As Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to weigh whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in New York, it is important to remember fracking's dangerous past.
About a year ago, an Ohio operator was caught after dumping an estimated 250,000 gallons of fracking wastewater into the Mahoning River. Since then, scarcely a month has gone by without some new fracking incident adding to the toll of damage done. Fracking fluids flowed into Colorado's rivers and communities during flooding last fall. Then, researchers in Pennsylvania found high levels of radioactive material in the sediment of a creek where fracking waste is discharged from a treatment plant.
Across the country, fracking is contaminating drinking water, making nearby families sick with air pollution, and turning forest acres into industrial zones. Yet as we read news stories or even peer reviewed scientific studies on fracking, we can sometimes forget that we are talking about real people whose lives have been gravely damaged by dirty drilling.
Judy Armstrong Stiles of Bradford County, Pa., tells of finding barium and arsenic in her drinking water, and then in her own blood, after Chesapeake began drilling on her land. Mayor William Sciscoe of Dish, Texas, explains how air quality tests near a compressor station found cancer-causing substances at 400 times the safe exposure levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And then there's Jaime Frederick of Coitsville, Ohio, who discovered barium, strontium, toluene and other contaminants in her water after 25 drilling wells began operating within a mile of her home. Eventually a drill was placed right next to her house, "as close as the law would allow." She was given no advance notice before the three straight days of hydraulic fracturing, explosions, and noise "like an airport runway." Now she has a view of gas storage tanks and radioactive toxic waste tanks from her bedroom window.
Among the many symptoms Jamie has endured are severe abdominal pains, vomiting, and kidney and intestinal infections. She had to have her gallbladder removed. In her words, "the worst side effect" was being told by her doctors that carrying a pregnancy would put her child at risk for birth defects, a risk she says she will never take.
These people's voices deserve to be heard in the national debate over fracking. That's why we are supporting "Shalefield Stories" — a booklet designed and published by local activists that allows people impacted by fracking to tell their stories, in their own words.
Of course the people in "Shalefield Stories" are only a few of the many individuals and families directly impacted by fracking operations. In some cases, residents affected by fracking are no longer able to talk about their experiences because of gag orders contained in their legal settlements with the drilling operator.
One tally called "List of the Harmed" counts more than 4,800 individuals adversely affected by fracking-related incidents.
These personal tragedies are emblematic of what the broader data on drilling is telling us. Last fall, "Fracking by the Numbers" report released by Environment New York documented multiple pathways of water contamination, billions of gallons of fracking waste, hundreds of thousands of pounds of air pollution, and huge releases of global warming emissions from fracking. The report highlighted that fracking wells nationwide produced an estimated 280 billion gallons of wastewater in 2012 — enough wastewater to flood New York City in a four-foot toxic lagoon.
Given the number and severity of these threats, creating a regulatory rigmarole that is sufficient enough to protect our water and our health at large— much less enforcing it at more than 80,000 wells, plus processing and waste disposal sites across the country— seems implausible at best.
So today, let's listen to what the victims in "Shalefield Stories" are telling us about the tragedy of dirty drilling. Although it was a victory that the state's environmental conservation commissioner, Joe Martens, informed legislators that there would be no fracking permits considered in New York until at least April 2015, this is not enough.
It's time for Cuomo and our decision-makers in Albany to finally close the door on dirty drilling in our state. And if enough of us speak out to our decision makers, perhaps we can avoid a New York edition of "Shalefield Stories."