COFFMAN: THE REAL COST OF HYDROFRACKING

[Oscar]

THE REAL COST OF HYDROFRACKING

by Steve Coffman

Presentation given at the Heights Theater in Elmira Heights, NY on April 3, 2010. Amended May 1, 2010.

Beyond the environmental and economic costs, there is another kind of cost that is less easy to quantify, yet nonetheless real. I’m talking about the humanities---the human costs of hydrofracking in terms of history, esthetics, ethics, community identity and self-determination---all of those connections between what an area has been, its values and history and aspirations, what it is now, and what it hopes to become.

Such things are never singular or static, of course---there are always competing and changing ideas and values---but I would contend that, in a healthy, viable community, those changes occur slowly and deliberately, are informed by an area’s past, and must involve much public input and debate.

When we look at very fast community changes that occur without regard to such rooted values and considered preparations, we generally see upheaval and significant loss of local identity. Sometimes these dramatic changes happen as a result of a war or natural disaster. Recently, New Orleans, Haiti, Baghdad come to mind. Closer to home, the 1972 Elmira flood, from which that city is still recovering.

Equally disruptive to a community can be a great boom or windfall.

Think of gold, oil, diamonds. The Gold Rush in the Black Hills, Diamond mines in Congo, Oil in Nigeria, Ecuador, Iraq---in human and cultural terms, a similar upheaval has occurred: environment degradation, disregard for local people and historical values---accompanied by great displacement, discord, public corruption and often violent conflict.

When it comes to the prospect of the Marcellus Shale Gas Boom, the main question we need to ask is: What is the value that we as a region stand to gain versus the value of what we are likely to lose?

For the Finger Lakes, what are the unpriceable essentials of our history and identity that might be depreciated in exchange for the tens of thousands of forecasted hydrofracked gas wells in our region?

1. The Water We’re not called the “Finger Lakes Region” without good reason. Our abundant water is not only inseparable from our region’s beauty, agriculture and tourism, but of inestimable value to our wildlife and to the hundreds of thousands of people who depend of the lakes for drinking water.

In fact, our Finger Lakes contain the largest reservoir of fresh water wholly within the United States (the Great Lakes being shared with Canada).

Considering the skirmishes and wars that are already being fought over fresh water, what will that be worth to future generations?

2. Agriculture For almost 200 years, the most important economic asset of our region has been---and still is---agriculture. 100 years ago, our region was known as the “berry capital of the world.” In 2009, it ranked 2nd nationally in apple production, 3rd in dairy products, 3rd in grapes, 3rd in wine, and it’s one of the nation’s fastest growing areas of organic agriculture, as well.

A 2001 Agricultural Economic Development Plan prepared by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Broome County Department of Planning put it this way:

Income from agriculture goes further than other sectors in helping the economy. Agriculture produces much higher economic multipliers than any other sector of the Broome County economy. . . . Farms contribute to. . . rural character and protect open spaces essential to the quality of life for both permanent and seasonal residents. Any number of surveys of rural residents and second-home dwellers indicate the primary reasons people live in such areas have to do with their appreciation of the natural resources and open spaces offered.

3. Tourism Hand in hand with the plentiful water and agriculture, tourism has long been an essential characteristic of our region. From steamboats on the lakes and spas in the 19th Century, from Watkins Glen, Corning and Hammondsport in the early 20th C. to the Wine Trail in the 21st. Clearly, in last decade or so, the influx of Mennonites has also augmented the region’s agriculture and tourism with their prolific farms, flowers, crafts and unique charm.

In 2009, Sherman Travel ranked the Finger Lakes as “the #1 Lakeside Resort Destination in the World” --- not Lake Tahoe, Lake Lucerne, Lake Como or Lake Louise, but our Finger Lakes!

4. Education and Progressive Thought

While our clean water, agriculture and tourism may occasionally be at odds, they are also symbiotic. These values have evolved in harmony to nurture a healthy and vibrant continuity in our region.

This harmony has also stemmed from our region’s emphasis on quality education, progressive social history and religious tolerance.

