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Actor Ruffalo among anti-fracking speakers at BU event
VESTAL -- Eight thousand it wasn't, but a standing-room-only crowd gathered Monday in Binghamton University's Mandela Room for a discussion on the risks of natural gas drilling featuring some of the loudest critics of the controversial hydraulic fracturing process.
The forum, organized by a BU student group, attracted about 400 people, the majority students with a handful of community activists and landowners.
Actor Mark Ruffalo was one of several who spoke passionately against fracking while rallying the attendees, many of whom sat behind their handheld digital cameras while the Sullivan County resident detailed his reservations about the drilling technique.
"I'm not a person who wants to take money from people. If you can do it and do it safely, then go ahead and do it," said Ruffalo, who has appeared in such films as Shutter Island and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and has been an outspoken fracking critic. "But there just hasn't been a credible study on it. Would you take your daughter to the red-light district just because you've fallen on hard times?"
Ruffalo and other activists were scheduled to appear Aug. 12 at a rally on BU grounds outside of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency meeting on its study of hydrofracking, a drilling technique in which a mix a water, sand and chemicals is blasted deep underground to break up shale formations and release natural gas. But the meeting was moved and postponed after the EPA couldn't come to a contract agreement with BU, which had estimated about 8,000 people could attend the hearing and rally.
While some students came to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood actor, many came to learn about the controversy surrounding the drilling process that has grabbed headlines across the state and nation.
"I've been hearing a lot about hydrofracking lately," said Sarah Lister, a BU junior from Oneonta. "We shouldn't be sacrificing our land for something that's going to destroy it. We only have so much of it, you know."
The forum attracted a small number of drilling supporters. Joint Landowners Coalition President Dan Fitzsimmons watched from the back of the room as did local landowners Victor Furman and Bryant La Tourette, who at one point was engaged in a spirited discussion with a BU student and hydrofracking opponent while the program moved along.
"It was a lot of propaganda," Fitzsimmons said. "The kids really don't know about this. They're looking for a cause, but the sad thing is they are getting a whole bunch of misinformation."
Julia Walsh, who has helped organize fracking rallies on New York college campuses and is a co-founder of the Ulster County-based group Frack Action, said the BU event was by far the largest.
"This is our future in New York state that's at risk," she said. "We have to step up and stand firm and tall together to battle this industry and to not let them step foot on our land."
Many of the speakers urged the campus community to stay involved.
"SUNY Binghamton was once an epicenter of student involvement across the country," said Walter Hang, an environmental database specialist and owner of Ithaca-based Toxics Targeting. "And so we're really happy that you're all here, and we hope that we can teach you about hydrofracking and how to be effective advocates to try and stop this."
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Drilling opponents struggle with choosing a candidate for governor
Cuomo still mostly quiet on the subject, activists say
Andrew Cuomo's stance is too vague.
Carl Paladino? He wants to drill, and the sooner, the better.
With a month-and-a-half to go before the general election, some activists opposed to drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale are not satisfied with the positions the major party gubernatorial candidates have taken, leaving them without a candidate to fully support.
"The candidates have not taken a sufficient stance. No way, no how, not on any level," said Walter Hang, a database specialist from Ithaca and environmental activist. "It's almost all pabulum. They're all posturing. Some have said some nice things, but that's just not good enough."
Drilling in the gas-rich Marcellus formation has been placed on hold in New York since July 2008 as the state Department of Environmental Conservation reviews its permitting guidelines for the high-volume hydraulic fracturing process.
While Paladino, the Republican candidate, has said New York should have allowed companies to tap into the Marcellus two years ago, Cuomo has offered a noncommittal stance. A book detailing his energy policy says that "any drilling in the Marcellus Shale must be environmentally sensitive and safe" and declares existing watersheds "sacrosanct."
Cuomo, the Democratic candidate and current Attorney General, "would not support any drilling that would threaten the state's major sources of drinking water," according to his book.
