webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

frack

content start 3/14?

this is a tag; see also Fracking node

 ===

local regs: corp person?

===

Citizens of Denton, Texas are still fighting to keep fracking banned within city limits despite the vote last November in favor of the ban. Ever since the vote, state lawmakers in cahoots with the oil and gas industry and the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, have attempted to strip municipalitieslike Denton of home rule authority to override the city’s ban, according to Frack Free Denton.

The town is the first municipality in Texas to ban fracking and has consequently become ground zero for the fracking debate. Yesterday, Denton Mayor Chris Watts and City Attorney Anita Burgess traveled to Austin to testifyat a hearing on two bills that have emerged in response to Denton’s fracking ban, according to Frack Free Denton. In solidarity with grassroots organizers from the Frack Free Denton movement and other residents from small Texas towns who also testified in Austin, documentary filmmaker and Denton resident Garrett Graham released a new trailer for his forthcoming film....

==

InsideClimate News's latest special report, publishing today: EDF Sparks Mistrust, and Admiration, With its Methane Research. The story, with an accompanying sidebar and a graphic on EDF's funding, is the result of a three-month reporting project led by our reporters Lisa Song and Katherine Bagley. It highlights the unique role—critics call it an ill-fitting one—that the Environmental Defense Fund has carved for itself as both an environmental group and a partner with the oil and gas industry in its research into methane emissions.

EDF is one of the country's oldest and most venerable environmental groups, but when it launched the project to study emissions from the fracking industry, it decided to collaborate with—and accept funding from—industry. While even EDF's critics say the work fills a critical void, many environmentalists are calling for a ban on fracking while the risks to public health are fully explored and believe EDF's research will only encourage its spread.

EDF Sparks Mistrust, and Admiration, With its Methane Research

The Environmental Defense Fund is one of the nation's most venerable environmental organizations, and many consider it one of the most effective. But its industry-collaborative approach to the study of methane leaks in natural gas drilling has drawn scrutiny from other environmental groups, who worry EDF has strayed into a gray area where science and the fossil fuel industry collide.

Read more.

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, in his Manhattan office in February 2015. Credit: Lisa Song/InsideClimate News

EDF Recruits Sprawling Network to Fund Methane Leaks Research

To fund its $18 million, 16-study investigation into methane emissions from the natural gas industry, the Environmental Defense Fund assembled a sprawling network of private donors, foundations, utilities, fossil fuel companies and others. The project attracted backers with a range of sometimes-conflicting stances on fracking.

Read more.

Related Stories from ICN:

A Field Guide to the U.S. Environmental Movement

Fracking's Methane Leakage To Be Focus of Many Studies This Year

Methane Leaks From Gas Pipelines Far Exceed Official Estimates, Harvard Study Finds

Methane May Leak From 40% of Gas Wells in Parts of Pennsylvania

Colorado's Tough New Drilling Rules Make an Impact in Texas

Can Fracking Pollute Drinking Water? Don't Ask the EP

==

18 Mar 2015

WASHINGTON, DC – League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Legislative Representative Madeleine Foote released this statement in response to the introduction of the “Frack Pack” legislation, five bills that will remove exemptions and close loopholes that oil and gas companies use to circumvent major environmental legislation:

“While oil and gas companies take advantage of loopholes and exceptions in our bedrock environmental laws, our communities assume all the risk.  By holding fracking companies to the same standards as other industries—requiring steps like groundwater testing and disclosure of chemicals used—the “Frack Pack” will help safeguard our drinking water, protect our environment, and reduce air pollutants.  There’s no question about it—our communities have a right to know what oil and gas companies are up to in their backyards, and the “Frack Pack” is a step in the direction of transparency.”

==

http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/17/home-rule-fracking-pipelines/

Across the country, battles are raging as communities attempt to protect the air, soil and water within their borders and the safety of their residents. These battles are taking the form of debates about whether state regulations can or should erase local home rule.

