* Public Comment calls for ban on shale gas drilling, to use ban movement to leverage deadline on use of shale gas and all fossil fuels, 11-23-10
* Pittsburgh bans gas drilling within city limits 11-9-10
EDITORIAL 11-23-10
Public Comment calls for flat-out
ban on shale gas drilling nationwide
USE A BAN MOVEMENT TO NEGOTIATE A DEADLINE ON THE SHALE GAS "BRIDGE" TO SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
After months of calling on the DRBC to extend the moratorium on drilling to allow time for studies by EPA (end 2012) or USGS (who knows when) before finalizing rulemaking and issuing permits to let drilling start in the Delaware River watershed; after weeks of calling on DRBC to exercise the Precautionary Principle to prove that drilling is safe, after crafting every rationale persuasion we can think of, including the suggestion that the action the DRBC is moving toward in only a matter of weeks -- dropping the racing flag on gas extraction while flying blind without any sort of scientific studies -- amounts to the moral equivalent of criminal negligence, Public Comment now calls for a flat-out ban on shale gas fracking.
Not a moratorium, a permanent nationwide ban. It might seem obvious but it apparently isn't.
It might seem rash but it's bold. There's a difference. We'll explain.
And here's the kicker: We're proposing not only a ban on shale gas production and use but since the movement toward an outright ban will likely evolve and grow in power over time -- a number of years -- we can use a ban movement to leverage negotiations on a deadline for how long we remain on the shale gas "bridge" to sustainables. Realistically this deadline would phase out all fossil fuels and this time limit might end up being 15 or 20 years (we won’t get into our negotiating strategy here). It will be a ban movement evolving over time which will coincide (just so happens) with the fastest transition to green energy most experts know of, using the former as leverage to achieve the latter sooner rather than later.
A time limit provides a practical focus, a new way of seeing the "bridge" -- in terms of time (More on this idea at the end of this essay).
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This is the honest way to imagine the carbon industry's
transitional "bridge" formed by fossil fuels to a renewable
energy future: a shaky, dangerous rope bridge in the
jungle, a bridge through small rural towns not designed
for thousands of heavy diesel trucks and industrial
infrastructure, a bridge we must cross carefully and
get to the other side as soon as humanly possible.
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First we'll start with arguments for the ban itself on shale gas production/use in the US.
If a miracle occurs and DRBC reverses course -- again -- gets off the "fast track" and decides to allow time for the EPA to finish its study, great. We'll use the time to keep trying to wake up the public to see the need for a total ban. The ban would come not from EPA or DRBC but from Congress, state and local township levels, the latter exercised as part of an assertion of local community legal rights and inherent self-governing authority (see several recent articles on this site about local townships like Licking PA and about Pittsburgh on this page).
Here below is a map showing Pennsylvania townships that have declared local governing authority over shale gas corporations to ban fracking activities (red: Pittsburgh and Licking) and some (Munhall, Shahola, Nockamixon and Harveys Lake) which are considering the move (blue) advised by Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF):
The EPA study, whatever it concludes, won't protect the watershed from gas drillers who cannot be effectively regulated anyway. State regulatory coffers in NY and PA (and probably the other two states governing the Basin, DE and NJ) are dead broke and can't fund enough inspectors and monitors to provide robust oversight of thousands of shale gas wells running day and night; we know enough from our own eyes, noses and mouths to figure this out without studies. Fines are not disincentive enough to stop drillers' reckless performance; the best incentive to keep drillers careful would be the threat of a total ban over their heads, and we have to be willing to call for such a ban. We should have taken this course long ago.
Public Comment's position is -- out with it! We want to see a peaceful resistance movement to get rid of shale gas drilling entirely, to liberate ourselves from a classic Siren Song, a seduction by which shale gas has lured our ship so close to the rocks that we risk devastation. A movement to move beyond shale gas is the true "bridge," the true transition to alternative energy, not falling in love with shale gas as gas companies are enticing us to do in the pretense that it will take us over an "energy bridge" beyond coal and oil. Shale gas is a bridge to nowhere. As soon as possible we must get beyond oil and coal and shale gas which is not "clean" as advertised but a major greenhouse menace.
