To Win Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama Must Oppose Fracking

by Alex Lotorto

This morn­ing, I was sip­ping cof­fee and watch­ing Sun­day morn­ing talk shows with my par­ents. We talked about the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion when my dad mut­ed the com­mer­cial breaks that con­sis­tent­ly includ­ed fos­sil fuel indus­try commercials.

My mom put it sim­ply, “I made phone calls, put up posters, and worked at the [Oba­ma] cam­paign office in 2008. I won’t do that again if he sup­ports frack­ing. He needs to pro­tect our clean water, pub­lic health, and well-being.”

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “frack­ing”, is used to extract the gas from a rock lay­er called the Mar­cel­lus Shale and in at least 32 states in the coun­try. The biggest cor­po­ra­tions in the world have their sites on shale gas plays and the gas trapped in them, includ­ing Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and the Chi­na Nation­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion (CNOOC).

The vast grass­roots orga­niz­ing efforts to stop frack­ing, despite being large­ly unfund­ed by tra­di­tion­al Big Green envi­ron­men­tal groups that have pro­mot­ed nat­ur­al gas as a bridge fuel to a clean ener­gy future for years, have car­ried their weight in the pitched bat­tle against drilling and are going to play a major part in 2012 king­mak­ing in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The frack­ing process requires up to 15 acre well sites, one to nine mil­lion gal­lons of water per well per frack, pipeline right of ways, smog­gy com­pres­sor sta­tions, pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties, thou­sands of truck trips, and frack­ing flu­id cock­tails made of up to 596 dif­fer­ent chem­i­cals. Thou­sands of vio­la­tions relat­ed to envi­ron­men­tal health and safe­ty have been doc­u­ment­ed by the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion, the head of which, Sec­re­tary Michael Krancer, is admi­it­ted­ly pro-drilling. An analy­sis from 2010 by the Penn­syl­va­nia Land Trust Asso­ci­a­tion puts these vio­la­tions in perspective:

DEP records show a total of 1614 vio­la­tions of state Oil and Gas Laws due to gas drilling or oth­er earth dis­tur­bance activ­i­ties relat­ed to nat­ur­al gas extrac­tion from the Mar­cel­lus Shale in this 2.5‑year peri­od.  The Asso­ci­a­tion iden­ti­fied 1056 vio­la­tions as hav­ing or like­ly to have an impact on the environment.

There is no such thing as “safe” frack­ing. See the movie Gasland to learn more.
Stephen Cleghorn, an organ­ic farmer from Jef­fer­son Coun­ty, PA, has been speak­ing out for a mora­to­ri­um on drilling in Penn­syl­va­nia, most notably after his wife Lucin­da Hart-Gon­za­lez’ lost her bat­tle with can­cer in Novem­ber with a pow­er­ful speech at the DRBC protest the day of the can­celed vote. From his recent TruthOut piece:

Her joy was in sus­tain­ing our farm against the threat of frack­ing. After Lucin­da’s ash­es become a part of this piece of the good earth, it becomes sacred ground to me, and the com­pa­ny that owns the so-called “rights” to the gas in the shale below our farm is advised to keep their hell away from this place.

This morn­ing, I asked Stephen for a com­ment on Oba­ma’s cam­paign this year. He respond­ed, “Lucin­da and I host­ed cam­paign work­ers in our farm home for three months. I am very dis­ap­point­ed that he can­not see the need to stop frack­ing, but the Repub­li­cans will be even worse. I will vote for Oba­ma, to be sure, but I am not as like­ly to have cam­paign work­ers here this year.”

The grass­roots orga­niz­ing the Oba­ma cam­paign relied on for the 2008 cam­paign is wan­ing as rur­al Penn­syl­va­ni­ans like my mom and Mr. Cleghorn lose enthusiasm.

This sit­u­a­tion pos­es a prob­lem for the Oba­ma for Amer­i­ca cam­paign, espe­cial­ly regard­ing the lat­est news report­ed by the usu­al­ly-Oba­ma-friend­ly lib­er­al blog, Dai­ly Kos:

Situation Normal, All Fracked Up: Obama embraces fracking

Last week, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion gave what may be its first for­mal state­ment favor­ing hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing, of nat­ur­al gas in a report, Invest­ing in Amer­i­ca (pdf).
[From the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion:]
“Since the mid-2000s, how­ev­er, the dis­cov­ery of new nat­ur­al gas reserves, such as the Mar­cel­lus Shale, and the devel­op­ment of hydraulic frac­tur­ing tech­niques to extract nat­ur­al gas from these reserves has led to rapid­ly grow­ing domes­tic pro­duc­tion and rel­a­tive­ly low domes­tic prices for house­holds and down­stream indus­tri­al users. Appro­pri­ate care must to be tak­en to ensure that Amer­i­ca’s nat­ur­al resources are extract­ed in a safe and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble man­ner with the safe­guards in place to pro­tect pub­lic health and safe­ty. Pro­vid­ed these pre­cau­tions are tak­en, the poten­tial ben­e­fits to the U.S. econ­o­my are substantial.