Colorado and Texas are engaged in such high-profile battles after voters in communities likeDenton, Texas and Boulder, Longmont and Fort Collins, Colorado, passed fracking bans. That has opened up ongoing maneuvers and lawsuits as state governments work with oil and gas companies to uphold the exploration and extraction interests of the latter despite citizen concerns about environmental pollution, noise, traffic and infrastructure stress.

ut with communities and citizens becoming more and more determined to have their say, fossil fuel interests put out one blaze only to find a dozen more flaring up. Many of those communities are using a strategy developed by the Pennsylvania-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to address environmental issues: a community bill of rights. Now oil and gas companies are working to suppress those bills of rights.

They were successful in Ohio last week where a judge in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) struck down the community bill of rights passed by suburban Broadview Heights voters by a 2-1 margin n November 2012 to keep additional drilling operations out of their community. The decision is considered significant because it’s the first community bill of rights in Ohio to get a legal review. Judge Michael Astrab found it in conflict with state law. Many other Ohio cities have passed or attempted to pass such bills of rights, including Youngstown and Kent where they were defeated and Columbus, where activists are working to put a city charter amendment on the ballot. Oberlin and Athens have passed them.

According to the *Akron Beacon-Journal*, “Astrab said the city’s community bill of rights conflicts with state law that gives the Ohio Department of Natural Resources sole authority to regulate drillers since 2004.”

Broadview Heights resident Tish O’Dell of Mothers Against Drilling in Our Neighborhoods(MADION), said, “We now see that at least one Court is not prepared to uphold our right to protect our health and safety. Instead, the court prohibited our city from protecting us. If no branch of our government is going to protect us from these corporate harms, then our government has ceased to be legitimate.”

Out in Oregon, citizens are fighting the same battle in a different way: they want to put it in their constitution so a judge can’t overturn it. The Oregon Community Rights Network (OCRN) is working to collect signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November 2016 that would protect the right of communities to make decisions about what goes on inside their borders and the legality of those decisions even if they conflict with corporate interests.

“It is clear that the current legal structure allows corporations to treat our communities as property,” said Eron King, board president of OCRN. “We—the people –have become mere tenants of the corporations. It’s time we change that by changing our constitution to reflect that our right to local, community self-government is above corporate control.”

Among the issues OCRN cites as areas where corporations’ rights can erase those of the community are growing GMOs, transporting oil and gas, spraying pesticides and building natural gas pipelines.

[img]

On the other side of the country in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, pipelines are the issue as citizens in Martic Township mobilize under the banner of Martic SOUL (Save Our Unspoiled Land) to prevent a natural gas pipeline from passing through their community.

“In October 2014, Martic Township Supervisors announced their opposition against the construction of the proposed Atlantic Sunrise Project,” the group Lancaster Against Pipelines posted on its website. “Following this announcement, residents in Martic as well as Conestoga Townships, requested that the supervisors pass an ordinance for a Community Bill of Rights. This Community Bill of Rights proposed the ban of construction of natural gas pipelines within the respective townships and the rights to local governance, sustainable energy, clean air, clean water among other things. The proposed ordinance was shot down, in both townships.”

The group is running seven anti-pipeline candidates in a May election for members of the local Government Study Commission and has turned to CELDF to help it with a Community Bill of Rights to protect home rule.

In an editorial posted at Lancaster Online, Martic resident and activist Emily Weinstock-Collins announced the launch of Home Rule in Martic Township and support for these candidates, writing, “We are dedicated to protecting our residents and securing the future of Martic Township; home rule is our next step toward achieving these goals. True democracy gives power to the people, not to the highest bidder.  Home rule is a step towards that democracy.”

A pipeline is also outraging citizens in southern New Hampshire, where communities are mobilizing against a large-scale natural gas pipeline, the Northeast Energy Direct (NED), that would cut through their towns. Three of the five towns impacted have already voted to take action against pipeline company Kinder-Morgan with the other two set to vote this week, following extensive community protests.

