<http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/01/29/can-a-small-community-throw-a-monkey-wrench-into-the-global-fracking-machine/>Can 
a Small Community Throw a Monkey Wrench into the Global Fracking Machine?

By <http://whowhatwhy.com/author/karen-charman/>Karen Charman


15-WT-frack-SQ


The history of liberty is a history of resistance --

Woodrow Wilson

While New Yorkers anxiously await Governor Andrew Cuomo's decision on 
whether to lift the state's de facto moratorium on high-volume 
slick-water horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," 
Woodstock, the iconic counter-culture capital of the world, has 
become the first municipality to call for legislation to make 
fracking a Class C felony.

Woodstock's action is just one small town's response to a rapidly 
escalating global war over fracking. To both sides in this war -- 
environmentalists and citizens who oppose fracking on the one side 
and the gas industry and its supporters on the other -- the upcoming 
ruling to allow or ban fracking in New York is being viewed as (you 
should pardon the expression) a watershed event.

Decisions made in Albany and in towns like Woodstock will likely 
determine whether fracking goes full steam ahead everywhere, or 
whether its momentum can be slowed or even stopped. New York, after 
all, has a rich history of environmental activism and democratic 
movements, and anti-fracking activism has spread like wildfire over 
the last couple of years. New York is also home to abundant supplies 
of clean freshwater, an essential resource that is in crisis globally 
and that could be endangered by the practice.

Fracking? Please Explain

On January 15, the Woodstock Town Board unanimously passed a 
resolution to petition New York State to introduce New York Public 
Law #1 -- which would impose stiff penalties for fracking and related 
activities. Before taking this step, the Woodstock Town Board took 
two others: banning fracking within its borders and outlawing the use 
of frackwaste fluid, some of which is known as "brine" (because of 
its heavy salt content), on its roads. This material is used as a 
de-icing agent in the winter and for dust control on dirt roads in 
the summer. Despite the fact that brine from oil and gas wells 
(whether fracked or not) is laden with heavy metals, toxic chemicals, 
and radioactivity, since 2008 the Department of Environmental 
Conservation has granted approval for it to be spread on roads in the 
western part of the state.

New York Public Law #1 was conceived and drafted in May 2011 by the 
Sovereign People's Action Network (SPAN) and FrackBusters NY -- two 
citizen anti-fracking groups spearheaded by the late Richard 
Grossman, a legal historian, democracy activist, and founder of a 
movement to ban corporate personhood and strip corporations of their 
special legal privileges.

Fracking is used to extract "unconventional" sources of natural gas 
or oil, like those found in shale formations. Unlike the large pools 
of gas that make up "conventional" sources, the gas in shale is 
typically found in separate tiny bubbles throughout the rock 
formation. In order to get it, drillers create a "permeable 
reservoir" by shattering the rock formation that contains the gas.

This involves drilling a deep well straight down into the shale, then 
turning the well at roughly 90 degrees so that it runs horizontally 
another 10,000 feet or so. The well is fracked when a mixture of 
water, chemicals, and sand is pumped in at explosive pressure to 
force open cracks in the rock, enabling the gas to flow back up to 
the wellhead.

Since these wells travel under aquifers, lakes, rivers, and streams, 
much concern has been raised about the potential to contaminate 
groundwater and other freshwater supplies. Fracking also requires a 
massive industrial operation, which creates significant air 
pollution, noise, and truck traffic. Large amounts of various toxic 
compounds, plus nitrous oxide, a key component of ozone, spew from 
diesel generators, drill rigs, trucks, condensate tanks, and other 
equipment, as well as the flaring of wells.

In communities across the country where fracking has been underway 
for more than a decade, the process has left a trail of poisoned 
people, serious water pollution, including radioactive contamination 
of drinking water supplies, and potential 
<http://whowhatwhy.com/Users/Gerry/Documents/baker/2013/CharmanWoodstockFracking-1/cce.cornell.edu/.../PDFs/NYSBA%20Journal%20nov-dec2011.pdf>threats 
to the value of people's homes and land in drilling areas. The gas 
industry has denied that its actions are responsible for these problems.

Meanwhile, serious questions have been raised about the integrity and 
economic viability of the entire enterprise. Officials within the 
United States Energy Information Administration, a division of the 
Energy Department, have suggested that estimates of gas reserves may 
have been purposely inflated, a concern graphically illustrated in 
hundreds of industry emails and internal documents -- some of them 
dripping with contempt.