That's not good enough for Hang, president of environmental database firm Toxics Targeting, and some of his fellow activists. Hang has organized a pair of well-attended protests surrounding recent Cuomo visits to Binghamton and Ithaca, and has sent a letter to the candidate, urging him to provide more detail and help to withdraw the DEC's draft guidelines. He met with Cuomo staff members ahead of his most recent Ithaca visit in August.
"Please spell out precisely how you propose to prevent gas drilling from threatening source water in approximately 75 percent of the Marcellus Shale in New York given that DEC's draft SGEIS would allow drilling in virtually that entire formation," Hang wrote, referring to the permitting guidelines. "I am eager to learn how you would safeguard those 'sacrosanct' areas if you are elected Governor of the State of New York."
Bruce Ferguson, a member of Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, called Paladino's stance "unacceptable." But he isn't thrilled with Cuomo's position, either.
"I think, unlike Paladino, Andrew Cuomo is a very intelligent man and a very seasoned politician," Ferguson said. "I think this is a question of educating Andrew Cuomo and making sure he hears our side of things. I don't think there's much point in talking to someone like Paladino; I don't think there would be much of a conversation there."
With a slew of polls showing a lead of varying degrees for Cuomo, there may not be any incentive for him to weigh in on highly polarizing issues, an expert said.
"Cuomo is still taking the role of frontrunner in his position taking. He's being careful to try and not take a position that could be used as a wedge in either direction with groups like the environmentalists," said John McNulty, a Binghamton University political science professor. "Paladino, on the other hand, is taking a go-for-broke strategy; like him or don't like him, he is who he is."
While she is supporting Cuomo, Tompkins County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson, a Democrat who opposes fracking, said she likes the stance Democratic Attorney General candidate Eric Schneiderman has taken. The Manhattan state senator has said he would sue to stop hydrofracking in New York.
"There's not a lot of detail there, but he says he would put the Attorney General's Office behind pressing the issue," Robertson said. "I think there are and have to be better ways to promote economic development in upstate New York. There have to be better ways to enable farmers to make a living, and there are ways to do this."
Schneiderman's stance could be problematic, however, if groups sue to stop the release of the DEC's permitting guidelines and the Attorney General would be forced to represent the department.
Hang said he and others would continue to fight well after the general election.
"We are pushing as hard as we can down the homestretch of the election and the (Gov. David) Paterson administration," Hang said. "Whoever gets elected and takes office in January, in all likelihood they're going to have to deal with this issue, as well."
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Pro-drilling demonstrators tired of demonstrating
As the second 12-hour EPA meeting session began on Wednesday, some pro-drilling demonstrators said they are starting become somewhat tired of making their case.
“People are getting burnt out on it,” said Marchie Diffendorf of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York. “It just keeps going on and on, and nobody trusts what the state’s going to do next — let alone the EPA.”
Diffendorf said the meeting was just one more event amid the three-year process of lobbing to bring natural gas drilling to New York State, and defend the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing nationwide.
“This has become very tiring,” said Brad Chubb, a landowner from Windsor. “There are some people who have been doing this for three years and it’s ridiculous. We shouldn’t have to do this for something that is our right to do anyway.”
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Strong positions on either side of "fracking" at EPA hearing
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - Armed with placards and clever slogans, hundreds of supporters and opponents of natural-gas drilling descended here Monday in a passionate display of just how fractious the process known as hydraulic fracturing has become.
Wearing shirts that urged policymakers to "Pass Gas Now," supporters of Marcellus Shale drilling faced off peacefully with activists who announced their opposition to hydraulic fracturing with chants of "Frack, No!"
The occasion was the first of two public sessions conducted Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency to gather public comment on its study of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a technique for unlocking natural gas from rock formations thousands of feet underground with high-pressure injections of water, chemicals, and sand.
Anti-drilling activists hope the EPA's study of hydro-fracking will prove it is an environmental danger that should be federally regulated, if not banned. The practice is currently regulated by states' oil- and gas-drilling laws.