In 1865, Ezra Cornell wrote: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." And the whole Finger Lakes Region has certainly followed his lead.

Compare the quality of our higher education to any similar region in the country.

Universities: Cornell, Rochester, Syracuse, the heart of the SUNY system at Geneseo, Binghamton, Alfred, Brockport, Cortland and Oneonta. Small private colleges: Colgate, Hamilton, Hobart/ William Smith, Ithaca, Elmira, Keuka, Wells, LeMoyne, St. John Fisher, Nazareth, RIT, Eastman School of Music. Augmented by the region’s seven excellent Community Colleges.

These institutions are of inestimable wealth that has also been closely aligned with our region’s equally-amazing history of progressive and independent thinkers.

From women’s rights leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Elizabeth Blackwell (America’s first woman doctor), to abolitionists and leaders of the underground railroad like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, to great writers and progressive orators like Robert Ingersoll and Mark Twain.

This tradition of education and progressive thought in the humanities is as much a part of the richness of our region as our precious lakes.

What are these values worth compared to millions of cubic feet of gas? I couldn’t begin to say.

Nor do I know how to figure the worth of the forests and wildlife in our region, whether it’s wildlife for hunting and fishing or just as food for the soul. How would one put a price on it? Per fish? Per fox? Per great blue heron? I don’t know.

Any more than I could put a price on clean air or starry nights. But just because I can’t quantify the worth of a starry night doesn’t make it worthless.

Last Tuesday (3/29/10), I picked up a copy of the Elmira STAR-GAZETTE.

Its main headline said: COUNTY EXEC OUTLINES ALTERED LANDFILL PACT, which was about the importation of fracking waste from Pennsylvania to be dumped into the Chemung County Landfill.

Right under that, the sub-headline read: OPENING DAY FOR TROUT FISHING IS THURSDAY --- CATHARINE CREEK REMAINS A LURE

Talk about an unsettling juxtaposition!

No, we won’t be able to have it both ways. Water and agriculture, wine and tourism, education and progressive thought all blend to make an enviable and delightful region. But, like oil and water, fracking waste and trout do not mix.

A year ago, our Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes sent a FOIL request to DEC asking for a list of toxic chemicals that DEC had on record associated with any planned use of fracking fluid additives in our five-county region. Because there had been much talk that such information was proprietary, we did not have high expectations, yet, to our surprise, we received a list of 48 hazardous products along with the Material Safety Data Sheet for each.

When I analyzed this information, I discovered that 34 of these products contained highly-hazardous chemicals. And of those, 21 were known to be toxic to aquatic environments (and 11 others had yet to be tested for environmental toxicity at all).

Hardly great news for the trout. Here is a sampling:

HAI-OS ACID INHIBITOR --- Precautions: Inhalation may cause chemical pneumonia, depress central nervous system. Prolonged exposure may damage eyes, blood, liver, kidneys, spleen. Acute fish toxicity, may cause long-term adverse effects in aquatic environment.

BE-6 --- May cause serious eye damage, may be harmful to skin or if ingested. Possible carcinogen. Very toxic to aquatic organisms. Avoid release to environment.

FDP-S798 --- Avoid contact with water, organic matter, all flammables. Acute fish toxicity. Prevent from entering sewers, waterways or low areas.

BORATE CROSSLINKER J532 --- Mutagenic effect observed in insect studies. Reproductive toxicity on laboratory animals. May impair fertility. May cause harm to the unborn child. Chronic exposure may cause reproductive disorders and teratogenic effects.

ALDACIDE G --- May cause chemical pneumonia. May be highly toxic to aquatic life.

MULTIFUNCTIONAL SURFACTANT F105 --- Can depress central nervous system. Toxic to aquatic organisms.

CORROSION INHIBITOR A26 --- Probable human carcinogen. Toxic to aquatic organisms.

How compatible will these products be with trout? Or perch? Or us?

