By Anna Witowska

As if he were employing the pop psychology Mars-versus-Venus framework on the issue, Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser called for a less “emotional” response to fracking in Europe. He stated that the European discussion on shale gas exploration is not factual but fuelled by emotions. So, can we thus infer that Mars — embodied by oil and gas corporations — must be focused on profits and is ready to drill? No matter who gets hurt in the process?

European opponents of fracking, including Food & Water Europe, are somewhat surprised by such a facile characterization as they have always based their case against fracking on facts— such as the water intensity of fracking operations. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 70 to 140 billion gallons of water are pumped into 35 thousand of fracking wells annually. What the gas industry is not admitting is that hydraulic fracturing uses water to an extent that ought to strike fear in countries that are counting on a shale gas boom, particularly as water becomes an increasingly scarce resource. Well contamination is also an issue to be considered. In January 2012, a Calgary-based company injected fluids at such a high pressure into a 1,800-metre-deep oil formation that they travelled more than 1.4 kilometres underground and ruptured an oil well near Innisfail, Alberta. There are also the documented facts of roads being destroyed through heavy machinery use and real estate prices dropping to ridiculous levels.  Read the full article…

See Our Video "The Washington Burger" and Tell Obama to Protect Our Food Safety

“I will not back down from … making sure that our food is safe and our water is clean.”

This quote from President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week expresses the very reason Food & Water Watch exists. It’s great to hear that the President supports our mission in such forceful terms. But when it comes to putting those words into action, he has room for improvement. Food inspection independent of corporate control is under attack by this administration, and frankenfoods are green-lighted. Food & Water Watch pushes back on these issues and we have had successes against a food industry that lobbies for profits over food safety. Public pressure on legislators and the administration is making a difference and we can turn the tide against these dangerous practices that the public does not want.

Read the full article…

By Emily Wurth

As I watched President Obama’s State of the Union address this week, I thought he had some good ideas about how to address some of our country’s serious problems, but I think he really got it wrong on energy policy.

In his speech, President Obama lauded natural gas from shale as a key part of his clean energy plan, but the truth is there is nothing clean about it. Fracking shale for natural gas is an intensive extractive process that has polluted the water and air of communities across the country.

Unfortunately, the energy portion of President Obama’s speech sounded like it could have been written by the oil and gas industry. He cited the industry’s deceptive claims and grossly inflated the jobs numbers, rather than actual labor statistics. President Obama needs to hear the truth about shale gas. Read the full article…

By Rich Bindell

When we last checked in with our friends in Dimock, Pennsylvania, some unlikely heroes were delivering a truck full of drinking water. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) had determined that Cabot Oil and Gas was no longer responsible to provide water to families affected by contamination. In so doing, PA DEP seemed to send the message that they were protecting Cabot more than the environment or local citizens. Thankfully, the EPA stepped in to investigate, and they determined that the well water of four of the eleven families contained dangerous contaminants. Now the EPA is in the water delivery business. Welcome to Frackville.

The fact that the EPA felt obligated to provide drinking water to four Dimock families was a victory for residents who have been without safe drinking water since November 30, 2011. Since that time, the families have relied upon environmental organizations and sympathetic mayors to provide them with safe water for drinking, bathing and other household uses. A federal agency made the right call, even if the state agency in pro-fracking Pennsylvania couldn’t take responsibility for the contamination.

While Cabot Oil and Gas continues to deny that their operations are the cause of the contamination, the facts might reveal a different story in due time. Cabot has been drilling in Dimock, near to the victim’s properties, and while the contaminants found in their water are certainly not natural to the area, they are often associated with fracking.

And this certainly isn’t limited to Dimock. Some residents in Butler, Pennsylvania could be next on the EPA’s delivery route. If fracking is allowed to continue, will the EPA become a bottled water delivery service?

If the EPA hadn’t stepped in and taken the time to conduct a proper investigation, this story could have ended differently. Meanwhile, every week reveals new information about fracking’s negative impacts. We’re learning the hard way. If we had put research and study before rapid industrial expansion, fracking might not be the cause of so many harmful events.

By Hugh MacMillan

Today, January 11, is the final day that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is accepting comments for their proposed plan that would open up large parts of New York to fracking. The agency reports receiving more than 20,000 comments, more than any issue in recent memory. As we prepare to submit our long technical comments, we realize that an important point has been missing from this debate: the DEC itself had the opportunity to choose the “no action alternative,” essentially banning fracking in New York state.

When citizens, communities, nonprofit organizations and environmental groups asked the DEC to protect the health and environment of the state by banning fracking, we were actually asking them to take an action well within their authority—accepting, rather than rejecting, the so-called “no action alternative.” But politics fast-tracked the science needed to create an accurate environmental impact statement. Given time, a sound scientific assessment would likely determine that an outright ban—the no action alternative—is the only prudent recommendation.

Instead, the DEC’s “political” study makes the unsupported claim that the oil and gas industry would provide the state with “substantial economic and environmental benefits.” Effectively, the DEC argues that the benefits of shale gas development in New York would outweigh the risks or costs.

In our comments, we explain why the DEC’s rejection of this “no action alternative” is based on a flawed assessment of the potential benefits, costs and risks of intensive shale gas development.

The socioeconomic impact analysis, which lays out the DEC’s claims of substantial economic benefits—including job projections—contains a number of flaws that lead to a gross overestimation of the job-producing potential of this industry. The job projections were made by an outside consulting firm and adopted by the DEC.

