Times Fracking Expose Buoys Local Opponents

By JIM KEVLIN


Local folks concerned about hydrofracking for natural gas were elated after the New York Times launched a three-part series Sunday, Feb. 27, with “Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers.”
Citing “internal documents” from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reporter Ian Urbina writes that waste water from fracking “contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known.”
That water is “sometimes” hauled to plants not designed to treat it, then discharged into rivers that provide drinking water for cities as large as Pittsburgh.
The second part, “Gas Drillers Recycle Wastewater, but Risks Remain,” was printed Tuesday, March 1.
Sunday’s front-page report, continued on two full pages inside, creates “great public exposure” on a issue that had been reported on, but never with such vitality, said Robert H. Boyle, East Springfield, the Sports Illustrated senior editor and environmental writer active in the local anti-fracking coalition.
“The Times is the flagship of the press,” said Boyle.  “That brought it home with great vitality.”
Sustainable Otsego’s Adrian Kuzminski, Fly Creek, the former Hartwick College professor, called the impact “enormous.  Everything the critics have been saying has now been condensed and brought to broad public attention by the Times.
“I’m sure this will initiate a statewide and national debate,” he continued.  “The only conclusion that reasonable people can reach is hydrofracking should be prohibited in New York State.”
Said Nicole Dillingham, Otsego 2000 president, “We’re grateful to this reporter who put this together.  If ever there was a time for our county to stand up for a moratorium, it is now.”
She pointed out many of the issues explored -- radioactivity, the lack of waste-water treatment facilities (the Ross #1 well on Crumhorn Mountain waste is being processed in Watertown, 200 miles away) and inability of the state to enforce -- are the very concerns the local anti-fracking coalition has been raising with the county’s Gas Advisory Committee.
Urbina reports on L.A.-level ozone pollution in Wyoming, and youthful asthma rates in Texas running triple the state average near wells, but spends the most time in the first segment on “Pennsylvania, Ground Zero.”
What EPA officials called “one of the largest failures in U.S. history to supply clean drinking water to the public” occurred in late 2008, when a drought prevented drilling and coal-mine waste from being sufficiently diluted in the Monogahela River, prompting  an advisory that Pittsburgh residents drink only bottled water.
“Of more than 179 wells producing wastewater with high levels of radiation, at least 116 reported levels of radium or other radioactive materials 100 times as high as the levels set by federal drinking water regulations,” he writes at another point.  In 15 wells, it was 1,000 times higher.
Urbina also reported lax regulation in Pennsylvania, with only 31 inspectors overseeing 125,000 oil and gas wells and state agencies afraid to aggressively enforce the rules.
“We simply can’t keep up.  There’s just too much of the waste,” said one inspector, adding, “If we’re too hard on them, the companies might just stop reporting their mistakes.”
The state’s new governor, Tom Corbett, who received more political contributions from gas companies than all his competitors put together, has been even more friendly to drilling interests, opening state land to new drilling.
“I will direct the (state) Department of Environmental Protection to serve as partner with Pennsylvania businesses, communities and local governments,” Corbett is quoted as saying.
As Urbina reports it, drilling can ruin the neighborhood, too:
“Drilling derricks tower over barns, lining rural roads like feed silos.  Drilling sites bustle around the clock with workers, some in yellow hazardous materials suits, and 18 wheelers haul equipment, water and waste along back roads.
“The rigs announce their presence with the occasional boom and quiver of underground explosions.  Smelling like raw sewage mixed with gasoline, drilling-waste pits, some as large as a football field, sit close to homes.”