See Amy Goodman's interview below with Walter Hang, President of
<http://www.toxicstargeting.com/>Toxics Targeting, an environmental
database firm in Ithaca, New York.
Hang states the water that emerges from horizontal drilling wells
contains radon and uranium (both radioactive elements) and he
mentions that the Cayuga Heights took the waste water -- I don't know
if the treatment plant is still taking the contaminated water, but I
do not believe that the plant has any mechanism for removing
radioactive elements. Pat Dutt
Walter Hang, President of <http://www.toxicstargeting.com/>Toxics
Targeting, an environmental database firm in Ithaca, New York.
<http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/3/fracking_and_the_environment_natural_gas>Fracking
and the Environment: Natural Gas Drilling, Hydraulic Fracturing and
Water Contamination (9/3/2009)
<http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/6/environmental_battle_brews_in_new_york>Environmental
Battle Brews in New York over Natural Gas Drilling (10/6/2009)
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today with the latest developments on gas
drilling in the Marcellus Shale watershed, potentially the largest
natural gas reserve in the country and the source of drinking water
for 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers. On Monday,
an environmental research group released government data revealing
New York state regulation of natural gas wells has been, quote,
"woefully insufficient for decades."
The upstate New York-based Toxics Targeting went through the
Department of Environmental Conservation's own database of hazardous
substances spills over the last thirty years. They found 270 cases
documenting fires, explosions, wastewater spills, well contamination
and ecological damage related to gas drilling. Many of the cases
remain unresolved.
The findings are contrary to repeated government assurances that
existing natural gas well regulations are sufficient to safeguard the
environment and public health.
Well, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation didn't
respond to our requests for comment. They told the Ithaca Journal,
however, that spills from the oil and gas industry constituted a very
small proportion of the total number of spills recorded in the past
three decades, adding that such accidents are rare.
For more on this, I'm joined here in our firehouse studio by Walter
Hang, the president of Toxics Targeting.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
WALTER HANG: Thank you for inviting me.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, for a national audience, let alone a New York
audience, I think most people have never heard of what Marcellus
Shale is.
WALTER HANG: That's right. It's this giant rock formation, very deep
underground. It's about a mile deep, and it stretches from just north
of Syracuse, New York, all the way to Tennessee. This is very thick
impermeable rock, but it's got gas inside these tiny little pores.
So, up until now, there really hasn't been any effective way to get
the gas out of the rock, because it's so deep and because it's so
impermeable. But now there's a new technology. It's called "slick
water hydrofracking," and it involves horizontal drilling. So they
drill down, and then they drill through the rock layer, and then they
force incredibly highly pressurized water that's got a lot of
additives, and this fractures the rock. This then lets the gas out,
and then they retrieve it.
Unfortunately, it requires tremendous amounts of water, and it's
incredibly polluting. So the water that comes out of the ground has
toxic chemicals, petroleum compounds, and it's actually radioactive.
So up until-
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait, wait, wait. "It's actually radioactive."
What do you mean?
WALTER HANG: Believe it or not, when the water gets drawn out of this
deep rock formation, there's radon, there's uranium, so the water
that comes out is radioactive, as well as toxic-contaminated. So, one
of the key problems is, what do you do with all this wastewater? And
that's the issue that we investigated.
So, New York has had natural gas drilling for almost 200 years, and
everyone at the state government and industry level has said, "We've
never had a problem. We've been drilling. It's reliable technology.
No problems." When we looked at the State of New York's own data,
however, we found, again, fires, explosions, huge uncontrolled
releases of wastewater that went into people's drinking water, went
into wetlands, streams. Many of these problems haven't been cleaned
up, even after decades.
