Oops - There goes Another Road in the Gas Patch

The other day a huge truck - a 37-plus-ton monster with 14 rows of wheels (8 wheels per row) - got itself stuck on Turnpike road in Brooklyn Township, Susquehanna County, PA. Seems it was on its way to the Williams Central Compressor station and couldn't make the grade. Not only did it require a bit of pushing to get it out of stuck, but it left the road a mess - a road that, according to the residents, the company just "fixed" in order to accommodate their trucks.

Frank Finan posted a video of how they finally got the monster truck moving again. This is what traffic looks like, say the locals. Plus they can hear drilling and fracking all around them, so there's never a dull - or quiet - moment.

3rd NY Town Wins in Court over Frack Ban

Last week acting Supreme Court justice Robert Wiggins (Livingston County, NY) ruled in favor of the Town of Avon's fracking ban.  He cited Court of Appeals precedents and decisions in favor of local bans in the towns of Dryden and Middlefield. This makes the third NY town to win in a court case challenging a town's right to ban fracking.

Gas drilling company Lenape Resources sued the Town of Avon and the state Department of Environmental Conservation over the town's moratorium on drilling, saying the action threatened to put it out of business after having operated in the town for decades. Owner John Holko asked for $50 million in damages, and said he'd included DEC in the lawsuit because he felt the agency has a duty to stop towns from enacting local bans.

You can read more here.
Read the court decision at  http://www.scribd.com/doc/131442865/Avon-HOME-RULE-Decision

Protecting Drinking Water Starts with Upland Watersheds

On Wednesday, USGS released a report on the hydrogeology of the aquifer system in the Susquehanna River Valley in parts of Broome and Chenango Counties of New York. While industry flaks spin this report as proclaiming “lots of water for industrial use”. The USGS report actually highlights the role of aquifer protection in the context of gas drilling impacts:

    "Aquifer protection in the study area is a topic of public concern in relation to the potential for natural gas drilling in this part of New York. Aquifer protection efforts likely will focus on currently used resources. Information provided in this report may help managers prioritize protection of largely unused aquifers whose characteristics suggest that they are capable of providing large public or commercial water supplies." p. 17.

Rachel Treichler’s excellent analysis points out why this study is valuable to communities in the Southern Tier. Of particular importance, the report highlights the close connections between uplands and the valley aquifers. If water quality in streams is compromised by activities in the upland watershed, groundwater quality in the valleys may be compromised. Therefore, it is not good enough to simply protect valley “wellheads” for local water supplies. We need to protect the upland watersheds.

Treichler will address watershed protection options in Candor, NY on March 27, 6:30 pm at the Candor Fire Hall (Rt. 96B).

Deer, Drilling and other Wildlife Considerations

Page 40 in Mar 13 Mulligan Shopping Guide

In a recent gas industry ad, hunter and sportsman Alan Probst proclaims that natural gas drilling will benefit wildlife.

On the one hand, he’s right. The pipeline right-of-ways that cut through forests, will need to be kept free of trees for as long as the gas shall run. And as all deer hunters know, those right-of-ways make great habitat for deer.

What he doesn’t say is what everyone already knows: we already have too many deer for the hunters to keep up with, and that deer population has tremendous and far-reaching impacts on our forests.

If you grow a garden, or walk in the woods, you already know this. When is the last time you saw young tree seedlings in your woods? According to Bernd Blossey, associate professor in Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources, it takes ten years for an oak seedling to grow tall enough to survive deer browsing. Most don’t make it past two.

He cites a research project in the Allegheny National Forest that demonstrated some of the impacts of deer on the landscape. Instead of excluding deer from areas, scientists enclosed deer inside of fences. That way they could control the population density of the herds. After tabulating tree regeneration for a decade the researchers found a clear relationship between deer pressure and the diversity of trees in their enclosures: a more diverse population of tree seedlings grew where there were fewer deer; more deer led to a less diverse forest.

Bad enough news for those depending on the back-forty woodlot to regenerate itself in a sustainable manner for the next generation… But the impacts go beyond timber interests. The researchers also looked at caterpillar populations in the various enclosures. Where the deer density was low, there was a high population of caterpillars; more deer meant fewer caterpillars. And that has huge implications for the forest-dwelling birds that depend on caterpillars to feed their nestlings. Some studies find an abundance of birds in the forest canopies, but few in the mid-story and shrubs.

And aren’t birds wildlife too, Alan?

Fracking the Farm Part 4: Perception and Food Safety

What happens when gas drilling and organic agriculture collide? This series considers some of the issues. Posts are drawn from a 3-part series originally published in New York Organic News (NOFA-NY) in 2012. Research was supported with a grant from SEJ's Fund for Environmental Journalism.

Two years ago the Park Slope Food Co-op publicly stated that if hydro-fracking were allowed in New York, they would “research alternatives to New York State products.”  The 15,800-member retail food cooperative purchases more than $1.5 million in New York State fruits and vegetables and another $1 million in poultry, beef, lamb and pork. They also purchase NY-made yogurt, cheese, eggs, cider and milk and take their responsibility to “buy local” seriously.

Fracking – even if it weren’t on the producer’s farm – would be a deal-breaker. One that, says NOFA-member Ken Jaffe, would have a dramatic effect on his farm.

Jaffe raises grass fed beef on hilly pastures in the Western Catskills. Slope Farm is situated on 100 acres in Delaware County, located near the headwaters of the Susquehanna River and just outside the “no fracking” buffer zone protecting the NYC watershed. He leases another 300 acres of pastures and hayfields and contracts grazing with other farmers. Some of his beef ends up at the Park Slope Co-op and other NYC markets, so Jaffe takes extra care to ensure his cattle are raised well away from drilling areas. But what happens when drilling moves into an area?

That’s not a rhetorical question for Jaffe. Just a few months ago he began negotiating a two-year grazing contract with a Tioga County farmer. But at the end of September, Houston-based Carrizo Oil and Gas started drilling an exploratory Marcellus well in Owego, NY. Now Jaffe’s re-thinking that contract, especially since Governor Andrew Cuomo has already indicated that he’d allow horizontal hydro-fracking Tioga and four other Southern Tier counties.

The primary concern for Jaffe’s buyers is what’s in the meat. “No one at the regulatory level is investigating this,” he says, disbelief in his voice. He cites the Pennsylvania case where 28 cows were quarantined after exposure to drilling fluids. No one, to his knowledge, has looked for any chemical residues in those animals.

The proximity of gas drilling chemicals and waste fluids to food production raises questions about the safety of grain and vegetables as well as the meat, eggs and dairy products. Not only is there no federal funding for research on the impacts of chemical contamination on food, there are also no required tests for contaminants.

Testing won’t make much difference, though, if there’s a perception that food comes from a contaminated place, says Stefan Senders. Two years ago he started Wide Awake Bakery in upstate NY. Production is small – between 500 to 700 loaves a week – but the focus, Senders says, is to nurture a local economy. One neighbor grows the organic grains, another neighbor mills them, and Senders bakes them into wholesome loaves.

“The wheat, the flour, and the bread are wholesome,” says Senders. “They bring our communities together, give us work, nourish us, and make our bodies and our land healthier.” Fracking threatens that because bread needs water, Senders explains. His rye flour requires nearly equal proportions of water and flour, and the purity of that water is critical. “What happens if you put your second ingredient at risk?”

Should drilling contaminate local wells, Senders could truck in water. But no farmer can afford to truck in irrigation water, he says. And without local grain, what’s a miller to grind? The illusion, says Senders is that you only need to fix one thing – maybe bring in water. “But when you frack, eventually everything fractures.”