Why Are Hearings on High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”) Held In New York A NATIONAL Issue?

(Above, evening hearing attendees in the 900 seat auditorium)
Last week I presented Noticing New York and National Notice testimony when the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation held a day’s worth of hearings in Manhattan concerning Governor Cuomo's proposal to start allowing High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing, aka “Fracking,” in the state for the first time by lifting the current moratorium under which it is now effectively banned. An account of the hearings, the testimony I provided and amplification for my testimony is available here: Thursday, December 1, 2011, Wednesday’s Department of Environmental Conservation Hearings on High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”): Noticing New York’s Testimony Plus. .

A shorter article providing, for pith’s sake, just the testimony I delivered that day is available here: Thursday, December 7, 2011, Testimony at Department of Environmental Conservation’s 11/30 Hearings on High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”): The LONG and the SHORT of It.

(People lined up after me Wednesday morning to get into DEC's first hearing, the afternoon hearing on introducing the new technology of fracking to New York state.)
Why are such hearings held locally in New York a national issue on which National Notice readers would want to focus? Because:

• The brand new technology of fracking, which involves injecting huge quantities of poisonous “hyperslick water” into the earth at enormous pressure in combination with underground explosions, is associated with an enormous amount and a great variety of pollution that travels across multiple state lines, particularly flowing down through river basins and blowing through the air, thereby involving many states, and is likely to pollute, in toto, much of the country’s natural resources.

• By seeking to target a win in the very heart of the opposition, the fracking industry is seeking to hijack New York State’s history as a leader in protecting its environment. As I point out in the longer article linked to above, if the industry can sell its despoliation and overturn environmental protections in New York it can, by “spreadin’ the news,” parlay that into a sales pitch for fracking anywhere else in the country. A sort of “New York, New York” refrain mentality: “If I can frack it there, I'll frack it anywhere, It's up to you, New York, New York.” Conversely, as also discussed in that linked-to article, the industry is attempting to use experiences since 2007 in North Dakota (population 640,000) and New York's neighboring Pennsylvania in order to stage manage a super-hyped sale of fracking in New York.- - In fact, as you can read, what the industry is trying to promote in New York is the idea of “unregulated or lightly regulated fracking” as if any kind of fracking at all isn’t enough to ensure disaster.

• The attempt to get fracking introduced in New York is being pressed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a man recognized to have presidential ambitions likely viewing this as fulfilling a cherished goal his father, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, fell short of. Andrew Cuomo’s tactics to force the introduction of fracking in New York bespeak some sort of behind-the-scenes political deal which falls in line with an observation that is more and more being offered about Mr. Cuomo: That whatever people may commend him for in terms of his effectiveness, he operates without transparency, and in this case without regard to the true needs of the voters who are properly his elective constituency.

• And then, of course there is the whole giant planet-affecting issue to which all the rest of this is integral: How many years do we have left to forestall pushing beyond a disastrous climate change tipping point?

So you may want to read and find out exactly how matters with respect to those “local” New York hearings are playing out.

(Hazmat suited protester. The first thing many saw approaching the hearing location)

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.”