We need a ban movement to leverage a negotiated time limit to get us off the "bridge."
The cumulative impacts of shale gas on water and air over time are poisonous no matter how much "regulation" we use to cover it up. Regulation is an illusory contraption designed to reassure us that drilling is controlled and safe. But the shale industry is too big, too widespread and too non-transparent to be controlled, hence it's a virtual black box on a national scale through 34 shale states and "safety" is anyone's guess beyond cursory monitoring. Political leaders are letting themselves be suckered by the money in their campaign coffers, the "jobs" and the fallacy of shale gas as "clean energy," so much so that they will overlook the worst drilling offenses even as they occur over and over again. Or they will fine over and over drillers for whom fines are not punishment but the cost of doing business.
A ban is a long shot, we admit, but calling for a ban feels better because it is morally sustainable, no longer kidding ourselves that the Halliburton fracturing method, protected by an exemption from a law (Safe Drinking Water Act) that would have outlawed underground injection of liquid toxins because it's unsafe by definition, is safe. We're done with pretending that contradiction is acceptable.
Finally, an outright ban on fracking is the best negotiating position (something Obama will never understand). Should drilling commence in the Delaware watershed and become the engine of air and water pollution we expect it might, we could well benefit by a strong and growing force calling for a ban. "Here we stand and we reject shale gas fracking. Get around us if you can. Prove to us you cannot harm the environment or us." If such a movement can be mustered, it would compel drillers, officials and all parties to do the best possible job keeping gas drilling from casual disasters and compel them to take care because the alternative to being careful is getting banned -- non-existence. Drillers might respond to non-existence whereas they flick away fines with a flick of the wrist wielding a pen on checks drawn on some of the biggest checking accounts in the world. Holding a ban over the heads of drillers will give an incentive to drillers (and officials who protect them and thrive on their campaign donations) to try to achieve as few harms as possible every way they know how so they can stay in business at all.
This movement toward a ban will require large numbers and might never, in fact, happen, but calling for a ban is a form of power we should not shy away from for seeming to be "too extreme" or even impossible. Achieving the seemingly impossible always starts with its first steps and grows over time. This happened in Poland when Lech Walesa aimed to achieve the impossible by standing up against the Soviet Union and his movement eventually succeeded -- why? In part because of solidarity among his supporters who embraced a "unity of interests." Walesa's movement became known as "Solidarity" and we adopt that name for our movement: Solidarity Against Shale
Sometimes it's a source of power to say no when an offending situation -- such as high-volume slick-water shale gas extraction in tens of thousands of wells nationwide -- is a cumulative environmental nightmare. It could spur a movement toward banning shale gas drilling that will grow over time as drilling commences all over the Marcellus and Penn's Woods, here and there, become "Gasland." The whole game would shift from one where we're on the begging end to one in which gas drillers have to work at top-notch performance level to get permits renewed every, say, six months. This is as close as we could come to a form of "regulation" with effective disincentives, even as it is a byproduct of a movement away from shale gas toward sustainable energy and banning shale gas drilling altogether. We should say not "even" but "because . . . "
We're reminded of World War II and the difference between Vichy France which collaborated with the enemy and was powerless to protect the people of France and the French Resistance which asked every man and woman to commit their lives to, shall we say, "a ban on Nazis." We advocate a peaceful resistance movement calling for a ban on shale gas fracking while doing everything we can to protect the American people which means, among other things, finding effective ways to get drillers to be careful, reduce their impacts and make life expensive for them so they will stay as short a time as possible before retiring back to their ranches in Texas. It also means, in the same breath, promoting alternative green energy solutions to reduce the need for any sort of carbon energy including shale gas. These energy forms, gas and green, are in competition, and green forms need our best ideas to persuade average Americans to support green forms and win the competition.