The industry likes to point out that these additives only make up one-half of one percent of the fracking fluid, and that many of these chemicals are included in everyday products like antifreeze and bathroom cleanser.

But consider that Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale wells are averaging 5.5 million gals. of fracking fluid; thus, “only one-half of one percent” amounts to 27,500 gals. of such hazardous chemicals per well.

And if, as drilling expert Tony Ingraffea estimates, it is likely that as many as 40,000 such wells will be drilled in our seven counties of Western NY, that amount would jump to 1.1 billion gals. of noxious chemicals added to our environment.

What would that mean for our region’s aquatic life? For the 500,000 people who currently depend on the Finger Lakes for their drinking water? For our region’s reputation as a clean, welcoming environment?

Would you want to buy milk and apples for your family that came from farms surrounded by fracking fluid ponds and diesel-spewing well pads?

If you were a tourist, would you want to drive on torn up roads behind endless lines of fracking trucks? Or through noisy industrial zones one after another? Does that sound like a world class tourist destination to you?

If you were a doctor or professor or other professional, would such a place be #1 on your list of desirable places for you to settle and raise a family?

If you wanted to build you retirement dream home, wouldn’t you want to be sure of the safety of your drinking water and the secure value of your investment?

If you wanted to start a winery or an organic farm, wouldn’t you want to dig in somewhere where the local populace and powers-that-be had a vision more compatible with your own?

In short, we can strive to remain a first class area for all these values that we, as a region, have traditionally cherished. Or we can be a first class producer of natural gas.

But we cannot be both.

To know this, we can look to Cleburne or DISH Texas, Sublette County Wyoming or Garfield County Colorado. We can look to the Louisiana coast that used to call itself “Fisherman’s Paradise” and is now God’s own junkyard for the gas and oil industry, not a fishing boat or tourist in sight. We can look across our southern border to Pennsylvania and wonder why they are suddenly so desperate to send their fracking waste to us.

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Footnotes to the above paragraph:

1. Cleburne, Texas is in the Barnett Shale -- A decade ago, prior to drilling, Cleburne was a lovely rolling cow town of 26,000 residents. Five years later, it had added 95,000 jobs and had become an industrial community, its infrastructure in chaos, its air the same polluted quality as Dallas/Fort Worth. (A recent illumination of this transformation: On June 6, 2010, a massive gasline explosion near Cleburne killed one worked and badly burned seven others.)

2. DISH, Texas is a tiny burg in the Barnett that became a center for multiple compressor stations and eleven different criss-crossing pipelines. When DISH's mayor, Calvin Tillman complained that the air was making people sick, the industry and Texas regulators claimed he was wrong.

DISH raised money to fund an independent study by Wolf Eagle Environmental. Wilma Subra, a MacAuthur (Genius) Award winning chemist, sampled the ambient air in DISH at seven locations on August 17 to 18, 2009. In it’s conclusion, Wolf Eagle states: “Air analysis in the Town of DISH confirmed the presence in high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in ambient air near and/or on residential properties.’ The report further indicated that many of the compounds in the air exceeded the Short-term and Long-term Effects Screening Levels (ESLs) according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) regulations.

Benzene, a known human cancer causing agent, was detected at all 7 sample locations, three exceeding TCEQ ECLs.

Subsequently, Calvin Tillman has been ignored by Texas authorities and hounded by the gas industry as a self-agrandizing malcontent.

3. The water woes of Garfiled County, Colorado are well documented by Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica (2/22/09). To see the full mess there and in Pavillion, Wyoming, I recommend the documentaries: Split Estate by Bull Frog Films, and Gasland by Josh Fox.

4. The reference to Lousiana's coast was written before BP's destruction of Louisiana's eastern coast. Originally, this only referred to the western Louisiana coast from New Orleans to Port Arthur, Texas.

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Or---we can just look around our Finger Lakes Region and think about what it’s really worth to us and what losing its pristine beauty would really mean. To me that’s the real cost/benefit analysis of hydrofracking.

Steve Coffman
Dundee, New York
Email: stovecoffman@frontiernet.net