Safety first

“Better be safe than sorry.”

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Everyone reading this column has probably uttered those phrases more than once in his or her lifetime. So it’s hard to believe that public policy makers and the industry lobbyists who influence them ignore these golden nuggets of wisdom.

Over the years DDT, thalidomide, tobacco, asbestos and pharmaceuticals like Celebrex have been given the stamp of approval, and only decades after we almost lost the American bald eagle, our national symbol, and thousands of people were born with birth defects, died of cancer and suffered fatal heart attacks, have the industries responsible for their manufacture and the agencies responsible for their approval said, “Oops, I guess we were wrong.”

It wasn’t until 1998 that the wisdom of being safe before you were sorry was conceived as a necessary moral and philosophical underpinning for business and government. That year, 32 scientists, lawyers, policymakers and environmentalists convened in Wisconsin and defined a concept they called the “precautionary principle.” It stated: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” In addition: “If an action or policy can potentially do irreversible harm to the environment or the public, and where science suggests even a possible risk of an activity, the burden of proof falls to those advocating the action.”

A primer of what happens when the precautionary principle is ignored can be seen where hydraulic fracking has occurred. For example, in Dimock and Hickory, PA, drinking water has been contaminated, in Louisiana cows died after drinking surface water on a farm where fracking occurred and Pittsburgh’s drinking water supply was temporarily tainted at least in part due to drilling wastewater. One might conclude that in light of accumulated and disturbing evidence, we in the Upper Delaware River valley would unanimously advocate for caution.

Apparently not when money is involved. Perhaps the promise of financial gain clouds a gas lessee’s ability to see the wisdom of the precautionary principle, which I’m certain operates in their daily lives. Perhaps one can understand their eagerness to adopt the position promulgated by the gas industry—that fracking can be done safely—a position that is contradicted by numerous reports to the contrary (excluding those funded by the industry itself).

In addition to taking precautions in the face of scientific uncertainty, the principle also advocates placing “the burden of proof on proponents of an activity rather than on victims or potential victims of the activity; and using democratic processes to carry out and enforce the principle—including the public right to informed consent.”

Under our present system, moneyed corporate interests control policymakers: witness the Federal deregulation of the multi-billion dollar gas and oil industry under the 2005 Energy Policy Act and the recently announced formal partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the gas industry. In light of this, we can rely only on unfunded activist organizations to fight to preserve the environment of the Upper Delaware region.

Under the precautionary principle, the gas industry would be obligated to guarantee beyond a doubt that hydraulic fracking can be done without sacrificing clean air, clean soil or clean water. And ordinary citizens would have a right to weigh in on the matter even though they might not own enough land to sign a lease.

If safety is to be dismissed as the most pressing concern and we are not willing to apply the precautionary principle in the case of hydraulic fracking, then we all might as well stop wearing our seat belts, take up smoking, go kayaking without our life preservers and drive under the influence of alcohol.

- Marcia Nehemiah