We've seen enough independent scientific studies and enough news reports of accidents, incidents of water contamination, methane escapes and ventings, methane ruining water wells, spills, accidents, explosions. We’ve read enough articles about millions of gallons of water withdrawals for the fracking process. We're been told of dire consequences of exposure to fracking compounds. We've smelled the air in Dimock and felt it sting our eyes. We've videotaped the diesel frack trucks in Dimock, 58 in 19 minutes, with the traffic far worse father west in Bradford County PA. In the middle of all those frack trucks one truck carries a 'water buffalo' with drinking water for a Dimock family's livestock whose well water was ruined by Cabot's gas drilling (see video in upper right column this page). We’ve been told about the heavy air pollution in high-volume gas drilling areas of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. We’ve seen 'Gasland" and even taking Josh Fox's shock with a grain of salt we were shocked. We’ve seen the way gas drillers operate after the leases are signed, how they do whatever the hell they want and say "sue us"; how they drill right up against the edge of house lawns, allow noxious vapors to drift over neighborhoods from stink pits where they store highly toxic frack flowback water; how they set up gathering lines, pipelines and compressor stations that gullible leasers never realized would be built so close to their homes, exuding nasty odors, noise and bright lights all night. We've heard about farm animals sickened by the water they used to thrive on before drilling began nearby. Tracy Banks PhD of Univ of Buffalo recently reported research showing that the fracking process could cause uranium to become solubilized (mobilized in soluble form) and come to the surface in flowback water to potentially contaminate rivers, streams and drinking water. We’ve read about school children near gas wells developing nosebleeds, headaches and asthma.
A comment from CBS blog after a 60 Minutes episode on fracking Nov 14, via No Frack Mountain website put it this way: "I live in southwestern PA near Waynesburg and there is a well being drilled on nearly every hilltop, dividing communities, pitting neighbor against neighbor and providing very little comfort, peace or environmental protection. A public forum was held in Pittsburgh recently and the representative from the DEP was very rude to the angry citizens who only want their questions answered. We were told we now live in a heavy industry area and no longer in the agriculture area."
All of this may seem anecdotal but it adds up to a wave of dire reality one would be foolish to ignore in favor of "waiting for studies" which won't get done before drilling starts in the Delaware River watershed if Obama and Corbett and even NY governor-elect Cuomo have anything to do with it.
Mr. Cuomo says he supports gas drilling "as long as it's done safely" -- Think about that: How will he make sure it's done "safely" when his own DEC is stripped bare and his inspectors won't be able to oversee -- and see underground -- the operations of thousands of wells run by gigantic corporations who will essentially regulate themselves, some from overseas, doing an "OK job" most of the time in their own self-interest to get the stuff out of the ground and make a profit for their stockholders but when they mess up, well, that’s too bad, and we likely won't even know when they mess up. An "OK job" is leaving millions of gallons of frack water underground to migrate God knows where; cutting up forest lands with frack roads and pipelines; tearing up our roads with hundreds of truck trips each well; polluting the air with extraction emissions and diesel exhaust fumes; withdrawing millions of gallons of water from our rivers and streams for each of thousands of wells in a time of increasing droughts due to effects of greenhouse impacts, global warming and climate change aggravated by -- guess what? -- escaped methane from the shale gas production life-cycle. That whole list (and more not listed) is what we're willing to accept as "OK." Oh wait, just heard EPA will "regulate" greenhouse emissions in 2012. Good luck with that while gas prices are so low that companies have little incentive to avoid leaks and ventings -- but by all means try. Banning shale gas production would be better.
Amy Malls' blog at NRDC about Chesapeake Energy's unconscionable violations of the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts in West Virginia will curl your hair. Gas companies can afford hundreds of lawyers; can survive any kind of lawsuit just grinding opponents down; and have purchased most of the state and federal legislatures and the president of the United States . . . So Mr. Cuomo's words about "drilling safely" are essentially empty.
Our goose is cooked, the fix is in.
To look at the vast wasteland of horrendous facts already collected by an average citizen, not a scientist but an educated and rational person, even without fancy EPA studies, to pretend that we don’t have conscious knowledge in advance that something is awry with widespread high-volume shale gas drilling, waiting for Godot of the EPA to come along and tell us everything is fine, would be a lie.
As Un-natural.gas.org puts it in their petition to ban shale gas fracking (go there and sign it), "The gas industry has provided ample evidence in other states, where its high pressure chemical hydrofracturing process . . . has already been extensively used, that its hydrofracture process is inherently environmentally unsafe. We have no reason to believe that it could ever be made safe here, regardless of regulation."
