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Fracking has been used 1 million times in the US with no adverse affects on the drinking water. I own pristine land in PA and PA has done fracking just fine. I am negotiating a lease for gas on my land now, and most of my neighbors have already signed. Not one case of drinking water contamination in the state with the thousands of wells drilled to date. Even Dimock, the posterchild of anti-fracking, was just determined by the EPA to have NO contaminated drinking water from Fracking. Don't believe propaganda like Gasland and the wackos. Do real research, study the DEP reports from each state, and you will find that natural gas drilling is the future to safe clean power in the US. Even the 1 week old EPA find of fracking fluids in the Wyoming drinking water was not due to fracking, but due to old well casings (33 years old, not done properly back then) and open pits (not used for fracking). I would retire anywhere in PA and NY and Ohio and WV and never think twice about all the misinformation and scare tactics. If you don't like fracking or Gas drilling, don't sign a lease. But don't use your ignorance of the subject take away my rights to my minerals.
Actually there have been cases, one in particular in Pennsylvania that they cannot explain, in addtion to many lawsuits that have been sealed that the industry refuses to disclose, if it's safe then why not disclose the reasoning behind the lawsuit.
Do you honestly think the NY State DEC is going to do justice to the thousands of wells, they will be totally reliant on the industry and little more than reactive. Fracking has been around for a while but never to this extent, this is nothing short of the very powerful energy lobby pushing it's agenda.
By the way if you are signing a lease, you better take a close look, there are many landowners that were left with pools or sludge on their land after the drilling in addition to some very unsavory practices, many do not even have to compensate landowners for well pollution.
As far as I know, and I don't know everything, they have not really found oil in NY.
My understanding is that a small amount of oil has been found in New York State, mostly in the western end of the state.
For instance, the Iroqouis (Seneca) have a very small reservation called Oil Spring in Allegany County.
Of course, more oil was found further south in Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania has all those coal mines while New York has none that I know of. This is strange considering how the states are right next to each other and share similar geographical features.
I've also thought it strange that the coal ran out just before the NY border. Some of the Upstate early railroads and canals functioned largely to get coal out of neighboring PA - coal from Blossburg was said to be just the thing to have in the forty-niners' mining camp, shipped up to Corning on an early railroad then through the Chemung Canal, Seneca Lake, and Erie Canal to NYC then around Cape Horn. Now with the fracking NYS gets to share in the Appalachian extractive heritage to go with two centuries of hardscrabble farming.
Anyone who thinks fracking is good news needs to read the following website. If fracking is so safe, why did the gas industry lobby hard to be exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thanks to Dick Cheney and Halliburton, they are exempt.
Fracking | Water Defense (http://www.waterdefense.org/the-problems/fracking - broken link)
How fracking works:
"The fracking process involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and over 900 toxic chemicals thousands of feet underground to release tiny pockets of gas by literally breaking up the rock where the gas is trapped. The method has been compared to exploding a pipe bomb deep underground. Chemicals used in the process are kept secret from the public, medical professionals, and even regulators, because fracking is exempt from key provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The exemption, which was granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, has been dubbed “the Halliburton Loophole” because Halliburton pioneered the fracking process, and then-Vice President (and former CEO of Halliburton) Dick Cheney was heavily involved in setting the Bush administration’s energy policy."
Enormous Quantities of Water
"Hydraulic fracturing uses enormous quantities of fresh water, which gas companies take from nearby streams, ponds, and rivers, or truck in if there is no immediate water source. Every time a gas well is fracked, 4 to 9 million gallons of water are injected into the ground. A single well can be fracked up to 12 separate times, adding up to over 100 million gallons of freshwater used in the lifetime of a well. In the Delaware River Basin in New York and Pennsylvania, the gas industry estimates that it will use over 10 billion gallons of water over the next ten years—which they plan to withdraw from the same sources that the public depends on for drinking water."
Contamination underground
"What happens to all that water? Much of it stays underground, where no one is exactly sure what happens to it. The gas industry insists that the chemicals and gas never find their way into underground aquifers, but many cases of groundwater contamination prove that the opposite is the case. When the fractures creating by fracking intersect with existing cracks in the ground, chemicals and gas can “catch a ride” on underground streams, and wind up contaminating drinking water sources. In places affected by fracking, many residents have become sick from dangerous levels of volatile organic compounds, chemicals, and methane gas in their water. Methane gas is also responsible for the phenomenon of flammable tap water, and has even caused houses and water wells to explode."
Contamination above ground
"While much of the water and chemical mixture stays below ground, a majority of it comes back up to the surface in the form of a toxic brew full of hazardous chemicals, volatile organic compounds, and even radioactive material—which exists naturally deep underground and is mobilized in the fracking process. With millions of gallons of this hazardous liquid created at every gas well, a major challenge for the gas industry and regulators has been finding a way to dispose of it. In states like Colorado, Texas, and Wyoming, often this wastewater is left to evaporate into the air, with the final thick sludge taken to landfills. This evaporation process has led dangerous air quality in some areas with gas drilling, and toxic exposure for many residents.
In less arid climates evaporation is not an option, so gas companies often dispose of the wastewater in municipal water treatment facilities. Public water utilities are inadequately equipped to process the highly toxic liquid, so the wastewater ends up receiving minimal treatment and is released into rivers and streams still containing many dangerous compounds. The Associated Press reported in January that in 2009 more than 44,000 barrels of fracking wastewater were discharged into a creek in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In New York, the Buffalo Sewer Authority has released fracking wastewater into the Niagara River, which flows into Lake Ontario through Niagara Falls."