“For too long, decisions related to energy have been controlled by corporations and individuals motivated by financial and political interests rather than by the public good,” New Hampshire Pipeline Awareness.org posted. “This project is more of the same. The prospective benefit to the fossil fuel industry is clear, but the alleged public need has not been demonstrated.”

“One thing I love about New Hampshire is that we are politically devoted to local control,” said Medicine Story, a Wampanoag Indian and longtime resident of Greenville, one of the impacted communities, told the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript. “If this pipeline was something that most people in the area wanted, then that’s what everyone would work toward. Clearly, that isn’t the case here.”

==

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/20/fracking-public-land-rule_n_6910922.html

The Department of Interior released new rules for hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on public lands in the United States on Friday, the first significant update to the regulations in three decades.

"Decades-old regulations don't take into account current technology for hydraulic fracturing," said Interior Sec. Sally Jewell in a call with reporters Friday. The new rules will require companies drilling on public lands to disclose the chemicals they are using to the Bureau of Land Management, will set higher standards for the storage of wastewater from the fracking process, and will require validation of well integrity.

There are 100,000 oil and gas wells on public lands across the U.S., according to the department, and 90 percent of those in operation use hydraulic fracturing, a process that uses a high-pressure stream of water, sand and chemicals to tap into oil and gas reserves. Friday's final rule applies only to development on public lands, however, not to the much more prolific development of state and private land. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 756 million acres of public land across the country....

must disclose chems

1st amendment

http://www.nrdc.org/media/2013/130417.asp

New York Town Repeals Fracking Gag Order After Free Speech Lawsuit

NEW YORK (April 17, 2013) – The Town Board of Sanford, NY, has repealed the gag order it passed last summer on discussing fracking at their meetings, following a First Amendment lawsuit filed in February by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy. As a result, the groups are dropping their Freedom of Speech lawsuit today.

Statements follow from NRDC and CCSE:

“The people of Sanford will no longer be silenced. With this action, the Town Board has rightly recognized the validity of residents’ concerns about this controversial heavy industrial activity moving into their backyards, and the need for their local representatives to hear them. This is especially important in light of the board’s history of support for fracking. This is a vindication of the right to free speech. And it sends a message to communities everywhere. As Americans, we have the right to speak up when we feel threatened. And it is our government’s responsibility to listen.” –Kate Sinding, Director of the Community Fracking Defense Project at NRDC.

“We are gratified that Sanford dropped its unconstitutional ban on free speech. It's unfortunate that it required litigation to re-establish this fundamental right for the citizens of Sanford, but by rescinding the ban now, the Town Board at least spared the taxpayers the expense of a protracted and costly lawsuit.” –Tom Wilinsky of Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy.

Background on the lawsuit here:http://www.nrdc.org/media/2013/130212.asp.

==

Fifteen New York towns that are upset at Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to ban fracking have threatened to secede from the state and join neighboring Pennsylvania, where fracking is allowed.

The towns, all members of the Upstate New York Towns Association, have expressed interest in secession, Conklin Town Supervisor Jim Finch told The Huffington Post. The association is compiling a report to assess the feasibility of joining Pennsylvania.

“We're in the Southern Tier of New York,” Finch said, referring to localities in Broome, Tioga, Sullivan and Delaware counties. “There are no jobs. The economy is terrible. There's nothing going on.”

He decried Cuomo’s recent decision not to bring a casino to the region, and noted that Conklin and the 14 other towns in the Southern Tier sit on the Marcellus Shale, which is rich in natural gas. Permitting drilling in the region would provide an avenue for new jobs and a way to raise money for local schools and governments, as it has across the border in Pennsylvania, Finch said.

Leaving New York and joining the Keystone State, he added, would also mean lower taxes for businesses and lower insurance payments.

Finch conceded that secession is “far-fetched” -- it would require the approval of the New York legislature, the Pennsylvania legislature and the federal government -- but said raising the idea helps highlight the region’s discontent with New York's government, and Cuomo in particular.

