River party to light the Delaware Basin

A cup of water and a candle: harbingers of hope

By SANDY LONG

DELAWARE RIVER BASIN — “If half a million people can come here for peace, love and music, they can come for the river,” said Liz Bucar, one of two “Granny-somethings” who recently completed a jam-packed road trip along the Delaware River Basin to wake people to the presence of natural gas extraction in the Upper Delaware region and to invite them to participate in the Light Up the Delaware River Party—a 330-mile long celebration along the banks of the river on Labor Day Sunday, September 6.

As in other parts of the country, the region is increasingly grappling with the issues springing from natural gas extraction and associated processes such as hydraulic fracturing. “It’s a national problem impacting people across the country, but it’s not receiving the attention it should,” said Leni Santoro, who made the trek with Bucar beginning in Philadelphia, PA and concluding in Hancock, NY.

The pair journeyed on the same weekend that the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival was celebrated at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, NY. But unlike the heightened awareness leading to that mass turnout in 1969, the women were disturbed to find only pockets of awareness along the route.

Visiting river towns, the women distributed more than 800 copies of their invitation to people on Main Streets, at canoe liveries and in diners, laundromats, barber shops, parks and biker hangouts.

Both Santoro and Bucar said that despite a lack of knowledge, people listened willingly to what they had to say. “Once people understood the threat of hydraulic fracturing, they were outraged and uniformly thrilled to hear about the party,” wrote Bucar, following the trip.

The pair is asking people to download the invitation ( www.lizbucar.com/DelawareRiverParty9_6_09.html ) to distribute door to door and display at community gathering spots, like post offices and libraries, or to forward it to “river-lovers, water-lovers, community organizers, environmental groups, outdoors clubs and the media.”

In addition to spreading the word, people are encouraged to organize their own events—parties, picnics, flotillas, movies, dances, camping and more—all of which should include two symbolic gestures: the pouring of a single cup of water into the river at 7:00 p.m., followed by the lighting of a candle at 7:30 p.m. “We want the basin lit from Philadelphia to Hancock,” said Bucar. “It’ll be a brilliant beacon of conservation, not exploitation.”

Organizers are asked to list their events at www.lightupthedelawareriver.com/party-locations.html or to check the site for events to attend. Events need not be open to the public. Bucar and Santoro will create a map showing the locations and the number of people who care about the issue. They plan to submit the map to the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) as it deliberates on the myriad regulations needed to protect the high-quality water resources of the river basin.

Bucar and Santoro want the DRBC to table all drilling and fracking applications until after an Environmental Impact Statement has been completed and independent, scientific studies evaluate the cumulative impacts of drilling, fracking and waste-water disposal on the Delaware River Basin.  

Joining them in their efforts is Amanda Halloran of Lake Huntington, NY, whose seven-week-old daughter, Maple, is all the inspiration she needs to get involved. Halloran is targeting her peers using social networking tools like Facebook and old-fashioned ones such as potluck dinners.

The twenty-four-year-old and her peers are wrestling with a quickly changing American dream marred by the failing economy and health care crisis. “It’s really a hard time for my generation,” she said. “You don’t know where to put your energy.” Even so, Halloran is organizing a riverside gathering.

Another local event scheduled from noon to 3:00 p.m. in Narrowsburg, NY on September 6 is the Regatta at the Big Eddy. Participants should bring canoes, kayaks, rafts, rowboats, waders and fishing poles, as well as a one-gallon plastic container with the name of a chemical associated with gas drilling, such as benzene, toluene, xylene, napthalene, formaldehyde, arsenic and more.

Boaters will be invited to cruise around the Big Eddy, filling up their containers with water and pouring it back into the river to symbolize the potential for pollution of the water, both locally and for down river communities. Participants are asked to take containers home for proper recycling. The event is organized by Friends of the Upper Delaware Watershed and is free.

“Fifteen million people depend on The Delaware River Basin for their water,” Bucar said. “It’s critical that we focus national attention on the dangers posed to it by drilling and fracking.”

So what do the hopeful grannies think will happen that day? “Wouldn’t it be great if we were to wake up and find that thousands of others have become awake to the fact that this is ground zero?” said Bucar. “We can stop it here.”

For more information, contact Bucar at ljbucar@earthlink.net or visit www.lizbucar.com. Santoro can be reached

at leni5s@yahoo.com or visit thecatskillchronicle.wordpress.com.