Earthbytes

No frickin' with frackin' in Tennessee!

Are you ready for hydrofracking in your community? If a gas developer with a lease in hand knocks on your door, do you know the risks and know your rights?

A new grassroots hero in Appalachia named Josh Fox helps fellow citizens understand some of these issues in his documentary, Gasland:

 

The Tennessee Clean Water Network will host a free screening of this award-winning documentary this coming Monday, February 21st, in Knoxville. For more information go to the Facebook event page for the Gasland screening, or click on the event link in the sidebar.

Over the next few months I will be posting article links as well as more detailed blog posts about oil and gas development in Tennessee and other states. In a future post, I'll tell you about a public hearing in Knoxville on Tuesday, February 22nd, and other events in Tennessee where you can learn more, discuss the issues, or voice your concerns and opinions.

Here are some links with information on issues associated with gas and oil well drilling -- and the practice of hydrofracking -- that have citizens across the United States and Canada so concerned:

Sign a petition to ask the state of Tennessee to protect citizens, communities and watersheds from negative impacts of oil and gas well drilling.

Sierra Club's Natural Gas Reform page.

Tennessee Clean Water Network's hydrofracking page.

State of Tennessee Oil and Gas Well Permitting page.

Earthworks Oil and Gas Accountability Project page.

EPA's hydrofracking page.

USGS page on oil and gas resources.

Riverkeeper's industrial gas drilling page.

ProPublica's home page for the series Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling's Environmental Threat.

Gasland: A film by Josh Fox -- action page and information about the documentary.

 

Cumberland Plateau is one of SELC's top 10 endangered places for 2011

The Southern Environmental Law Center has released its list of the Top 10 Endangered Places for 2011. Included is the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, known for its world class biodiversity and number of rare species and at risk for mountaintop removal mining. Also listed is the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, at risk for potential gas well drilling with hydrofracking methods that threaten water supplies.

 

 

SURVEY: DRINKING WATER POLLUTION CONCERNS FUELING AWARENESS AMONG AMERICANS OF 'FRACKING' USED TO EXTRACT NATURAL GAS

Interesting surveys from the Civil Society Institute sampled more than 1,000 adults last month to see what folks are thinking about issues related to hydrofracking:

Do Americans think natural gas is as "clean" as it is touted as being by the energy industry? Nearly half of Americans (45 percent) are already very or somewhat aware of the controversy about hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") drilling used to tap cheap natural gas supplies in the U.S., according to a new Infogroup/Opinion Research Corporation (Infogroup/ORC) survey conducted for the nonprofit Civil Society Institute (CSI). Among Americans who already are aware of "fracking," more than two out of three (69 percent) are concerned about the drilling technique's possible threat to clean drinking water.

The U.S. fracking survey conducted by CSI – the first national poll to gauge the attitudes of Americans on the subject – was released today along with two separate survey reports for more than 800 New York State/New York City residents and over 400 Pennsylvanians. The national and two state-specific reports are available at http://www.CivilSocietyInstitute.org.

You can also view the survey report with a summary as well as detailed findings, questions and responses (pdf, 394KB).

EPA action on Texas driller escalates fight over state regulation

An EPA official's decision to step over state regulators and take action against a Texas gas driller is likely to turn up the heat on a long-simmering debate about whether states protect their residents against the dangers of drilling.

Dallas-based EPA Regional Director Al Armendariz issued an emergency order yesterday against Range Resources Corp., charging that its drilling in the Barnett Shale contaminated at least two water wells with methane and benzene. The order gave Range 48 hours to provide clean drinking water to affected residents and begin taking steps to resolve the problem.

via www.waterworld.com

Here's the link for the original article at Greenwire, New York Times.

Actor Lands on Terror List for Screening Film Against Fracking | AlterNet

Hydrofracking and bogus homeland security tactics: mindless, destructive, unregulated and maybe coming to a watershed near you...

The star of Zodiac and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has been a vocal opponent of the drilling method, which involves cracking rocks through hydraulic pressure underground to release the fossil fuels below–often into groundwater.

via www.alternet.org

Have you seen Gasland yet?