As far-fetched as secession may be, however, state Senate Deputy Majority Coalition Leader Tom Libous (R), of nearby Binghamton, said he is taking the proposal seriously. As first reported by WBNG-TV in Binghamton, the senator mailed a survey to his constituents, asking if they are interested in secession.

==

http://www.alternet.org/print/cuomo-administration-fossil-fuel-industry-dont-frack-ny

AlterNet [1] / By Cliff Weathers [2]

Cuomo Administration Officials: ‘Don’t Frack With NY’

December 17, 2014 |

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration has tentatively said no to the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the state based on the recommendations of two commissioners who have studied the energy extraction process.

Cuomo met with his top advisers and representatives of the media late this morning, and announced that because fracking is a highly technical field, he required more information and less emotion in his decision-making. So he deferred his decision on fracking to the findings of Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Joseph Martens and acting state health commissioner Howard Zucker.

“This has been the most emotionally charged issue that I’ve ever experienced. More than marriage equality, more than the gun issue, more than the death penalty,” said Cuomo. “But I will be bound by what the experts say,” he said, before turning over the meeting to his commissioners. “Let the science decide.”

Martens and Zucker, who both spoke at length at the meeting, concurred that the risks to the water supply and air quality were too great to approve fracking. Dr. Zucker said that he reviewed the peer-reviewed studies, and that there was both scientific and anecdotal evidence of immediate health and environmental risks. He also said there were virtually no long-term health studies to help him make his decision and that more research is needed.

“The bottom line is that we lack the comprehensive long-term studies,” Zucker said. “The science isn’t there.”

Current studies he’s reviewed gives him reason to pause. “We have a responsibility to ourselves, but also future generations,” Zucker said.....

[http://www.globalpossibilities.org/fracking-threatens-millions-of-californians/ Fracking Threatens Millions of Californians] A new report shows that 5.4 million Californians—more than 14 percent of its 38.3 million population—live within a mile of an oil or gas well, and almost four million of those, or nearly 70 percent, are Hispanic, Asian or African-American, according to a new Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report Drilling in California: Who’s at Risk? Non-whites make up slightly more than 40 percent of California’s total population. 10/14. see [http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php?title=Category:Fracking Fracking].

==

10/14

Susan G. Komen, the largest breast cancer organization in America with more than 100,000 volunteers and partnerships in more than 50 countries, has teamed up with  Baker Hughes, one of the world’s largest oilfield service companies with employees in more than 80 countries. Susan G. Komen hands out pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, and Baker Hughes fracks. So, there you have it: a pink, fracking, drill head.

That’s Susan G. Komen pink, by the way. It’s special. Like John Deere green. And that signature color has been painted by hand on  a thousand drill bits, which will soon be shipped by Baker Hughes to well pads all over the world, thus facilitating  a thousand fossil fuel extraction projects just in time for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Which is this month. (But please don’t confuse Baker Hughes pink drill bits with Chesapeake Energy’s “even-rigs-can-rally-for-a-cure”  pink drill rigs. That was so 2012.)...

===

water use map http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/02/water-resources-fracking**

==

8/14 colo prop polis hickenlooper

---

http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/07/pa-prioritizes-fracking-at-expense-of-health-environment-law/

==

Changing Laws Protecting the Environment

==

ALEC: apr 14

Promoting Trojan Horse-like Fracking Regulations

Thirteen of the bills concern hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking."

ALEC has three items of "model" legislation in its library concerning fracking:two pro-fracking resolutions and a bill -- illogically titled "The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act"-- that allows operators to keep secret the details of chemicals injected into a well by making a near impossible to challenge claim of "trade secrets."

As reported by the New York Times in April 2012, ExxonMobil brought the fracking bill to ALEC in December 2011 following its adoption as law in Texas. In the 2013 session, five states introduced legislation similar to the ALEC model, as detailed in the CMD report "ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress."

One of the bills ALEC is tracking is a proposed moratorium on fracking in Massachusetts. This does not relate directly to any of the ALEC "model" bills, but both fracking bans and federal oversight have been a focus at recent ALEC conferences.

