Hydraulic Fracturing’s Deleterious Environmental Effects: Andrew Cuomo’s Plan To End His State’s Ban and the Passage of the NYS Marriage Equality Law

(Map of Marcellus Shale from Geology.com. Click on this image to enlarge. Other visuals providing an overview of the hydrofracking problem are available in the Noticing New York article linked to.)
Hydraulic Fracturing is an issue of national concern that should be preoccupying much of the nation. It involves a significant despoiling of public resources including the serious poisoning of vast quantities water and air. And what goes on in one state is apt to be to the very consequential detriment of other states downstream or downwind. For instance, actions now being taken by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo respecting his planned lifting of a ban in New York State is likely not only to poison or polute, in one way or another, most of New York State, it will also affect much of the eastern seaboard via the rivers that run down from New York (the Delaware and the Susquehanna) and the drinking water of major downstream cities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware. Also of concern is water flowing into the Ohio River from the Allegheny (going all the way down into the Mississippi) and water flowing into the two Great Lakes bordering New York and and also the St. Lawrence Seaway.

All of the multiple ways hydrofracking poisons broad swaths of the environment is discussed in depth in a lengthy Noticing New York article which also examines the intriguing question of whether Andrew Cuomo might possibly have traded the lifting of the state’s ban on the deleterious hydrofracking industry in order to get the state’s gay marriage equality law enacted: Friday, July 29, 2011, Conundrum: If Gov. Andrew Cuomo Traded The Moratorium on Hydrofracking To Get Gay Marriage Would That Be Good Or a Bad Thing?

The Noticing New York article provides this observation about the proposed hydrofracking of the Marcellus Shale formation respecting the effect on New York State alone:

If you consider what parts of the state lie over the Marcellus Shale formation, what parts are downstream of it and what parts are downwind of it the entire state of New York will be environmentally affected by the drilling the Cuomo plan proposes to permit.

Much of the analysis of the Noticing New York article is more detailed and thorough in the connections it makes than what is frequently to be found elsewhere. Much cannot be found elsewhere at all. The article may not have come to your attention when it first went up at the end of July. This is because Google currently has some sort of block in place making Noticing New York content suddenly exceptionally difficult to find if you use Google. That blocking is something National Notice will cover further in a later post respecting research into this matter. For the moment, you are more likely to find your way to the Noticing New York content through the link in this article when your interest in these matters causes you to Google: “Andrew Cuomo,” “hydraulic fracturing ban” and “gay marriage” or “marriage equality.”