When the idea that property owners in the Upper Delaware Valley might stand to make a lot of money from hydraulic fracturing, most people thought the practice would soon be widespread here, because there seemed to be too much money to be made to stop it.

As most of us know, the battle for fracking to become legal in New York State raged on for seven long years and, in the end, it was a decision based on the possible negative health impacts of fracking that stopped its forward motion. True, there were many in the region who said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo was not really losing much when he agreed to allow the ban to take hold, because there was not much gas in the Marcellus Shale to begin with.

But the official word was that Howard Zucker, MD, the then-acting state health commissioner, said he could not recommend that the practice go forward because of health concerns. It was the first time in the United States that a review of health impacts was included in an overall environmental review of an industrial process—which indicates how skewed oversight of industrial activity is in our country. After all, protection of the health and welfare of the citizens is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of elected officials, and yet, until the New York review of fracking came along, a review of health impacts was not even part of the agenda.

Zucker, to his credit, found a number of red flags at the time in some studies of heath impacts done outside of regulatory agencies, and he said, “Would I live in a community with [fracking], based on the facts I have now? Would I let my child play in the school field nearby? Or my family drink the water from the tap, or grow vegetables in the soil? After looking at the plethora of reports … my answer is ‘no.’”

The medical community seems to agree that health impacts should be studied in the case of all gas infrastructure. As Larysa Dyrszka said again, at the compressor impacts forum held on February 20 at the Eldred Junior-Senior High School, the Medical Society of the State of New York and the American Medical Association says there are health impacts of all such infrastructure “because they have seen the data.”

Dyrszka was deeply involved in a review of the health impacts of the Minisink Compressor Station in Orange County that has been operational since 2013. The review, carried out by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, shows that compressor stations emit various substances that are “all major components of smog [and] are known to cause significant health effects in exposed populations. These primarily increase respiratory symptoms and aggravate respiratory conditions such as asthma, especially in children, older adults, or individuals with heart or lung diseases.”

Further, it said, “Carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde have been found at levels exceeding federal risk levels over 2,500 ft from compressor stations, far greater than currently mandated residential setbacks (the largest of which is 750 ft).”

Currently, health impacts of compressor stations are not a big concern of FERC or the gas industry. Activists were able to elevate the importance of health impacts in the case of fracking in New York because they were dealing with a single state and a single governor—one who had likely come to see that there would be more political downside to allowing fracking than to banning it.

But with compressors, activists are not dealing with the state as the main power, but rather with a federal agency, one that is funded entirely by the industry and one that has approved every project that has come before it for decades. Any meaningful reform of FERC and its permitting process would probably come via new legislation in Congress, which is not likely to happen given its current make-up.

Still, state agencies and an increasing number of landowners are speaking out against FERC, slowing it down and putting up roadblocks. Judging by the healthy attendance at the Eldred forum, local landowners are planning to join that effort.

It seems at least two of the approaches will include heavily spotlighting the possible negative health impacts, and challenging the legality of the process, whenever that is possible. As we have said in the past, given previous outcomes, defeating FERC and Millennium will be a long slog, but that’s not to say it isn’t worth the fight.