According to one industry insider, "The word in the world of 
independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and 
the economics just do not work." Another equated the hype around 
shale gas as a "charade" and said companies involved were "having an 
Enron moment," adding that "they want to bend light to hide the truth."

On another environmental front, evidence is mounting that a vast 
expansion of shale gas extraction will dramatically increase global 
warming. That's because the emissions of methane -- a much more 
potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide -- leaking out of the 
ground in drilling fields are much greater than previously known. 
Considering that fracking is becoming a global phenomenon, the 
methane leakage could be a significant new source of greenhouse gas emissions.

SPAN, FrackBusters NY, and the Woodstock officials who passed the 
resolution calling for criminalizing the activity believe that 
existing law and regulation won't protect New Yorkers from the 
irreversible damage fracking would inevitably cause. On its website, 
SPAN says: "The traditional way to prevent irreparable harm is by 
enacting laws criminalizing such behavior and by imposing 
deterrent-level penalties."

A Law with Real Teeth

As such, the law is comprehensive in scope and mandates prison 
sentences of between five and 20 years along with minimum fines of $1 
million per violation. Activities deemed felonies under the law include:

- extracting oil and/or gas by fracking in New York State;
- mapping, exploring and locating oil and/or gas deposits with the 
intent to frack;
- importing frack-related materials into the state, including 
fracking wastewater and drill cuttings;
- withdrawing any water in the state for the purpose of fracking anywhere; and
- owning, possessing or transporting fracking paraphernalia anywhere 
in the state.

The law also goes after corporations -- and their boards and top 
management -- found to violate it. New York corporations would have 
their corporate charter revoked, while those chartered elsewhere 
would have their authority to do business in the state rescinded. 
Such corporations could also have any assets they had in New York 
seized to be sold at auction, with the proceeds going to the state treasury.

Nor does Public Law #1 exclude government personnel. It would also 
make any person working for any level of government in New York, 
whether as an employee or as an elected or appointed official, liable 
not only for compensatory and punitive damages, but also legal 
expenses if that person was found in violation.

"The oil and gas mining laws of New York, as presently written, 
disempower citizens and communities while treating corporate fracking 
and fracking-related activities as legal, despite the extreme and 
irreversible harm this industrial process causes," FrackBusters NY 
said in a statement from November 2011, when the group first unveiled 
the draft law.

The law is intended to move the debate over fracking out of the 
regulatory arena, whose often glacially paced and always expensive 
procedures are designed only to mitigate rather than prevent harm. 
Instead, the law would require officials to stop the damage before it occurs.

In October 2011, a month before he died, Grossman gave an interview 
to Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter, in which 
he said that he and his co-activists had no illusions about the New 
York State Legislature: "But theoretically at least, that is where 
laws are made. And that's where sovereign people go to instruct our 
representatives. Our approach to our legislators is: we wrote this 
law -- now you pass it."

Grossman also said that anti-fracking activists understood that this 
wouldn't happen "until we build a formidable statewide movement that 
is not only talking about fracking as a destructive technology, but 
also about illegitimate rule by a very small corporate class."

Jobs vs. Environment: A Familiar "Choice"

Anti-drilling sentiment is rising in New York. Currently, 43 
municipalities have enacted bans, 110 have passed moratoriums, and 
there are movements for either outright bans or moratoria in another 
91 municipalities.

Not everyone is opposed to fracking, however. Like many areas in the 
country, the upstate economy is struggling with high rates of poverty 
and unemployment, issues that loom large for many people living in 
areas above the shale. Forty-four municipalities have passed 
resolutions supporting fracking, though opponents in some of those 
communities are trying to repeal pro-fracking resolutions and enact 
either a ban or moratorium.

The public's concern about shale gas extraction is much more nuanced 
than the common but crude "jobs versus environment" framing. 
According to a 
<http://whowhatwhy.com/Users/Gerry/Downloads/counties.cce.cornell.edu/oneida/.../Chartbook-FINAL-1lte%20%281%29.pdf>survey 
of 600 residents in upstate New York by Cornell University's Survey 
Research Unit in January 2011, 46 percent said the need for jobs and 
economic issues was the most important concern facing their 
community. And 70 percent of those living in counties with urban area 
populations of between 10,000 and 50,000 ("micropolitan" counties) 
said creating local jobs was the most important goal of their local 
government, while 59 percent of respondents in more sparsely 
populated areas agreed.

