I found the newsletter sent out by MUG ManhattanUsersGuide incredibly informative and thought you might enjoy it as well.:
Halliburton
again.
Your drinking water is protected by the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act,
except when it's not. The Halliburton Loophole, as it is known, was
passed by Congress in 2005, an exemption that literally and
figuratively undermines the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Why the loophole? Fracking.
Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is a method in which
water (huge amounts are needed), plus sand, plus chemicals are
high-pressured into tightly packed shale. That causes the rocks to
fracture, allowing for extraction of oil and gases otherwise trapped.
You with us so far?
The technology to do this extraction has improved in recent years so
that companies like Halliburton are suddenly chomping at the drill bit
to frack the shale bounty. These companies lobbied Congress for the
right to frack freely, without the regulatory oversight of the Safe
Drinking Water Act interfering with their bottom line. Congress granted
this drill-baby-drill exemption four years ago.
Without careful monitoring, however, and some say even with it,
the environmental impact of this kind of drilling can be disastrous.
Among the consequences: contaminated drinking water from the
hydrofracking fluid runoff.
One example. As Abrahm
Lustgarten at ProPublica has reported, water near the
gas-rich, recently fracked fields in Wyoming's Sublette Country was
analyzed this past summer. Lustgarten reports that the water contained
benzene, "a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and
leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for
people."
The Marcellus Shale is a rock formation of black shale that covers
54,000 square miles across four states: Ohio, West Viriginia,
Pennsylvania, and New York. Marcellus has lots of natural gas, ready
for the fracking, and, indeed, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, they're
already drilling – and spilling. Drilling will begin in New York if the
state's Department of Environmental Conservation gives the go-ahead,
after their environmental impact review ends next month.
When you cut through the noise, the results seem clear. If Halliburton
and friends are allowed to frack the million acres of Marcellus in the
NYC watershed without proper regulation, it will just be a matter of
time, and not a lot of it, before our drinking water becomes toxic.
Here's what you can do.
Learn more by
reading this overview from the Natural Resources Defense
Council (PDF).
Submit your comments to the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation.
Urge Congress to close the Halliburton
Loophole.
Support Riverkeeper.
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