For example, at the August 2013 ALEC conference in Chicago, the American Petroleum Institute presented to legislators on "Local Bans on Hydraulic Fracturing: Coming Soon to Your District." And during the most recent December 2013 ALEC conference in Washington DC, the Energy, Environment and Agriculture members received a presentation on the EPA "adversarial oversight" of fracking.

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/04/187665/revealed-alec%E2%80%99s-2014-attacks-environment#sthash.qXdvkJNQ.dpuf

nick s

==

  1. [http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/11/pipeline-rupture-beneath-great-lakes-devastate-people-planet Rupture of Aging Tar Sands Pipeline Beneath Great Lakes Would Devastate People, Planet and Economy] 7/14.

For the last eight years, Pennsylvania has been riding the natural gas boom, with companies drilling and fracking thousands of wells across the state. And in a little corner of Washington County, some 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh, EQT Corporation has been busy –drilling close to a dozen new wells on one site.

It didn't take long for the residents of Finleyville who lived near the fracking operations to complain – about the noise and air quality, and what they regarded as threats to their health and quality of life. Initially, EQT, one of the largest producers of natural gas in Pennsylvania, tried to allay concerns with promises of noise studies and offers of vouchers so residents could stay in hotels to avoid the noise and fumes.

But then, in what experts say was a rare tactic, the company got more aggressive: it offered all of the households along Cardox Road $50,000 in cash if they would agree to release the company from any legal liability, for current operations as well as those to be carried out in the future. It covered potential health problems and property damage, and gave the company blanket protection from any kind of claim over noise, dust, light, smoke, odors, fumes, soot, air pollution or vibrations.

The agreement also defined the company's operations as not only including drilling activity but the construction of pipelines, power lines, roads, tanks, ponds, pits, compressor stations, houses and buildings.

"The release is so incredibly broad and such a laundry list," said Doug Clark, a gas lease attorney in Pennsylvania who mainly represents landowners. "You're releasing for everything including activity that hasn't even occurred yet. It's crazy."...7/14 propubl

===

5/14

A California bill that would have banned fracking while the state studied its risks was narrowly defeated in the state Senate on Thursday, despite polling that showed a majority of California voters favored the legislation.

SB 1132, authored by Democratic state senatorsHolly Mitchell and Mark Leno, failed to pass with a vote of 18-16. In all, seven Democrats prevented the bill from moving forward, with four voting against the bill and three more abstaining from voting.

The bill’s defeat was widely seen as a win for the state’s large oil lobby, led by the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA). The group, according to **Truth Out**, spent $4.6 million in 2013 on lobbying in California, and has so far spent $1.4 million in just the first 3 months of 2014. Altogether, the oil industry — including WSPA, Chevron, and BP — spent more than $56 million lobbying the California Legislature from 2009 through 2013.

The group Californians Against Fracking — which includes 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Oil Change International — estimates $15 million has been spent altogether on lobbying activities to specifically defeat SB 1132.

“It’s disappointing to see our leaders in Sacramento fail to pass a moratorium on fracking, siding with the powerful oil and gas industry at the expense of the health of our families and climate,” said Arturo Carmona, Executive Director of Latino online organizing group Presente.org. “Latinos will bear the brunt of the worst effects of fracking in California–from poisoned water to asthma, and are in the areas worst affected by climate change across the nation.”

Fracking is a method of extracting fossil fuels that is coveted for its ability to increase the flow of oil or gas from a well. This is done by injecting high-pressure water and chemicals miles-deep into the ground into subsurface rock, effectively “fracturing” the rock and allowing more spaces for oil and gas to come through. The process relies heavily on groundwater by injecting a mixture of chemicals and water into rock formations to release oil and gas deposits.

California’s ongoing severe drought emergency had prompted lawmakers to push for thestatewide ban until more information could be found about how much water the process used and how safe it was, as a Ceres report found that 96 percent of California fracking wells are located in the areas experiencing drought and high water stress.