"Everywhere this drilling is practiced is at grave risk," said James Barth, of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, a Pennsylvania anti-drilling group.
The gas industry and its supporters said the EPA study could inspire restrictions that might impair an industry that is one of the few economic bright spots in Pennsylvania and surrounding states.
"Now is especially not the time to further limit energy-job opportunities for those in need," testified John E. Harmon, of the African American Chamber of Commerce.
Two more sessions will be held Wednesday in this city 60 miles north of Scranton, the last of four locations where the EPA has had hearings in recent months.
The agency says public input will help it determine the scope of its study, expected to be finished in about two years. Regional administrator Judith Enck said the EPA was seeking suggestions "about the design of the study, not about the merits of hydraulic fracturing."
But that did not stop impassioned speakers from offering their opinions, which were joyously applauded in the cavernous Broome County Forum Theater.
Nearly all urged the EPA to base its study on science, rather than emotion or political pressure - as long as it was the science that supported their position.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D., N.Y.), a drilling opponent who campaigned for the new EPA study, called fracking an "unconventional, harm-causing drilling technique" that has been linked to "numerous reports of water contamination" nationwide.
He denounced a 2004 EPA examination that concluded hydraulic fracturing posed no risk. That study examined fracturing for natural gas in coal seams, which is conducted at shallower geologic depth and theoretically should pose more environmental risk than drilling in the Marcellus Shale, which is located a mile deeper than groundwater sources.
"Fortunately, now we have a new EPA which understands things a lot more clearly and is being more honest and open about this process," Hinchey said.
But gas-drilling advocates repeated their argument that there are no documented cases in which the hydraulic-fracturing process has contaminated groundwater - and that numerous studies have said there is little chance for contaminated fluids to escape from a properly constructed natural-gas well.
"A Hollywood actor holding a glass of cloudy water proves nothing except that fear-mongering and emotion will always trump science and logic," said Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York State.
Gill said that 14,000 of the 75,000 wells drilled in New York in the last two centuries were still producing, and that many of them were hydraulically fractured. But New York currently has a de facto moratorium on fracking while the state Department of Environmental Conservation studies new drilling regulations.
"Billions of dollars in economic impact to New York and its citizens is at stake here," he said. "The positive impact is staggering, but it doesn't come at the expense of environmental protection."
Opposition to drilling in New York is strongest in the Delaware and Hudson River watersheds, which provide New York City with its unfiltered drinking water.
But public sentiment in New York's southern tier is mixed. This economically depressed region lies across the border from Pennsylvania's most productive Marcellus areas, which are also the scene of several dramatic cases where drilling activity - though not necessarily hydraulic fracturing - caused contamination.
Broome County Executive Barbara Fiala declared fracking "safe" and expressed frustration with the slow pace of development in New York. "All we ask is that this study be focused and not take forever to complete," she said.
Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan urged regulators to take their time and examine not just fracking, but all aspects of gas drilling. "To date," he said, "I have heard only one refrain from those who want to speed up the gas play: We need the money."
Outside, where the street drama was taking place - police kept the rivals separated by barricades - land owners such as Chris Ostrowsky expressed exasperation that Pennsylvanians a few miles away in Susquehanna County were striking it rich, while New Yorkers were in limbo.
Last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released its first detailed Marcellus production figures. Susquehanna and Bradford Counties accounted for 55 percent of the 179 billion cubic feet of Marcellus gas produced in the year ending June 30, a Powell Barnett Shale Newsletter analysis says.
"It's real frustrating to see what's going on across the border, how the economy is booming in Pennsylvania," Ostrowsky said.
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EPA told gas drilling does, does not taint water
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Rep. Maurice Hinchey told a federal hearing Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate hydraulic fracturing, the natural gas extraction process that he said has contaminated water near drilling sites around the country.
"There are numerous reports of water contamination related to hydraulic fracturing in states across the country," said Hinchey, D-N.Y. "Despite the fact that EPA is, in many ways, precluded from taking regulatory action in response to these reports, I believe EPA must investigate to understand what is being done — to keep water supplies safe and secure."
