Where are the upstate New York blogs on this issue?
I am a resident of upstate New York, Otsego county. I have watched with interest as the battle against natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale has been joined. For the past 6-8 months signs declaring "Don't Drill, Don't Spill" have become ubiquitous on bumper stickers and in lawns. I have done my own research on the matter and have my own thoughts.
Interestingly, information has been hard to come by. Local newspapers are filled with only one side of the issue. Town halls are filled to overflowing with activists who are intent on repeating the same talking points and local towns are taking note and making changes in their zoning laws to prevent drilling, see here, here , here and here. I really have never seen anything like it. I read about this sort of thing all the time, but have never been witness to this sort of orchestrated effort. It really is difficult to be pro drilling here. Anyone who speaks out in favor or cites studies documenting the safety of hydraulic fracturing are deemed to be uninformed, greedy, or a shill for the oil companies.
As I said, information is hard to come by as google, bing, and yahoo searches all put the anti-drilling crusade to the front. Of course no industry is completely safe and accidents do happen, but hydraulic fracturing has a pretty good track record. I can find no instance where a fresh water aquifer has been soiled by this technique. This of course makes sense as the actually fracturing occurs almost a mile below fresh water underground pools. There have been some problems with fracturing of the wells themselves and issues with the waste water, but in reality this is a fairly scarce phenomenon. Wells do use a lot of water~8 million gallons per well, but this pales in comparison to the 20 million gallons used per day by golf courses
The arguments really seem to boil down to a not in my backyard attitude. Arguments that it will spoil the natural beauty of the region, or will drive down property values (my property value has already decreased by almost $50,000 in the past 6 years and has nothing to do with gas drilling), or ruin roads. In my county there is definitely an aspect of class warfare with the most vocal and organized opponents being of the affluent variety.
In the end it seems that this is something other than a grassroots movement that started in Albany last year with the effort to pass a ban on natural gas drilling and has moved to a few test counties to push local zoning laws to prevent drilling.
I can tell you, in our area there are a bunch of no fracking signs. Even though they probably won't be doing it here because our water supply is close and the city of Syracuse is nearby. But they've got everyone scared. We should collaborate on this.
ReplyDeleteI believe that aquifer contamination is a false argument. The actual fracking portion takes place nearly a mile below the surface and migration of chemicals just won't happen and as far as I can tell there has never been a documented aquifer contamination that has occurred because of hydraulic fracturing. Every time this issue has been looked at it has been deemed safe.
ReplyDeleteIt's an overrated argument used to scare the people of Upstate.
ReplyDeleteFrack away!
It's like the Cherry Valley windmill argument about four years ago. It was the rich liberal yuppies that were against them-- mainly because they thought their property values would go down. In an energy situation like today's, NIMBY arguments are selfish and suicidal.
ReplyDelete