Of the major fos­sil fuels, nat­ur­al gas is the clean­est and least carbon-intensive for elec­tric pow­er gen­er­a­tion. By keep­ing domes­tic ener­gy costs rel­a­tive­ly low, this resource also sup­ports ener­gy inten­sive man­u­fac­tur­ing in the Unit­ed States.  In fact, com­pa­nies like Dow Chem­i­cal and West­lake Chem­i­cal have announced inten­tions to make major invest­ments in new facil­i­ties over the next sev­er­al years. In addi­tion, firms that pro­vide equip­ment for shale gas pro­duc­tion have announced major invest­ments in the U.S., includ­ing Vallourec’s $650 mil­lion plant for steel pipes in Ohio.

An abun­dant local sup­ply will trans­late into rel­a­tive­ly low costs for the indus­tries that use nat­ur­al gas as an input.  Expan­sion in these indus­tries, includ­ing indus­tri­al chem­i­cals and fer­til­iz­ers, will boost invest­ment and exports in the com­ing years, gen­er­at­ing new jobs. In the longer run, the scale of Amer­i­ca’s nat­ur­al gas endow­ment appears to be suf­fi­cient­ly large that exports of nat­ur­al gas to oth­er major mar­kets could be eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable.”

 

 

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has a very impor­tant ques­tion to answer about frack­ing before Penn­syl­va­ni­ans like my mom, and Ohioans turn away from work­ing his cam­paign in 2012. Name­ly, the old coal min­ers’ union slo­gan, “Which side are you on?”

In Ohio, “Sev­en­ty-two per­cent of vot­ers polled said there should be a halt in hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or sim­ply frack­ing, in Ohio until more was known about the impact of the process, Quin­nip­i­ac found,” accord­ing to a recent Reuters report.

Ohio has been watch­ing frack­ing expand at an expo­nen­tial pace, with 156 per­mits issued for drilling in the Uti­ca shale that under­lies por­tions of Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia, Ken­tucky, Mary­land, New York, Ten­nessee, West Vir­ginia and Vir­ginia. Ohio issued 80 of those per­mits dur­ing the last three months of the year, includ­ing 32 in November.

Ohio has also been the recip­i­ent of frack­ing waste sludge, host­ing con­tro­ver­sial Class III injec­tion wells where drillers come from out of state to dump. The big prob­lem? They are sus­pect­ed of caus­ing earth­quakes. Activists young and old have been ral­ly­ing against and even block­ing access to the injec­tion wells. 

Here in Ding­mans Fer­ry, PA, in Pike Coun­ty where gas leas­es have been signed with­in a few hun­dred feet of the Delaware Riv­er and in Promised Land State Park, with thou­sands more leas­es upriv­er in Wayne Coun­ty, nat­ur­al gas drilling is on our doorstep.

The riv­er is the drink­ing water sup­ply for 15.6 mil­lion peo­ple from New York to Delaware.

Indus­tri­al-scale drilling has­n’t start­ed here yet because the Delaware Riv­er Basin Com­mis­sion has yet to pass a set of reg­u­la­tions that would per­mit the use of frack­ing. A hand­ful of explorato­ry Mar­cel­lus wells in the riv­er basin have already yield­ed one well cas­ing fail­ure in Wayne Coun­ty at the David­son well in Scott Town­ship. Well cas­ings are meant to pro­tect aquifers that pro­vide well water to rur­al homes from contamination.

The indus­try states that they are seek­ing to drill 10,000 to 20,000 Mar­cel­lus wells in the Delaware Riv­er Basin.

The DRBC is a fed­er­al com­mis­sion made up of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma gov­er­nors of Penn­syl­va­nia, New York, New Jer­sey, and Delaware and requires a major­i­ty vote to allow drilling.

In Novem­ber, thou­sands of brave peo­ple planned to protest the final vote on the reg­u­la­tions in Tren­ton, NJ, caus­ing a last minute dis­sent of Gov­er­nor Markell of Delaware. Gov­er­nor Markel­l’s deci­sion to vote “no” on the reg­u­la­tions was based on his con­cern that New York has not issued their state’s reg­u­la­tions for the process. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma remains silent.

In a worse case sce­nario if New York issues their reg­u­la­tions this spring, the DRBC could vote to approve drilling on the Delaware Riv­er as shale gas devel­op­ment scales up quick­ing in New York as well. That is, of course, if Pres­i­dent Oba­ma allows that to happen.

Long sto­ry short, the Oba­ma cam­paign can expect fur­ther protests, like the one we held in Scran­ton when he dropped in for a vis­it in December.

The anti-drilling pro­test­ers were the most numer­ous, as well as the most vis­i­ble and the most vocal.

Ding­mans Fer­ry res­i­dent Alex Lotor­to, an orga­niz­er with the Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, said he expects the pres­i­dent to pro­tect rur­al Penn­syl­va­ni­ans from the harms caused by drilling and hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing — a point that will be dri­ven home at every cam­paign stop he makes in the state next year.

“He needs to keep his promis­es about clean air and clean water,” Mr. Lotor­to said.