Issue Briefs

The potential for widespread hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” threatens New York’s abundance of farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and locally grown produce and food products. Fracking is a process that the oil and gas industry uses to extract natural gas and oil from shale rock formations buried deep within the Earth. It requires large quantities of water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals, which are injected underground at high pressure to crack dense rock and release oil and gas.

Despite the alarming water crisis the world is facing, private interests are polluting, exploiting and selling water — a resource essential for all life. A 2009 publication, sponsored by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and several for-profit multinational companies, predicted that by 2030 global freshwater demand would exceed available supplies by 40 percent. In addition to the increasing pollution and overuse of the available freshwater supply, climate change will exacerbate water shortages worldwide. In fact, a UN-Water report said, “…climate change is expected to account for about 20 percent of the global increase in water scarcity.”

New drilling and fracking techniques have made it possible to extract oil and natural gas from shale and other dense rock formations that were previously inaccessible. While such drilling and fracking has been a boon for the oil and gas industry in the United States, it has been a nightmare for Americans exposed to the pollution that accompanies shale development. The expansion of modern drilling and fracking across the country has caused widespread environmental and public health problems and created serious, long- term risks to underground water resources, all of which affect farming and our food.

From the Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles County, the oil and gas industry has been fracking in California without clear regulatory oversight for many years. Now, the next generation of drilling and fracking involving much more fluid and chemicals injected at much higher pressure, and creating much more waste, pollution and risk — has arrived on the West Coast.

Gas drillers use a water-intensive process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract natural gas from shale. The process injects millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, under high pressure to crack the rock formation to release natural gas. Private water players can make money on both ends by selling water to drillers and then treating the wastewater.

The oil and gas industry is aggressively promoting the expansion of shale gas drilling in the United States. Over the past decade, oil and gas companies have developed new fracking technologies to extract gas from shale, a previously unprofitable source, leading to a resource extraction rush referred to as the “natural gas revolution.” The Marcellus Shale is projected to become the largest source of gas produced in the country and has been a focal point of the industry. However, shale gas drilling blowouts and explosions, drinking water contamination, wastewater and drilling fluid spills and leaks, and local air pollution have caused environmental problems and led to growing public resistance to the practice across the country. In response, the oil and gas industry has promoted the supposed economic benefits and job creation potential of shale gas drilling for communities. Economic studies by industry, industry-funded academics and ideological think tanks claim that shale gas development will generate enormous economic benefits. One study claims that developing the Marcellus Shale alone could create more than a quarter of a million jobs in the coming decade.

Today, the oil and gas industry is loudly promoting natural gas production as a means of increasing American energy independence and national energy security. Industry representatives have specifically used this argument to lobby against federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the harmful technology that drillers hope to use to increase production by tapping into America’s shale rock formations.