 

Pennsylvania Gas Drillers Dumping Radioactive Waste in New York | AlterNet

Many of us who've only had to deal with the coal-industrial complex are gearing up for the next assaults of fossil fuel-ishness as coal falls from favor and the gas-fracking-industrial complex explodes into power. Here's an excerpt from a troubling article by Peter Mantius that explores gas drilling impacts that threaten communities well beyond the boundaries of individual wells in the Marcellus shale:

Trucks hauling rock cuttings from drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania regularly cross the New York State border these days to dump in the Chemung County Landfill seven miles east of Elmira.

The Marcellus formation is characterized by unusually high readings of naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM, so most of the cuttings are probably radioactive. The Chemung Landfill, a former gravel pit, has never been licensed to handle low-level radioactive waste.

via www.alternet.org

Pact With the Devil: A New Fossil Fuel Energy Boom May Be Our Ultimate Undoing | | AlterNet

The consequence of failure in the '70's to make the switch away from fossil fuels is about to deliver a sucker punch. Definitely a must read:

The boom is producing fresh scars on the land and new threats to scarce water supplies. Government studies show that exploiting unconventional fossil-fuel reserves generates more C02 emissions than drilling for conventional oil and gas and uses three to five times more water. “It’s a pact with the devil,” says Randy Udall, a consulting energy analyst from Colorado. “The tar sands and shale oil and shale gas require a lot of water. It sets up a collision course for the West.”

via www.alternet.org

The Whole Fracking Enchilada | Sandra Steingraber | Orion Magazine

Great article by Sandra Steingraber attempts to rank hydrofracking on the list of really bad ideas for people and nature:

I HAVE COME to believe that extracting natural gas from shale using the newish technique called hydrofracking is the environmental issue of our time. And I think you should, too.

via www.orionmagazine.org

Read the whole article at Orion here.

The Grass and the Greens: What? The Frack?

For the past few years I have been watching -- with a mix of feelings, I might add -- what seems almost like a civil war threatening to break out in an unmowed, wild and weedy edge of a field between grassroots environmental justice activists ("the Grass") and larger national environmental groups ("the Greens").

I've started doing some thinking about this, researching it and starting to outline some longer posts that I plan to put up on this blog, and a new one -- related to my research -- Earth and Psyche. But as I'm working on this, I'm beginning to see examples of this edge coming more into expression.

In the past week or two it has occurred to me to look at how these dynamics may be playing out closer to home here in Tennessee -- just a theory right now, just experimenting in the mind-heart realms right now to see how such a view might hold up (or fall apart). Yesterday, discussing some of this more generally at a meeting with fellow activists, I got a few more pieces of evidence that keep me interested in pursuing these ideas further.

I think that's why my brain spun around a little bit today when I found a link to the article excerpted below. It's a good article, I think, and worth putting up here while I continue heuristic exploration of my research questions. To see the whole thing, click here or use the link below the excerpt.

In my opinion, we (the Grass and the Greens) need to find a way to explore some of the underlying histories of ourselves and our groups, as well as unconscious dynamics at work that many still refuse to acknowledge, and then get in a room together and try to decide how we're going unite rather than being divided and conquered.

Failure to do so would be a most unfortunate repetition of an ancient pattern that no longer serves humankind or the Earth and all of its sentient beings.

In Counterpunch -- Robert Jereski: A Review of 'Gasland': Banning Methane Mining

The movement for a ban on horizontal hydrofracking in New York State is one of the largest (if not the largest) campaign in that state responding to the threat of this relatively new fossil fuel extraction method. Yet, in his film Gasland, which enjoys its theatrical premiere in New York City on September 15th, Josh Fox chronicles his cross-country odyssey searching for answers about the impacts of gas drilling, while failing to support or even refer to the existence of this or any other campaign to ban gas drilling. Which brings us to a provocative question this review of the film will touch on: why are Josh Fox and his film becoming famous? To begin to address this question, we need to explore how people came to learn about the threat of horizontal hydrofracking to their way of life, the environment and public helath and to recognize the various responses to that threat by communities directly threatened, professional environmentalists, politicians, and finally the artist.

via www.counterpunch.org