What’s gerrymandering got to do with Fracking? Everything. They, the legislators, don’t listen to you when you protest fracking because they don’t have to. The are safe and secure regardless of how you vote. Here is Jim Greenwood explaining why…
Not part of FDPA? Check it out and meet people, both Republicans and Democrats, who are dedicated to having our democracy represent We the People.
Read the article in the Courier Times today. You’ll not only get a great overview of what’s afoot here. You will gain an important lesson in the down and dirty world of money and influence in government. Ostensibly, it’s about a ban on fracking in the Delaware Basin. but the DRBC decision was to propose rule-making, not ban fracking.
Between now and November, DRBC staff will be drafting language for regulations to govern not just drilling operations, but also the taking of water from the river to be used in fracking and also the disposal of the contaminated waste water. Our watchdog groups like the Delaware Riverkeeper Network smell a rat. The general public has no opportunity for influence until the proposed regulations are written. But the politicians and lobbyists will be hard at it, working to influence the phrasing and content of those rules. We’d like to think that common sense and science would prevail. But that is rarely the case. it will be very difficult for We the People to be heard in this process.
Stay tuned. If you snooze, we lose.
The Delaware River Basin Commission is a regulatory panel that decides what may be removed from or discharged to our Delaware River watershed. Members represent the United States (Corps of Engineers), New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Each entity has a seat at the table and a vote. But the individuals, the people who sit in those powerful chairs do not vote based on their personal conviction or discernment. The speak and vote for each of the Governors, and the President of the US.
Sure, most of the routine permitting of water companies and waste treatment operations is left to the staff these board members oversee. But issues like fracking are highly politicized. Lobbyists and industry lawyers make it their business to influence the policy that determines how these board members decide things.
The tension was palpable when the Colonel representing the Corps of Engineers voted against the motion that directed the staff to draft rules banning and regulating fracking in the Delaware River Basin. Everyone knew that she was following her orders and had no discretion whatever. As the roll call proceeded, other panelists made it clear that they too were speaking for those in higher authority.
As a courtesy to the many concerned citizens present, the panel permitted a public comment period after the meeting adjourned. It was not on the record, and it would not be heard by the real decision makers unless those who sat on the dais were extraordinarily committed to reporting the passion the various speakers expressed. These commissioners, many of the second or third alternates for the primary commission members, were there to take the verbal punches and try to remain civil and be cordial sparing those for whom they are surrogates.
If any one of them experienced themselves as guardians of a public trust, the moral injury they personally sustain should earn them a medal. When a person is ordered to do something that violates their deeply held moral and ethical convictions, when such an order comes from one who has absolute authority over the person, and when the stakes are very high, doing that abhorrent thing tears at the soul of one’s humanity. It’s a high-risk job if you really care about doing the right thing.
There will be enormous pressure for the DBRC to create loopholes and wiggle room in the regulations so that the energy industry can drill their wells and build their pipelines. The process will happen without public scrutiny, except when leaks happen. Insiders and influence peddlers will seek to influence the phrasing and the content. Political deals may be made. And, when the proposed rules are finally published and opened for public comment, it will be damned hard to get any meaningful changes adopted. Why? Again, because the people in those chairs listening to the public are not empowered to vote using their discernment and conscience – they will be under orders decided by a political bureaucracy and given before the hearings even begin.
The Pope speaks about climate change and morality …
Big news: we just learned that in 5 days there will be a vote to help establish a ban on fracking in the Delaware River watershed for good. 1
With 289 confirmed cases of people’s drinking water wells contaminated by fracking in Pennsylvania, we can’t risk the drinking water for the 15 million people who rely on the Delaware River. 2
Tell Governor Wolf: Vote to keep fracking permanently out of the Delaware River Basin.
The frackers are already railing against news of the vote by spreading misinformation and lobbying the Governor. That’s why he needs to hear from thousands of Pennsylvanians in the next few days to make sure this passes.
Eight years ago we helped flood the governor’s office with public comments in support of the first moratorium on fracking in the Delaware River Basin. Since then, it’s become only more clear, as fracking companies in PA have violated environmental and public health protections over 4,000 times in other parts of the Commonwealth.3
And so for eight years, we’ve kept our drinking water safe.
This new policy would permanently commit environmental regulators to keep fracking away from the Delaware River, giving all of us peace of mind that our water will always be safe from fracking’s cocktail of toxic chemicals. Add your name for a ban on fracking near the Delaware now.
You can be sure the fracking industry will fight this effort over the next few days, but with your support we can protect the Delaware.
Sincerely,
David Masur
PennEnvironment Research & Policy CenterP.S. Help us build even more support for protecting the Delaware by forwarding this to your friends and family!.
