NY State: imperative to retain a clean water supply

By MAV MOORHEAD

For several months now, NYH2O has been working to alert residents of New York City and NYC Community Boards to the actual process involved in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling (fracking) and the ramifications that will affect them. The world that they could be confronted with in the very near future, as opposed to the world they live in now, would be a new and critically disturbing “normal” if the toxic contamination of fracking is not banned statewide.

The process raises many issues, including contamination of aquifers, watersheds and wetlands, examples of which abound around the country and globe. Over 257 corrosive and toxic chemicals are mixed with one to five million gallons of water and driven underground under extreme pressure, and “accidents,” a benign gas company term, have been documented. With up to 70 percent of that toxic brew left underground in pressurized injection wells “forever,” there is a probability, not possibility, of migration and osmosis of fluids that would contaminate our drinking water supply. Water withdrawal of such magnitudes could also result in extreme drought periods.

Clean water is the basis of human health, without which we cannot exist, and contamination would create an unprecedented health crisis. Large geographic centers, like New York, Camden, Trenton and Philadelphia, as well as small rural communities, would be affected by the probability of contamination, putting about 40 million people at risk. Since no expert, study or guarantee from any known authority can confirm that the extraction process will not adversely affect our most precious resource, we must call for zero tolerance for any possibility of water contamination anywhere in the State of New York.

Also, the issue of how wastewater from fracking shall be disposed of has not been resolved. “Produced water,” another benign-sounding gas-drilling term meaning water that is contaminated, is then sent back into the water supply, better known as “dilution,” a benign word for disposal of incompletely treated toxic water back into our streams and water supply. There is no known technology available to filter all the chemicals out of the brew; therefore, any “filtering” process is inadequate, especially when they “reintroduce” it, another benign gas term, into the existing water supply.

The identity of chemicals used by the gas companies is “proprietary information,” meaning they don’t have to, and refuse to, disclose them to anyone. Health consequences abound, including a full range of cancers, organ failure, tingling hands and feet, loss of sense of smell and taste, nausea, vomiting and inability to carry offspring to full term. As for food supply and livestock, animals near the contamination lose fur and can’t reproduce. They have to be moved away from the area.

Do you want to drink and bathe in contaminated water, breathe contaminated air, listen to the drone of the compressors, wait for migration of toxic waters to hit your aquifers or eat food that was grown near a toxic site? The reality is that there is a short-term gain for a few who have no responsibility later for the billions of dollars incurred for filtration, health costs, depressed real estate, deaths, tainted food and livestock supply. They get off scott free while the rest of us watch the demise of our quality of life. There is no going back. Once the water is contaminated by the fracking process, the next step is to ask ourselves, “Where do you want to move?” Because living here won’t be an option.

(Mav Moorhead is a founding board member of NYH20, whose mission is to call for a New York State ban of hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling.)