Industry that plays “fast and loose” with the rules, and no cop on the job
"In addition to the infamous “Halliburton Loophole” exempting fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the gas industry benefits from a host of sweeping exemptions to our most basic environmental and public health protections. Other laws that the gas industry is exempted from include key provisions of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, CERCLA (Superfund Act), Resource Conversation and Recovery Act (hazardous waste act), and the Environmental Policy Act.
Between all these exemptions, the gas industry has often been described as completely free of all federal oversight. However, federal law does still prohibit the gas industry from one particular practice: the injection of diesel fuel as a fracking fluid. While gas companies are permitted to inject hundreds of known carcinogenic compounds as fracking fluids (without informing the public of what chemicals they are using), the Safe Drinking Water Act still mandated that gas companies not use diesel fuel as a frack fluid. But on January 31, 2011, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced their preliminary results of a year-long investigation into the practices of gas companies. The congressional investigation found that oil and gas companies injected over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel into gas wells in 19 states between 2005 and 2009—in direct violation of the one federal provision from which they were not exempt. Despite having federal laws carved to suit their profits and need for secrecy, the gas industry could not follow the one guideline it had set for itself."
Who are all these rich second-home owners, and where exactly are they? I sure don't see them around me.... Well, maybe Yoko Ono somewhere around Franklin, but...
Yoko Ono has a house in a potential fracking zone?
Anyone who thinks fracking is good news needs to read the following website. If fracking is so safe, why did the gas industry lobby hard to be exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thanks to Dick Cheney and Halliburton, they are exempt.
Fracking | Water Defense (http://www.waterdefense.org/the-problems/fracking - broken link)
How fracking works:
"The fracking process involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and over 900 toxic chemicals thousands of feet underground to release tiny pockets of gas by literally breaking up the rock where the gas is trapped. The method has been compared to exploding a pipe bomb deep underground. Chemicals used in the process are kept secret from the public, medical professionals, and even regulators, because fracking is exempt from key provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The exemption, which was granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, has been dubbed “the Halliburton Loophole” because Halliburton pioneered the fracking process, and then-Vice President (and former CEO of Halliburton) Dick Cheney was heavily involved in setting the Bush administration’s energy policy."
Enormous Quantities of Water
"Hydraulic fracturing uses enormous quantities of fresh water, which gas companies take from nearby streams, ponds, and rivers, or truck in if there is no immediate water source. Every time a gas well is fracked, 4 to 9 million gallons of water are injected into the ground. A single well can be fracked up to 12 separate times, adding up to over 100 million gallons of freshwater used in the lifetime of a well. In the Delaware River Basin in New York and Pennsylvania, the gas industry estimates that it will use over 10 billion gallons of water over the next ten years—which they plan to withdraw from the same sources that the public depends on for drinking water."
Contamination underground
"What happens to all that water? Much of it stays underground, where no one is exactly sure what happens to it. The gas industry insists that the chemicals and gas never find their way into underground aquifers, but many cases of groundwater contamination prove that the opposite is the case. When the fractures creating by fracking intersect with existing cracks in the ground, chemicals and gas can “catch a ride” on underground streams, and wind up contaminating drinking water sources. In places affected by fracking, many residents have become sick from dangerous levels of volatile organic compounds, chemicals, and methane gas in their water. Methane gas is also responsible for the phenomenon of flammable tap water, and has even caused houses and water wells to explode."
Contamination above ground
"While much of the water and chemical mixture stays below ground, a majority of it comes back up to the surface in the form of a toxic brew full of hazardous chemicals, volatile organic compounds, and even radioactive material—which exists naturally deep underground and is mobilized in the fracking process. With millions of gallons of this hazardous liquid created at every gas well, a major challenge for the gas industry and regulators has been finding a way to dispose of it. In states like Colorado, Texas, and Wyoming, often this wastewater is left to evaporate into the air, with the final thick sludge taken to landfills. This evaporation process has led dangerous air quality in some areas with gas drilling, and toxic exposure for many residents.
In less arid climates evaporation is not an option, so gas companies often dispose of the wastewater in municipal water treatment facilities. Public water utilities are inadequately equipped to process the highly toxic liquid, so the wastewater ends up receiving minimal treatment and is released into rivers and streams still containing many dangerous compounds. The Associated Press reported in January that in 2009 more than 44,000 barrels of fracking wastewater were discharged into a creek in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In New York, the Buffalo Sewer Authority has released fracking wastewater into the Niagara River, which flows into Lake Ontario through Niagara Falls."
Industry that plays “fast and loose” with the rules, and no cop on the job
"In addition to the infamous “Halliburton Loophole” exempting fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the gas industry benefits from a host of sweeping exemptions to our most basic environmental and public health protections. Other laws that the gas industry is exempted from include key provisions of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, CERCLA (Superfund Act), Resource Conversation and Recovery Act (hazardous waste act), and the Environmental Policy Act.
Between all these exemptions, the gas industry has often been described as completely free of all federal oversight. However, federal law does still prohibit the gas industry from one particular practice: the injection of diesel fuel as a fracking fluid. While gas companies are permitted to inject hundreds of known carcinogenic compounds as fracking fluids (without informing the public of what chemicals they are using), the Safe Drinking Water Act still mandated that gas companies not use diesel fuel as a frack fluid. But on January 31, 2011, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced their preliminary results of a year-long investigation into the practices of gas companies. The congressional investigation found that oil and gas companies injected over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel into gas wells in 19 states between 2005 and 2009—in direct violation of the one federal provision from which they were not exempt. Despite having federal laws carved to suit their profits and need for secrecy, the gas industry could not follow the one guideline it had set for itself."
The fact that they have been given a pass on the clean water act says it all, if they are so safe why the amendment??? The were allowed to dump the fracking waste into rivers because of this change.
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