. (“Corrective” as in, I screwed up your water supply but, reluctantly, here is a filter).

This is an example of the arrogance of Cabot Oil:

Kenneth Komoroski, a Cabot attorney and spokesman, said the company agreed to abide by the order, but it does not believe it failed to follow the first order and so sees no reason for the penalties or new demands.

“But in the interest of continuing to do our best to cooperate with the department, we did agree to those additional terms,” he said.

The company plans to shift its operations to other parts of Susquehanna County where it currently holds permits.

The overall impact to the company, he said, “will be somewhere between none and insignificant.”

Here is the full story – Gas company slapped with drilling ban and fine

Science should trump finance in a sane world, but nooooooo…

By way of Susquehanna River Sentinel here is an enlightening article by a scientist, Robert Howarth, who is the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University He is an “internationally known expert on environmental issues and water quality”. (article source:)

But go ahead and listen to light weight politicos like Urban, Rendell, and Cheney.  All they ever see is their own political interest.  None of them ever had an original thought which went beyond manipulation.  Go ahead and ask one, “Hey Dick, give me an original solution.”  Guaranteed it will be ideological, self-serving, transparent, and tired.

Read and think:

Natural gas is marketed as a clean fuel with less impact on global warming than oil or coal, a transitional fuel to replace other fossil fuels until some distant future with renewable energy. Some argue that we have an obligation to develop Marcellus Shale gas, despite environmental concerns. I strongly disagree.

Natural gas as a clean fuel is a myth. While less carbon dioxide is emitted from burning natural gas than oil or coal, emissions during combustion are only part of the concern. Natural gas is mostly methane, a greenhouse gas with 72 times more potential than carbon dioxide to warm our planet (per molecule, averaged over the 20 years following emission). I estimate that extraction, transport and combustion of Marcellus gas ? together with leakage of methane ? makes this gas at least 60 percent more damaging for greenhouse warming than crude oil and similar in impact to coal.

The most recent method of hydro-fracking is relatively new technology, massive in scope and far from clean in ways beyond greenhouse gas emissions. The landscape could be dotted with thousands of drilling pads, spaced as closely as one every 40 acres. Compacted gravel would cover three to five acres for each. New pipelines and access roads crisscrossing the landscape would connect the pads. Ten or more wells per pad are expected. Every time a well is “fracked,” 1,200 truck trips will carry the needed water.

Drillers will inject several million gallons of water and tens of thousands of pounds of chemicals into each well. Some of this mixture will stay deep in the shale, but cumulatively, billions of gallons of waste fluids will surface. Under current law, drillers can use absolutely any chemical additive or waste, with no restrictions and no disclosure. Recent experience in Pennsylvania indicates regular use of toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic substances. Out of 24 wells sampled there, flow-back wastes from every one contained high levels of 4-Nitroquinoline-1-oxide, (according to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation). It is one of the most mutagenic compounds known. Flow-back wastes also contain toxic metals and high levels of radioactivity extracted from the shale, in addition to the materials used by drillers.

Industry tells us that surface and groundwater contamination is unlikely, since gas is deep in the ground and drilling operations are designed to minimize leakage. Nonsense. The technology is new and understudied, but early evidence shows high levels of contamination in some drinking water wells and rivers in other states.

Accidents happen, and well casings and cementing can fail. The geology of our region is complex, and water and materials under high pressure can move quickly to aquifers, rivers and lakes along fissures and fractures. Flow-back waters and associated chemical and radioactive wastes must be handled and stored at the surface, some in open pits and ponds unless government regulation prevents this. What will keep birds and wildlife away from it? What happens downstream if a heavy rain causes the toxic soup to overflow the dam? What happens to these wastes? Adequate treatment technologies and facilities do not exist.

What about government regulation and oversight? The DEC is understaffed,underfunded and has no history with the scale and scope of exploitation now envisioned. Federal oversight is almost completely gone, due to Congress exempting gas development from most environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, in 2005.

We can be independent of fossil fuels within 20 years and rely on renewable green technologies, such as wind and solar. The constraints on this are mostly political, not technical. We do not need to sacrifice a healthy environment to industrial gas development. Rather, we need to mobilize and have our region provide some badly needed national leadership toward a sustainable energy future.

Lead into the sustainable, organic, regional-centric economic future? Nah… let’s go back to the mines, the usury, the elitism… it makes perfect non-sense… and so the fools continue to rule us…

Frack House

Poetry Project – Citizens Beware!

Citizens Beware!

Gas drilling companies
don’t play fair –
they pollute
our water,
soil and air.

– by Jerry Walkowiak

“DEP lies to residents of Waterville”

Here is a most recent update on the Pine Creek Toxin Spill from the Responsible Drilling Alliance:

Subject: DEP lies to residents of Waterville about chemical product hazards: Sungazette “DEP: Gas industry treatment behind discharge on hillside”

AIRFOAM HD discharging into spring water from gas production — Dan Spadoni of the DEP said to the reporter in this news article that the MSDS sheet states that Airfoam HD is not dangerous — but it is, Air Foam HD has high levels of a chemical called 2-BE (2-Butoxyethanol) which is strongly associated with a rare form of adrenal cancer. The MSDS sheets for Airfoam HD indicate that this chemical product can cause health problems and is also soluble in water. Water tests for 2-BE are extremely expensive, costing over $100 for a 500ppm test of a water sample (as Wayne and Angel Smith in Clearville, PA found out last winter). There is already one poster child for 2-BE contamination and this rare adrenal cancer in a gas drilling area: Laura Amos.