Arguably the worst case was in Freedom, New York. Someone named Dale
Fox was drilling a vertical well, and he hit a gas pocket. The
natural gas was incredibly pressurized. It came blasting out of this
2,000-foot-deep hole. It picked up petroleum on the way up. It shot
out of the hole. The wind blew this incredibly flammable explosive
mixture onto the drill rig. They had to shut off the drill rig. Then
they couldn't kill the well. They couldn't stop the gas from
exploding out of the well. It got in a rock fracture, and in a matter
of minutes it went 8,000 feet. It contaminated twelve homes, that
were evacuated. It polluted drinking water wells. It polluted
drainage ditches, ponds. And it came up in this farmer's barn, where
his dairy herd was. Believe it or not, more than ten years after that
release, the water is still undrinkable.
And in the New York City reservoir system, the only protection would
be that you can't drill a well within 300 feet, compared to this
problem which went 8,000 feet. So these regulations that have been
proposed by the Governor, David Paterson, are totally inadequate. And
again, they're based on this false assumption that the existing
regulations are adequate. And that's how come I've written to him to
say, "Withdraw this proposal, look at the problems that your own
Department of Environmental Conservation has documented, and come
back when you have something that's actually going to assure that
this drilling can be done safely and without harming public health."
AMY GOODMAN: I have seen images that you've posted on your
<http://www.toxicstargeting.com/>website of water lighting up, being
flammable, light-water catching fire.
WALTER HANG: This is just incredible. About a year ago-actually, a
little bit more than a year ago, basically, a Vietnam vet living in
Candor, New York had discovered that, even though he had lived in the
same house since 1962, his water started to release gas, and he
discovered that you could light it. And he was immediately east of an
area where they had begun drilling. So, last January, he complained
to the Department of Environmental Conservation. He said, "Hey, my
water is flammable. I can light it."
AMY GOODMAN: Instead of the flame going out, it lights up.
WALTER HANG: It lights up. I mean, you will literally turn on the
water, the water will start coming out of the faucet, and then it
will like burp gas. And if you hold a match to it, it literally
ignites.
So the incredibly shameful thing is that the Department of
Environmental Conservation did not even come to look at this
situation. They simply told this disabled vet, Mr. Mayer, "Don't
drink the water." And that was it. And the key thing is, they said
this reported problem was administratively closed out, and it met the
applicable cleanup standards. They didn't do anything, but they said
it met the cleanup standards. There are hundreds of similar kinds of
problems where the Division of Mineral Resources in the state of New
York has said, "Yep, that problem is taken care of," even though it
appears that they did inadequate cleanup. And some of these problems,
again, have been going on for decades.
AMY GOODMAN: When you describe, for example, the herd of cows, when
you describe all the houses that had to be evacuated, what happens to
these families? What happened to the cows? What happened to the
water? You said that it was permanently polluted?
WALTER HANG: The day of the gas release, I asked one of the people
whose wells got contaminated-I said, "How did you know that your
water got polluted?" He said, "It turned black." In other words, when
the gas went through this rock fracture and came up this person's
well, it just blasted out the pollution in the water. You could see
it was oily. It had all kinds of contamination. And he has never been
able to drink it.
So, eventually the gas petered out. They hit the gas pocket. The gas
was released. It came up in the ground. It was just jetting out all
over this area through this fractured rock. Eventually, the gas was
released, but the residual pollution has never been cleaned up.
And that's the problem all over New York. There are these problems
where oil has been spilled, gas is released in uncontrolled fashion,
and the state Department of Environmental Conservation has simply
failed to clean up these problems. And that's how come we should not
go forward with Marcellus gas horizontal, high-volume fracking, until
we have an adequate regulatory program.
AMY GOODMAN: Who benefits from it?
WALTER HANG: The benefit, if we do it well, is that the natural
resources will be protected, communities will be protected, people's
drinking water won't be impacted-notably, the people in the City of
New York, who drink water from the Catskills. There are these huge
reservoirs that are above the Marcellus Shale.
If we don't do it well, then many of the biggest companies in the
planet are going to save money-Chesapeake, Fortuna, Talisman, Hess.
These are giant corporations. They are chomping at the bit to come to
New York and to drill for this giant reserve of gas.
AMY GOODMAN: The largest possibly in the country?
