Congressman Hinchey and Congressman Arcuri need to be STRONGLY URGED to take a leadership role in helping to protect the safety and welfare of their constituents.
Protect New York State drinking water from unsafe gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. The hydrofracking process endangers drinking water supplies, uses billions of gallons of drinking water in the process and creates contaminated water that cannot be properly treated. In New York State, Governor Paterson needs to ban unsafe gas drilling in order to protect our drinking water supply. Safer methods are being developed that are well worth waiting for.
The lawsuit accuses Cabot of negligence and says it has failed to restore water supplies to residents when it has been disrupted by gas drilling. It seeks a permanent injunction to stop the drilling processes that are blamed for the contamination, as well as unspecified compensatory damages. Read more
The New York-based Toxics Targeting went through the Department of Environmental Conservation’s own database of hazardous substances spills over the past 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. The state is considering allowing for gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers. Guest: Walter Hang, President of Toxics Targeting, an environmental database firm in Ithaca, New York. (More at Democracy Now)
Walter Hang writes:
I just posted data at www.toxicstargeting.com for 270 oil and gas spill spills in New York State that have caused fires, explosions, home evacuations, polluted drinking water wells as well as long-term impacts on forests, streams, wetlands, ponds and other waterways.
I believe these findings destroy the myth that the Department of Environmental Conservation’s current oil and gas regulations are adequate to safeguard the environment and public health. For that reason, I am asking Governor Paterson to withdraw the dSGEIS.
As New York gears up for gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, state officials have made a potentially troubling discovery about the wastewater created by the process: It’s radioactive. And they have yet to say how they’ll deal with it. The information comes from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought thousands of feet to the surface from drilling and found that they contain levels of radium-226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink. (Read more)
On Saturday, October 17, 2009, the Executive Committee of the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club met in Syracuse and passed a resolution proposed by the SC Gas Drilling Task Force. The resolutions calls on the NYS legislature to enact a ban on unconventional gas drilling in NYS.
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