What we can do: 1) Ban fracking at local community level and/or 2) use a national ban movement to leverage a 15-20 year deadline on the shale gas "bridge" and phase out all fossil fuels to move to sustainables in that time.
A nascent community-rights movement is growing in small townships, noted above, in direct response to the corporate sweep. Guess what they're doing? Banning shale gas fracking in their city limits. Most recently a not-so-small town called Pittsburgh banned fracking (see next story below). If you live in a PA township where there is developing resistance to gas drilling and where the board of supervisors or city council members are not entirely corrupted by having signed gas leases, study the growing movement toward local community rights of self-government, then stand up and appeal to your local township leaders to ban gas drilling within your township environs. Contact the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund for advice on how to proceed. They've been coaching local communities on how how to craft their own banning ordinances, most notably Licking Township asserted their 'inherent governing authority' over gas corporations by banning the dumping of frack water by corporations anywhere in their township environs. As noted earlier, the city of Pittsburgh has banned any further fracking and Harveys Lake city council is considering an ordinance (shaped by CELDF) to ban fracking. Legal challenges to these bans have yet to come forth from the gas industry but they likely will and when they do we will see a drama of core democracy that will determine whether we live as vassals under the thumb of energy corporations or as free Americans.
If your local board of supervisors or city council is corrupted by members having signed leases, elect new members to replace them. You can also appeal to the state legislature and Congress to ban shale gas fracking statewide and nationwide respectively. There is also another legal group called the Community Environmental Defense Council (not to be confused with CELDF which emphasizes elimination of "corporate personhood" and outright banning of certain corporate activities like shale gas drilling). CEDC emphasizes a more incremental approach via zoning and other legal means that are more easily defensible legally. Work all levels.
Public Comment no longer wishes to support the pretense that a regulated shale gas industry will be benign enough to live with. There are so many features not even mentioned here that offend human life and our American culture, including formerly tight-knit communities now split into millionaires and rural poor with deep and bitter resentments, increased crime, a simmering atmosphere of conflict and potential violence, a shale-centered life, a money-centered life for a few. Not to mention yet another gigantic wave of corporatism sweeping across the land with energy companies essentially becoming government (remember the BP disaster and how BP wrapped the Obama administration around its little finger).
Public Comment no longer wishes to support crimes against the earth, against our public forests, against the land all around us, against our beloved rivers and streams, our clear air, our sweet trees and plants, our dear animals, our communities, our people. If we were parents of our environment we wouldn’t let this massive experiment happen. If we were parents of ourselves we wouldn’t let this happen to us.
A deadline on shale gas production and use
Others have suggested and we heartily concur that the call for a gas ban will be an evolving movement over several years and that shale gas will have to suffice as a "bridge fuel" to help get us beyond coal while we develop sustainables, despite being nearly as dirty as coal GHG wise. With this in mind we should declare a time limit on use of shale gas.
And here's the kicker: We're proposing not only a ban on shale gas production and use but since the movement toward an outright ban will likely evolve and grow in power over time -- a number of years -- we can use a ban movement to leverage negotiations on a deadline on how long we remain on the shale gas "bridge" to sustainables. Realistically this time limit might end up being 15 or 20 years (we won’t get into our negotiating strategy here) but generally it will be a ban movement evolving over time which will coincide (just so happens) with the fastest transition to green energy most experts know of, using the former as leverage to achieve the latter sooner rather than later.
Negotiations with the popular pressure of a grassroots ban movement behind them pushing for, say, 5-10 years to end shale gas production and use could do interesting things like allow the shale gas industry 10 more years of profits in exchange for green fracking chemicals and 100% water recycling, imperative control and capture of methane leakage or whatever clean up methods we want to press on them during the transition period winding down and tapering off shale gas use – indeed the entire gamut of carbon energy use. As we said earlier, the ban movement gives us power and a time limit on shale gas – indeed all carbon energy -- is what we could do with that power.
Sounds like a new political party with a deadline on fossil fuels as a major plank.