The process, also known as fracking, blasts millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals, some of them carcinogens, deep into the earth to free gas from dense shale deposits. As a gas rush sweeps parts of the vast and lucrative Marcellus Shale region that underlies New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, environmentalists are concerned for the watershed that provides drinking water for 17 million people from Philadelphia to New York City.
Environmentalists fear the process, which leaves as much as 90 percent of the post-fracking water known as "produced water" deep underground, will irreversibly taint aquifers.
No water supplies have been poisoned by fracking, the petroleum industry says, and the process — which promises lucrative industry profits and thousands of jobs in economically depressed areas — is safe.
"Billions of dollars in economic impact on New York and its citizens is at stake here," said Brad Gill of the Independent Oil and Gas Association, with drilling promising more than 60,000 jobs in New York alone. "The positive impact is staggering but it doesn't come at the expense of environmental protection."
John Harmon of the New York-New Jersey African American Chamber of Commerce said full development of the Marcellus Shale would create 280,000 jobs over the next 10 years, jobs sorely needed in the black community.
"This is not the time to further limit energy job opportunities for those in need," Harmon said.
Congress has ordered EPA to conduct a new fracking study and EPA is considering how broadly to construct it, since the agency's 2004 study that declared the technology safe was widely criticized as flawed. The earlier study had enabled passage of 2005 energy legislation exempting fracking from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, leaving regulation to individual states.
"The EPA must do all it can to insure that its scientists and researchers are not influenced by industry or by politics as they were influenced back in 2004," Hinchey said, "so that the public can be assured that this study is being carried out in the public interest."
Hinchey is one of the authors of the so-called FRAC Act in Congress, which would put fracking under EPA regulation.
The petroleum industry is strongly opposed to federal regulation — which it says would be more costly than complying with adequate state rules.
Gill said "strict state regulations" for decades have governed fracking and the industry has "a stellar environmental record" to show for it.
In New York, he said, there are about 14,000 producing natural gas wells, thousands of which were begun by the fracking process. New York has not seen one case of groundwater contamination by fracking fluids, he said.
"A Hollywood actor holding a glass of cloudy water proves nothing except that fear-mongering and emotion will always trump science and logic," he said, taking aim at the recent critical TV documentary "Gasland," by Josh Fox.
The Marcellus rush is barely two years old in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where thousands of wells have been fracked. Some geologists estimate the Marcellus contains more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, of which fracking could recover 50 trillion cubic feet — enough to supply the entire East Coast for 50 years. The proximity of the gas stores to the large East Coast energy market makes it particularly valuable.
Hundreds of people on both sides gathered for the last of four public hearings on a pending EPA study of fracking. The Binghamton hearings, twice postponed because of anticipated large crowds, are split into double sessions on Monday and again on Wednesday.
"Kids can't drink gas" and "Protect our water. Stop fracking America," were some of the signs carried by opponents. Supporters, including union workers eager for jobs, carried signs that said "Yes to science, no to paranoia" and chanted "Pass gas now!"
New York's Department of Environmental Conservation has halted issuing drilling permits until it draws regulations to govern the process. Complaints of wellwater contamination and surface spills of post-fracking water have forced revision of state rules in Pennsylvania, where more than 1,600 wells have already been drilled in the Marcellus Shale and more than 4,000 permits have been granted.
Drilling companies have used fracking to release natural gas from other shale reserves around the country. EPA earlier held hearings in Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania.
Paul Rush of New York City's Department of Environmental Protection noted that half the state's population, residing in New York City and its environs, depend on unfiltered water from the Catskills-Delaware watershed that is in the Marcellus Shale region. Two DEP studies showed serious risks to the watershed if gas drilling is allowed there. He urged the EPA to read the studies posted on the DEP's website.
"There's no way this can be done safely. It will toxify the air, water and soil," said protester Kathy Shimberg, 73, of Mount Vision, N.Y., wearing a T-shirt that read "Love N.Y.? Don't frack it up."
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