But this analysis fails to account for the significant public costs, including the impacts on roads, public health and social services. It also fails to consider potential economic losses that would be suffered by New York’s tourism and agriculture, as well as its value-added industries.

The report also dismisses the inherent risks that shale gas development poses to vital freshwater resources, as recently acknowledged by one of DEC’s own employees.

The DEC’s environmental impact study inaccurately claims potential benefits, inadequately accounts for potential public costs, and imprudently dismisses inherent risks. Food & Water Watch maintains that the DEC should go with the no-action alternative and that shale gas development should be banned in the State of New York. Click here to read our full comments.

By Rich Bindell

Remember that east coast earthquake last August? We speculated half-kiddingly about the possibility that fracking could have been the cause. We didn’t really think that was the case last August, but we certainly wondered if it would be possible for fracking to cause such seismic activity. We’re taking that speculation much more seriously after two earthquakes hit Youngstown, Ohio over the holidays, which scientists determined were caused by the underground disposal of fracking wastewater.

With the Ohio quakes following on the heels of news announcing that the EPA linked fracking to groundwater contamination in Wyoming, you’d have to dig deeper than the water table to find even a tidbit of good news about drilling for natural gas.

Earthquakes are not common in Youngstown, yet they experienced two medium-sized earthquakes in December and nine small ones between March and November of 2011. Scientists believe that a fracking wastewater disposal well, drilled there in December 2010, is to blame for all eleven quakes. The well is owned by D&L Energy and operated in part by Northstar Disposal Services.

Authorities in Ohio have closed down the D&L well and have even halted four other wastewater-injection wells from opening until further notice. The unsettling seismic activity was enough to convince Youngstown Mayor Charles P. Sammarone to take out an earthquake insurance policy for his home. Bloomberg’s Mark Niquette reports that Sammarone also called for City Council to support a moratorium on “so-called fracking and injection-well activity.”

After drilling for natural gas via hydraulic fracturing, gas companies in Pennsylvania truck the millions of gallons of fracking wastewater—in most cases containing undisclosed amounts of hazardous chemicals—to Ohio, where it is injected deep underground for disposal. This method is utilized because water treatment facilities aren’t capable of safely treating fracking wastewater. The disposal of fracking wastewater via underground injection has also been linked to earthquakes in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

It seems that big problems from fracking continue to haunt communities throughout shale country. The horse doesn’t usually like to push the cart.

By Kate Fried

Time Magazine recently recognized Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Ingraffea and Robert Howarth, who each significantly contributed to the anti-fracking movement as “people who mattered” in 2011. As the year draws to a close, we’re making our own list and checking it twice to take stock of those who helped make some of this year’s victories in the fight against fracking possible. While many heroes emerged, there are a few grinches who deserve a big lump of coal for their efforts to defend and promote this destructive and risky means of extracting gas from deep below the earth’s surface. Read on to see who has been naughty and who has been nice.

T. Boone Pickens


In 2011, the oil tycoon turned natural gas evangelist continued his call to develop U.S. shale resources, taking his show to the National Press Club to promote his Pickens Plan to get U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for billions in government subsidies for vehicles that run on natural gas. The National Press Club event was the stage for Pickens’ stunning display of hubris when he trivialized the concerns of New Yorkers worried about the environmental and public health effects of fracking, saying in effect, that all they really need is a “leader” to set them straight. This coming from a man who amassed his fortune from pillaging our nation’s water and mineral resources, and who forked over a hefty chunk of cash to help finance the notorious 2004 Swiftboat smear campaign against then-presidential contender Sen. John Kerry.

Read the full article…

(click here to view)

Rob Rogers Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Dec 5, 2011 EditorialCartoonists.com

As 2011 comes to a close and we head into the holiday season with fracking as one of the most controversial topics of the year, we thought this cartoon by Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette would ease the tension with a little laugh. Meanwhile, we continue to amp up our campaign against fracking to prepare for a tumultuous 2012. Just remember, oil and gas industry… he’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/fracking/fracking-action-center/

By Rich Bindell

The standard gas industry position about the potential for fracking fluid to contaminate groundwater is that it’s never happened and it never will. The EPA announcement that hydraulic fracturing likely played a role in drinking water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, demonstrates that the industry’s credibility with the public, and even the EPA, is diminishing.

The EPA released a portion of the draft report to Greenwire yesterday that “indicates groundwater in the aquifer contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices including hydraulic fracturing.” Testing in the EPA’s monitoring wells in Pavillion revealed high levels of methane, benzene and other chemicals commonly used in fracking.

While the EPA finding is part of a draft report that has not yet been peer reviewed, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “It is possible that fracking in one bearing zone may have impacted nearby areas that may contain some groundwater.” Read the full article…

By Rich Bindell

A group of citizens with a little celebrity power from New York State are doing something that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation failed to do: they will provide eleven families of Dimock, PA, with clean drinking water. The group is responding to a situation that has left these residents without access to clean water after their normal supply was contaminated with toxic chemicals, gas and radioactive material—all associated with fracking. Celebrities and advocates are saving the day. Welcome to Frackville.

After the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) attributed responsibility for the contamination to Cabot, the agency demanded that the gas company provide deliveries of water to those affected. This has been the arrangement for the past three years. Unfortunately, as of November 30, Cabot is no longer required provide water to Dimock residents, after they struck a sneaky deal with PA DEP.

So, what are Dimock families supposed to do if a gas company pollutes their drinking water and then they are abandoned by the state, including the very department that’s supposed to be “protecting” the environment? Read the full article…