Calling on Congress

160 groups support the FRAC Act nationwide

By FRITZ MAYER

UNITED STATES — Local groups pushing for increased regulation of gas drilling in the Upper Delaware Valley have gained high profiles in recent months; groups such as Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, Catskill Mountainkeeper and Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy have often found their way into the news.

But the issue of gas drilling and its impact on the environment spreads well beyond this region into states like Texas, Colorado and New Mexico. In fact, the issue is so widely recognized as important that when environmental groups went looking to find support for a letter they intended to send to congress, they gathered 160 different national and community groups across the country to sign.

The letter essentially urged congress to pass the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (FRAC Act), which was introduced in the House by representatives Maurice Hinchey, Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, and in the Senate by senators Bob Casey and Chuck Schumer.

The FRAC Act would require the process of fracking to be covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act, and would require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals in fracking, but not the formulae used to create the fluids.

On a conference call with reporters on September 16, Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council was asked about the claim by the gas industry that revealing the chemicals used in fracking would be giving away trade secrets that would harm individual companies in a competitive market.

Mall responded that if a person buys a can of Coke, the buyer gets to see the list of ingredients on the label but not the formula. The FRAC Act would have the same impact on fracking fluids.

In response to industry claims that the FRAC Act would cost too much and cause fewer jobs to be produced, Mall pointed to a new economic study by ECONorthwest that said that industry studies regarding the impact of the FRAC Act “fail to consider the wide range of alternatives for implementing the proposed regulations, including ways that could reduce costs and increase benefits. They also ignore the economic benefits of the proposed regulations and grossly exaggerate the economic costs of the proposed regulations.”

Also on the conference call was Bruce Baizel, a senior staff attorney with Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project, based in Durango, CO. He said, “Recent hearings in Colorado showed that the oil and gas industry has caused more than 300 instances of contaminated water in Colorado since 2003 and more than 700 instances in New Mexico, and no one has thoroughly investigated whether contamination is linked to hydraulic fracturing. As we continue to produce oil and gas throughout the Rockies, in Texas and Arkansas and now in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York, we need to put in place the safeguards for our communities and the water they depend on,” he said. “We don’t want 10 to 15 years of natural gas production to leave us with a lifetime legacy of contaminated water.”

The letter and the list of signatories can be found at earthworksaction.org/pubs/FRACactLetter9-10.pdf.