At the same time, environmental preservation also scored high among 
upstaters. In response to the question, "Given the current economic 
challenges facing New York State, do you believe state and local 
governments should be committed to protecting long-term environmental 
values?", 90 percent said yes. When specifically asked about natural 
gas drilling and whether the risks to water quality outweighed the 
benefits of the revenues, or vice versa, 65 percent said the risks 
outweigh the benefits, 24 percent said the revenues were more 
important, and 11 percent said they didn't' know enough about gas 
drilling to answer.

Regulatory Business-as-Usual -- But with a Twist

Anti-fracking groups delivered 204,000 letters on the New York 
Department of Environmental Conservation's proposed regulations on 
January 11, 2013, the last day of a 30-day public comment period that 
included the Christmas holidays.

The DEC took most of 2012 to read the 66,000 comments generated 
during an earlier public comment period. Yet the agency appears to be 
pushing hard to meet a February 27, 2013 deadline to approve the 
proposed regulations that would pave the way for the issuing of 
drilling permits. If the fracking regulations are not finalized by 
that date, the proposed ruleswould lapse, in which case the entire 
process would start from scratch, probably delaying any decision to 
allow fracking in the state for years.

Governor Cuomo and the DEC have come under intense criticism for 
rushing the process. The most recent comment period under the state's 
environmental review -- quite possibly the last -- asked for public 
input on regulations the agency put out before its environmental 
review was finished.

There has been no comprehensive study of fracking's health impacts by 
independent experts, a glaring omission in the state's environmental 
review, which citizens and environmentalists have repeatedly called 
on the governor and DEC to remedy. Instead, the Cuomo administration 
decided to have the state Department of Health conduct a health 
review that veteran Albany Times Union columnist Fred LeBrun 
describes as "opaque."

"To this day," LeBrun continues, "the public has not a clue as to 
what the health department is actually looking at, what's being 
reviewed, whether any recommendations for change will be made. That's 
all being kept secret by the administration. And apart from the names 
of the three respected public health experts from outside the state 
vetting the health department's work, we know nothing of what they 
are being asked to vet, whether they, too, can make any 
recommendations, [or] what the limits of their oversight might be."

The rule-making on fracking "has been from hell, an abomination," 
LeBrun said. "The public has been deceived, misdirected and kept 
utterly in the dark over where the state was heading concerning the 
most important environmental issue of this generation."

Frackbusters NY says New York's oil and gas mining laws, as currently 
written, "disempower citizens and communities while treating 
corporate fracking and fracking-related activities as legal, despite 
the extreme and irreversible harm this industrial process causes." It 
further charges that the New York DEC "functions as a pro-corporate 
agency, enabling hazardous extraction processes that benefit the few 
against the interests of local communities and the vast majority of citizens."

The DEC's behavior in its environmental review of fracking seems to 
bear out the group's allegation. Under existing state law, DEC must 
publish its environmental review, a document known as the 
Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, or SGEIS, at 
least ten days before it releases its final decision. The SGEIS will 
contain the reasoning behind the DEC's decisions on fracking as well 
as whether or not it will be permitted in New York.

If the state is to meet its February 27 deadline to finalize its 
regulations and lift the de facto moratorium on fracking, the SGEIS 
would have to be published by February 13.

But whether Cuomo approves fracking or not, this high-stakes fight 
will undoubtedly continue.

To the deep-pocketed and politically powerful fossil fuel industry -- 
which has run out of large, easily exploited reservoirs of fossil 
fuels -- fracking is the only way to get at much of the vast supplies 
of what is left. Global warming or not, the fossil fuel sector is 
aggressively securing as much of those sources as they can throughout 
the world.

To those concerned about the immediate harm to their health, the 
environment, and their communities, as well as the continued 
existence of our species and other life forms we share the planet 
with, stopping fracking is a question of life and death.

If Cuomo does approve fracking in New York, thousands have pledged to 
continue the resistance with acts of civil disobedience. Can ordinary 
citizens prevail, Occupy Style, when the money piles are high, and 
the stakes even higher? Stay tuned.