The combination of a popular movement to ban carbon energy with a time limit/deadline is powerful. Developing the popular excitement to build a ban movement will be the hard part. Can’t do it from the elected leader level as they’re mostly corrupted, so it has to come from the grassroots.
We aim to end shale gas production and use by a date certain after which it will be illegal due to poisonous effects on the environment and marked worsening of greenhouse effect. If we are to use the political clout of an imminent ban, let us use it this way: Use a ban movement to leverage a shale gas deadline for staying on the "bridge" limited to no more than 15-20 years max. Having such a deadline will automatically make sustainables more attractive and more immediately so in our emphasis on their development. Otherwise, without a deadline, we will stay on the shale gas "bridge" without incentive to get off until shale gas finally peters out in several decades at which time the political will to develop green energy will have run out of energy. A deadline will snap that entire outlook into focus and force us to change course by limiting the time we stay on the shale gas bridge, that is to say, the carbon bridge, before getting off and getting on with a green alternative lifestyle to lead the world (including China and India) in all things green.
Having said all this (be willing to ban shale gas drilling and use political grassroots and investor pressure toward banning shale gas drilling to leverage negotiation of a 10-year deadline on shale gas use), here's a visual statement we designed a while ago that says it all. If you wear the button (go to right column to click on image to order one) and people ask you about what it means, it's two things: 1) No, you cannot frack (but we can negotiate the countdown time limit), and 2) Not On Planet Earth.
More subtle and a good conversation starter is the blue ribbon for a campaign to sunset shale gas drilling. We think of it as "Not only the drinking water" meaning shale gas fracking not only pollutes drinking water but ruins air quality, worsens the greenhouse effect and has multiple other adverse impacts on environment and human health. Wear the blue ribbon to signify Solidarity Against Shale, post the blue ribbon on your website and pass around the Internet.
SOLIDARITY AGAINST SHALE
Public Comment will continue to carry news about shale gas but will put far more energy into promoting the true transitional efforts of conservation, insulation and efficiency while fast-tracking renewables and sustainables, as well as use pressure for a ban to negotiate a deadline on shale gas use. As it stands, shale gas is a grand distraction, which gas corporations have skillfully created with their PR. We can do better PR for energy that sustains rather than harms life, and we will.
Our first talking point is that green energy is less expensive with few hidden costs compared to carbon energy which carries hidden costs we absorb in its harms and damages, hidden costs only now becoming evident that make it far more expensive than sustainable energy. We can't afford carbon anymore.
Regards to all hands,
Jane W. Prettyman
for Public Comment
Update mid 2012: Gov Corbett of PA and his cronies in the Harriburg legislature pushed through Act 13 which effectively removes the power of local municipalities to design their own zoning laws and replaces that home rule authority with a one-size fits, all cookie-cutter zoning law for all towns in the state to make it easier for shale gas drillers to move quickly into communities without delay. Act 13 allows drillers to drill nearly everywhere in a community, even in residential areas. It is a shale gas lobbyist's wet dream.
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BULLETIN 11-9-10
Pittsburgh City Council bans
shale gas drilling
CELDF again on the case
Pittsburgh City Council has given approval to a ban on future Marcellus Shale gas well drilling (Update: 11-17-10 preliminary approval was finalized). The bill, which was first introduced in August has gone through several rounds of debate at the council table and has been the subject of more than one public input session. Bill Sponsor Doug Shields says over the weeks it has become clearer to him that the ban is needed if the city is to protect its water supply, property values and quality of life. Most council members and legal experts believe the bill runs afoul of state law but Shields says it is far too important of an issue for him to worry about a legal challenge. “Maybe some members are comfortable with this challenge, some members aren’t, but I won’t concede an inch on a legal argument. I will not concede anything until that argument is made. I will not be preempted. I hope we do not preempt the city’s voice,” says Shields.
Shields says he is not certain that the drilling companies would want to launch the fight but if they do he has been in contact with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. A representative of that group says he will put in writing that the CELDF will provide free legal assistance to the city if a challenge if filed.
Also see story in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 11-10-10.
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A Dimock landscape: Just to right off camera is a gas well
(Photo Jane Prettyman)
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