But lawmakers who voted against the statewide ban on Wednesday argued that the bill would have led to a “heavy reduction” of jobs, while others argued that the state “needs gas to run on.”

Many had also argued that California was about to experience a shale oil boom, and that a fracking ban would prevent the jobs to come from that boom. Fracking and other unconventional methods of drilling are the primary methods to reach the oil in California’s Monterey Shale, which is too difficult to recover with other methods of drilling.

However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration last week admitted that the amount of oil that could be extracted from the Monterey Shale formation had been overstated by 96 percent,saying only 600 million barrels of oil could be extracted with currently available technology. That amount of oil is only enough to meet U.S. oil consumption for 32 days.

“In other words, there’s not going to be a giant oil boom in California’s near future, and the state, as a result, is not going to add 2.8 million new industry jobs or see its tax revenue increase by $24.6 billion annually, as oil and gas interests had claimed,” Robert Gammon wrote in the East Bay Express on Thursday. “As such, there’s no reason for the governor and lawmakers to continue to back a controversial practice that involves shooting massive amounts of water and toxic chemicals deep into the earth and has been linked to groundwater and air pollution and to earthquakes.”

Even though the statewide ban has failed, though, regional bans on fracking are popping up all over the state — and they’re passing.

In February, the Los Angeles City Council passed a **ban on fracking** within its jurisdiction, until the council is assured that the practice does not pose a threat to residents’ health and safety.**Beverly Hills** passed a fracking ban this month, as did **Santa Cruz**, which last week passed the state’s first-ever permanent fracking ban.

Russell Gold talks about the rise of fracking and the impact, both positive and negative, that it has had in the world.  Mr. Gold spoke at the San Antonio Book Festival in Texas.     Russell Gold has covered energy for The Wall Street Journal since 2002.   

http://www.booktv.org/Program/15609/2014+San+Antonio+Book+Festival+Russell+Gold+The+Boom+How+Fracking+Ignited+the+American+Energy+Revolution+and+Changed+the+World.aspx

==

colorado and NY resist; LA

Thursday, October 3,2013

Report: Colorado among top three frack-wracked states in nation

By Jefferson Dodge

When it comes to environmental impacts from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Colorado ranks among the three most negatively affected states in the country in most categories, according to a new report from the Environment Colorado Research & Policy Center.

And Colorado ranks second only to Texas in the report when it comes to certain indicators on the spread of fracking and its effects.

As of press time, the center was set to formally unveil its report, “Fracking by the Numbers: Key Impacts of Dirty Drilling at the State and National Level,” at an Oct. 3 event in downtown Denver featuring Boulder City Council member and environmental attorney Macon Cowles, Lafayette community activist and trauma nurse Cliff Willmeng and Environment Colorado field associate Lindsey Wilson.

The 46-page report breaks down fracking and its impacts by listing estimates for each state in categories such as number of fracked wells, wastewater produced and water used.

According to the center, Colorado has seen 18,168 new fracking wells drilled since 2005, trailing only Texas, which added 33,753 during that period. Wastewater produced in 2012 was the only category in the report in which Colorado evaded landing in the top three: There were 2.2 billion gallons of wastewater produced in Colorado, behind the 3 billion in New Mexico, the 12 billion in North Dakota and the 260 billion in Texas.

And according to the report, when it comes to the amount of water used for fracking since 2005, Colorado’s 26 billion gallons trails only Pennsylvania and Texas.

“The amount of water used for fracking in Colorado was enough to meet the water needs of nearly 200,000 Denver households for a year,” the report says.

The center also estimates air pollution caused by oil and gas operations, listing several types of emissions: particulate matter, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sulphur dioxide and nitric oxide/nitrogen dioxide. Again, Colorado had the distinction of being in the top three in all five categories, along with North Dakota and Texas....

http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-11727-report-colorado-among-top-three-frack-wracked-states-in-nation.html