1. “AP Source: Permanent Delaware River drilling ban in the works,” Associate Press, September 7, 2017.
2. “Water Supply Determination Letters,” Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, accessed September 7, 2017.
2. Alana Miller and Adam Garber, “Fracking Failures 2017: Oil and Gas Industry Environmental Violations in Pennsylvania,” PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group, Spring 2017.
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Ask your representative how “Demolishing the DEP” budget bills serve the public interest.
Food and Water Watch has the details (click link) and is organizing a statewide call in on August 17th. http://fwwat.ch/ProtectDEP. Don’t let this legislation happen!
You would think that a non-profit organization with a name like “American Council on Science and Health” with a slogan like “Science, Not Hype” would be one of those bedrock watchdogs of rigorous truth. But not in today’s world of disinformation. A couple of weeks ago my wife Marguerite received a nine-page single-spaced letter from Hank Campbell, the President of that organization. He was pitching his role as “the only organization in the nation” that could defend “the remarkable benefits of science in our lives.”
Yes, you read right, nine (9) pages. Ed Mayer, who wrote the book on junk mail, said that a letter couldn’t be too long, just too boring. A nine-page letter asking for a $1,000.00 contribution has got to be really good to work. This one is, but not in the moral or ethical sense. It is cleverly and artfully crafted to deceive. (more…)
“This is why I don’t think they will come to central Bucks or even Wrightstown to frack. And this is why I suggested that we should put the zone for fracking in the jointure in land next to a McMansion development. That said, none of that would stop them from fracking in upper Bucks in the Delaware watershed and jeopardizing our aquifers and water supply. This couple’s story also elucidates why we need money from frackers for at least pre-fracking water testing. That’s gotta be in a fracking ordinance if there’s a way to include it.” —Robin Hoy
In the frightening denial of reality we are seeing in Washington, and with the State of Pennsylvania acting against the interests of local communities and individuals this film will be a timely reminder of the grim facts. America and the world can not delay the transition to non-carbon energy sources. Delay has terrible consequences for everyone, but especially for those already surviving at a bare subsistence level.
Watch. Truth. In theatres July 28, 2017.
If you fill a vertical pipe with water, the weight of the water produces pressure at the bottom of the pipe. That’s why we have water towers. A typical water tower is about 100 feet tall and produces about 40 to 50 pounds of pressure at ground level.
Imagine if you could build a water tower 10,000 feet (2 miles) high. The pressure would be 4,000 to 5,000 pounds. A deep well is like a tall water tower. The pressure at the bottom is equal to about half a pound a foot for each foot. That is the kind of pressure it takes to fracture rock layers. Deep disposal wells create that sort of pressure in the rock without the help of pumps because of the sheer weight of the water poured in at the top. Unlike the fracking process which last hours or days, the disposal well pressure is unrelenting. Over months and years and decades and centuries it is still there. The consequences are unpredictable. But Oklahomans have a pretty good idea what some of them are.
Think about a hydraulic jack. A small piston or pump produces a high pressure per square inch. My travel trailer weighs 12,000 lbs. Yet I can lift it with a little bottle jack. (Click the picture to learn how it works.)
The deep well shaft is analogous to the pump part of the jack. The miles of subterranean porous rock surrounding that well are like the lifting piston. The drilling company would like us to believe that nothing will happen when they add tons of polluted frack waste water to the well. Good luck with that. Their little company, all its owners, and all its employees may be long dead, but that well will still be there trying to lift the miles of earth around it.
Wastewater disposal wells are bad news. Such wells have caused earthquakes in Oklahoma and Texas, and now they may come to Pennsylvania. What’s even more alarming and disgusting? Our taxes are being used to make it happen! The State of Pennsylvania has issued permits for the wells and simultaneously filed lawsuits to overturn the local government’s attempt to block them. (Read Article)
If that doesn’t make your blood boil, also consider the fact that there is little benefit and much harm to Pennsylvanians. Sure, if you own stock in a gas energy company, or have one of the few jobs they create, you might have some near-term benefit. But the gas is not for domestic needs — there is already a glut. It’s for overseas markets. The governor does hope to attract plastics makers who can use natural gas as a hydrocarbon source. But that is not the motivation for any of this. The hidden agenda is to sell the gas as fast as possible before its use is banned to save the planet.
Global climate change is a major economic disruptor that looms ahead of us. Models differ on how soon each of its principal life-threatening effects will be impossible to ignore. The process seems to be accelerating. As we have been saying for years, nothing good comes of fracking.
Related News: http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/03/thats_not_deps_role_outrage_an.html
[Thanks to Charlie Peterson for the tip.]
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