My Fracking Wake Up Call

My fracked gas wake up call happened way back in the summer of 2009 in the Endless Mountains of PA. I had arranged a barter deal though a chef buddy of mine. I would work in the dining hall at the Ballibay summer camp for theater arts, while my 12 year old diva would get to attend camp free of charge.

I enjoyed making breakfast and lunch for the campers along with helping to start a composting program. We actually got the campers to scrape their veggie scraps into bins, thereby cutting our waste stream.  We ended up saving the camp money that summer by cooking fresh food from scratch and cutting back on one time disposable containers and utensils.

My accommodations were a simple cabin in the woods. I loved being able to be outside at night without a flashlight, walking slowly through the woods by the light of the moon.  My diva daughter had a blast, making new friends, singing, dancing and acting in plays.  At camp, I made lots of friends who I still keep in touch with to this very day. There were fun and interesting characters in the kitchen,  smart caring nurses and counselors who taught theater and voice.   Our kitchen staff co-created a music video for our famous home made hummus which became a camp favorite.

Off in the fields one day, I spotted a truck and what appeared to be some survey workers. They were taking measurements for some gas companies would would be starting to drill there in the following months. I didn’t think much of it, but it turns out that  while I was having fun at camp, Bradford County PA was gearing up to become the epicenter of fracking in the state of Pennsylvania. Since 2008,  over 2000 gas wells have been fracked in the county.

The day before I returned to camp the following summer, I had a chance to watch Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary got me up to speed on fracking in a hurry and gave me some context for what I was about to see as I headed back to PA for the season.

When I returned to Bradford County PA, in the summer of 2010, things were visibly different.  Slow-moving tractor-trailers and large pickups clogged the main roads. At times, traffic was backed up for miles. I learned a new word: fraffic –  traffic from trucks related to fracking. Trucks carrying tons of gravel, water, sand, chemicals. Hundred and hundreds of them. Small local roads take a real pounding from this heavy use and become a patchwork quilt of potholes and gravel.

The night sky was now lit up with high towers of gas fracking rigs. Lights burning 24 7 to illuminate them.  When driving at night,  you could see  gas flares burning off at the top of the rigs.

I never got to see a faucet go up in flames like in the movie Gasland, but I did hear stories from the locals about contamination of farms and water supplies.

In the 4 years since my last tour of duty in that summer camp, I have continued to follow the fracking story in Bradford County PA.
The gas boom that started in 2008 out there is now turning into a bust, just 6 years later. Of the 2000 wells that were fracked in Bradford County, only around800 are still in operation. Lots of  incidences of water contamination have been reported along with toxic spills and explosions.

Many folks have not been paid what they thought they would be by the gas companies.

The problems with natural gas are many.
For one thing it contaminates the groundwater. Fresh clean, safe water is far more important than any fossil fuel.
It makes one heck of a mass leaving water that’s contaminated with all sorts of  chemicals and volatile compounds. Thanks to Halliburton, we don’t even know all the chemicals being used for fracking.

Fracking was explicitly made exempt from the Safe Water Drinking Act by a piece of energy legislation passed by Congress called the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This exemption allows drilling and fracking companies to inject unknown and/or toxic materials directly into, below, or adjacent to underground sources of drinking water without reporting the chemicals or the quantities of these chemicals to the government or to the public.

But many of the chemicals that  we do know in fracking fluids are well-documented for causing cancer, birth defects, and nervous system disorders. The same is true of many naturally occuring but highly toxic substances that are unearthed in the process, then seap into the water supply and into the air too.

Fracking waste products are laced with radon, which is radioactive from the bedrock
Fracked gas makes no sense whatsoever! It is not safe or clean.

The fracking boom has spread to many other states. Ohio and Oklahoma are now experiencing small earthquakes do to the shock waves of fracking liquids sent into the ground designed to break up the bedrock where the gas is trapped.

Our federal government continues to promote, support the natural gas industry  falsely thinking that this is somehow cleaner than coal. When you add methane to the equation, fracked gas is as bad if not worse than coal. But President Obama and most of the Democrats continue full frack ahead.

Here in NY in the fall of 2014, we are still living under a gas fracking moratorium put into place by then NY Gov Patterson. Our current governor, Andrew Cuomo, says he’s waiting for the science to come in on whether fracking is safe. We are worried that he is simply waiting until after this week’s election to give the green light on fracking in NY.

I will be voting for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party on Tuesday. He is the only candidate for governor who supports a ban on fracking.

Once you’ve had a wake up call like this, it is impossible to go back to sleep. Thanks to my experience at summer camp, I am now and will always be a relentless Fracktivist.