WALTER HANG: That's right. The problem is it is very difficult to get
out of this deep rock formation. Usually if you drill into a gas
pocket, the gas just comes right back up. But this requires this
incredibly polluting hydrofracking, where they pump this liquid under
tremendous pressure into the rock, and it just explodes out, maybe as
far as 3,000 feet, shattering the rock. And then sand gets injected
into the little fractures, and they draw the gas out.
AMY GOODMAN: What happens to the water, for example, in New York,
where there are millions of people, obviously, who rely on the
reservoirs upstate?
WALTER HANG: Well, right now there are almost no natural gas wells in
the Catskills region. Literally, a handful. But that area does have
Marcellus Shale. So if they begin to drill in that area, and if they
cause the same kinds of uncontrolled pollution problems that other
areas of New York have experienced-notably, western New York-then the
drinking water could be impacted. And once these problems develop,
they're very difficult to clean up.
AMY GOODMAN: And you have states all over this country, of course,
that are in dire economic shape, and so they are going to turn to any
way they can make money. Is New York in that situation? And what are
you doing right now?
WALTER HANG: New York, unfortunately, in the Southern Tier, in the
Finger Lakes region in western New York, is in dire economic straits.
These communities are just desperate for jobs. And so, it sounds so
good: we're going to get this gas out, we're going to make tons of
money, communities are going to benefit, the state of New York is
going to benefit. Governor David Paterson has basically made this
Marcellus Shale effort the linchpin of his economic development plan.
The problem is he hasn't answered those key questions. What happens
when hundreds and hundreds of these hundred thousand ton trucks start
pounding these structurally deficient bridges that have been
neglected for decades into pieces? Who's going to pay for that? What
about the roadways that are going to get destroyed? What are we going
to do with all of this toxic wastewater?
Believe it or not, they were actually dumping this natural gas
drilling wastewater from a vertical well in little Cayuga Heights,
New York, and it was passing through this sanitary wastewater
treatment plant that was not designed, constructed or maintained in
any way to take out the toxics. And it was passing through into
southern Cayuga Lake, which is a nationally recognized impaired water
body. It's already been polluted for decades. And this added to the
problems. And 30,000 people drink water from that area.
So we're looking at an impending disaster, and that's how come we're
going to now try to organize all these communities to say this has to
be done properly.
AMY GOODMAN: There's one public hearing today?
WALTER HANG: That's right, in the City of New York. They're going to
talk about the threat to the reservoirs. And so, that's how come I'm
here in New York. I'm going to talk to the Department of
Environmental Conservation about these concerns.
And I've posted at
<http://www.toxicstargeting.com/>toxicstargeting.com the 270
profiles. People can look at them and see, are there any major
problems in my community in the Marcellus Shale region of New York?
But then we're going to have a coalition letter that people can sign
onto and basically say, "Governor Paterson, we're just not ready to
go forward with Marcellus Shale drilling, until we get these
regulations. Don't do it. Withdraw this proposed supplemental generic
environmental impact statement."
AMY GOODMAN: We only have thirty seconds, but the significance of the
New York watershed, freshwater, how it comes into the city, how
unusual it is in this country?
WALTER HANG: It's absolutely unique. You have these upland
reservoirs, hundreds of miles away from the city, and the water flows
completely under gravity through these giant tunnels. It's so pure it
doesn't even need to be filtered. And so, this is a jewel. Any city
in the world would give anything to have this water. That's why it
has to be safeguarded. It has to be protected. Once it's polluted,
then the city would have to treat that water at gargantuan cost. So
Mayor Bloomberg and all the other city leaders have to unite with all
the other New Yorkers who could be impacted by Marcellus Shale.
AMY GOODMAN: Walter Hang, thank you so much for being with us,
president of Toxics Targeting, an environmental database firm in
Ithaca, New York. The one hearing today is taking place at Stuyvesant
High School?
WALTER HANG: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Today at 5:00?
WALTER HANG: 6:30, actually.
AMY GOODMAN: 6:30 in the evening. And we'll let people know what comes of that.
--
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Living Associates
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249 607-592-8402 Cell
"Be the change we want to see in the world"
Mohandas Gandhi
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