Upstate New York Landowner Shale Gas Activist
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Governor Cuomo, in 2014, said he’d revisit his fracking decision if the data later showed fracking was safe. There are now several such studies. It’s time.
Governor Cuomo, on December 17, 2014, following a second-term election victory, made his infamous fracking decision with a view to burnishing his radical credentials. Being Governor Cuomo, though, he wanted a way out later if needed. He promised, therefore, to revisit the fracking issue on behalf of New York should science come out in support of the safety of fracking for purposes of developing our state’s natural gas resources. Well, Governor Gumby, that time has come and is past due.
Let us not forget that crazy day in 2014 when Governor Cuomo’s new Commissioner of Health (the previous one having been too honest), Dr. Howard Zucker, gave his infamous “I wouldn’t want my children…” speech. You can watch it here:
Zucker, of course, has no wife or children and his sickening attempt to suggest he did shows how far he was willing to go to please his new boss.
The decision was a purely political one not based on science, but, rather on junk science and on propaganda bought and paid for by anti-gas activists. It was based on fake peer reviewed papers submitted and reviewed by the likes of anti-gas activist Sandra Steingraber. It was decided through lobbying by rich elites, Hollywood showboat activists, and a Governor Cuomo whose economic insight vision is something on the order of a blind bat. It was made by an administration that knew full well, as they made it, that other states allowing the use of fracking would not only grow, but also be called upon to supply natural gas to New York.
But that was then and now we have even more data showing fracking is safe, starting with the EPA study:
The study requested by Congress found that while fracking has not led to “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources,” there are potential dangers to some people’s drinking water.
Note that “potential dangers” referred to the possibilities of accidents such as spills and not the process of hydraulic fracturing itself. That just doesn’t happen and when the EPA talked about fracking it broadened the definition to include methane migration incidents that are not only associated with drilling rather than fracking but also happen in drilling geothermal and water wells. Remember the fire at Owego?
The EPA study was, in fact, offers major support for the conclusion fracking is safe, which is why anti-gas activists never cite it. Learn more by going here.
And, here’s what Townhall said about a recent peer reviewed Duke University study about groundwater impacts:
We have another study from Duke University that shows groundwater isn’t being polluted by fracking, despite the cries from the environmentalists that the process, which is used to tap into natural gas resources. It’s been the crux of their narrative against this sector of the economy that’s rapidly growing throughout the country. The study was three years in the making, peer reviewed, and was recently published in the European journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
There’s still more good news from the USGS:
A new U.S. Geological Survey study shows that unconventional oil and gas production in some areas of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas is not currently a significant source of methane or benzene to drinking water wells. These production areas include the Eagle Ford, Fayetteville, and Haynesville shale formations, which are some of the largest sources of natural gas in the country and have trillions of cubic feet of gas.
This is the first study of these areas to systematically determine the presence of benzene and methane in drinking water wells near unconventional oil and gas production areas in relation to the age of the groundwater. Methane and benzene, produced by many unconventional oil and gas wells, have various human health implications when present in high concentrations in drinking water.
The USGS has pioneered the ability to determine the age of groundwater. “Understanding the occurrence of methane and benzene in groundwater in the context of groundwater age is useful because it allows us to assess whether the hydrocarbons were from surface or subsurface sources. The ages indicate groundwater moves relatively slowly in these aquifers. Decades or longer may be needed to fully assess the effects of unconventional oil and gas production activities on the quality of groundwater used for drinking water,” said Peter McMahon, USGS hydrologist and study lead.
The USGS examined 116 domestic and public-supply wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas that were located as close as 360 feet to unconventional oil and gas wells. Methane was detected in 91 percent of the wells and, of those, 90 percent had methane concentrations lower than the threshold of 10 milligrams per liter. The Department of the Interior Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement proposed this threshold for the purposes of protection from explosive risk. Most of the methane detected in groundwater was from naturally occurring microbial sources at shallow depths rather than deep shale gas.
Still more recently, yet additional studies saying fracking does not harm drinking water have come from Penn State University and Yale University. The former looked at Bradford County and the latter concentrated its efforts on Susquehanna County, both right there on the New York State border. The Penn State researchers had this to say:
“Unlike previous studies, our findings show that groundwater quality might even be improving in an area heavily exploited for shale gas — northeastern Bradford,” said Tao Wen, a post-doctoral scholar in Penn State’s Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and lead author on the paper.
Energy In Depth summarized the Yale University study here and found this:
A new peer-reviewed study from Yale University concludes that fracking is not a major threat to groundwater. This is the third study in five weeks based on water analyses in the Appalachian Basin to reach such conclusions, and is the latest of more than two dozen studies with similar results across America’s major shale plays. As the Associated Pressreported Monday,
“The results suggest that, as a whole, groundwater supplies appear to have held their own against the energy industry’s exploitation of the Marcellus Shale, a rock layer more than a mile underground that holds the nation’s largest reservoir of natural gas.”
The Yale study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, analyzed eight monitoring wells located in a 25-km area in Susquehanna County, Pa., over a two-year period before, during and after seven shale gas wells were drilled, hydraulically fractured, and brought into production. The researchers concluded, “Collectively, our observations suggest that was an unlikely source of methane in our valley wells.” (emphasis added)
IPPA sums it nicely:
Is fracking a threat to public health?
No. In fact, there is ample evidence that increased natural gas use — made possible by fracking — has improved public health by dramatically improving air quality in recent years. This is not to say there are no risks, but the full body of research on this issue shows that those risks are manageable.
Several state departments of environmental protection have also installed air monitors at well sites and found that emissions during oil and natural gas development do not exceed public health thresholds. For example, the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment released a 2017 report that found a “low risk of harmful health effects from combined exposure to all substances during oil and gas development.” In contrast, many of the most headline-grabbing studies linking fracking to health issues have been plagued by questionable methodologies and contradictory results. Visit EIDHealth.org for more information.
Does fracking threaten groundwater?
No. And, you don’t have to take our word for it. No fewer than two dozen scientific studies have concluded that fracking does not pose a major threat to groundwater. Most notably, a landmark 2016 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study concluded that, “ydraulic fracturing operations are unlikely to generate sufficient pressure to drive fluids into shallow drinking water zones.” The EPA reached this conclusion even after expanding the definition of fracking to include a wide range of other oilfield activities, demonstrating the safety of the entire development process.
It was easy finding university and other governmental studies documenting the safety of fracking, but in the process of searching I came across many supposed studies from anti-gas organizations that, open a superficial basis, read impressively until I looked at the sources and the reviewers. They tend to all be the same people and quote and review each other.
One must understand the difference between activism and science to decipher the difference between the two. I recall, for instance, listening to an anti-gas activist tell Fenton Town Board members here in New York that he was a scientist in the study of natural gas when in fact he was just an another misinformed member of the fractivist movement who collected talking points but was so full of energy that if were electricity, he could power the world. Call it anti-energy. Unfortunately, the voices of such are the only ones Governor Cuomo wanted to hear in 2014. But, that was then, and now the evidence is overwhelming that Governor Cuomo was wrong, Zucker was suckered and Joe Martens was simply a short-term assignment to implement the will of the NRDC.
Time’s up, Governor Cuomo. What are you going to do? When will real science and reason be allowed prevail over your politics?
The post Times Up, Governor Cuomo: You Said You’d Revisit Fracking After Studies appeared first on Natural Gas Now.
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