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Editorial: Frack Is a Dirty Word |
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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 18 December 2009 |
 Wasn't 'frack' a curse word in the old, campy 'Battlestar Galactica' television series? It has certainly become one in Tompkins County. Of course it refers to the hydrofracking process of drilling natural gas, and it involved pumping a liquid into the ground to create new fractures or expand old ones under ground. Nobody uttered that word three years ago when oil companies came to Lansing to get exploration contracts signed. It seemed like a surprise when opposition forces took on such a strong voice this year.
When the process was described three years ago it sounded like a long tube was going straight down, and then would move horizontally through the circumference of the area it was capable of drilling. To me it sounded like a global colonoscopy, unpleasant, but not inherently harmful. But that is not what is being discussed today.
The liquids pumped into the ground in the hydrofracking process include toxic chemicals. Not all of them are pumped back out. In fact about half stays in the ground, while the rest is brought back to the surface where the natural gas is extracted from it.
Issues worrying local residents include the possible contamination of well water and other groundwater resources, who bears cost of monitoring and cleaning up and processing the expended fluid, the visual and noise impact on a landscape that the local economy depends on for tourism among other things, and industrial development and air quality.
The other side of the coin is landowners rights to sell their land use in the hopes of making some cash if natural gas is actually extracted. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the cost to the other taxpayers, the environment, and the economy are not damaged.
The real problem is that the State has not yet taken strong enough measures to regulate hydrofracking, and reasonable fears have not been adequately addressed. If it's going to happen here it needs to happen safely, and the companies have to be up-front about what chemicals they are injecting into our earth, especially if they want local waste treatment plants to deal with the expended liquids. The State announced that local health departments will be in charge of monitoring, but who will pay for the manpower, training, and equipment needed to do that?
A number of Lansing residents have told me they reconsidered when contract-renewal time came, and they won't be signing again. That seems prudent to me. One of those questions is how much liability will landowners have if something does go wrong? But the real question is will New York get serious about dealing with the issues local residents will have to live with from now to forever, or will hydrofracking be another 'unfunded mandate' that locals are saddled with?
Until the hard questions are answered I don't think anyone should be signing contracts. At the moment those answers are too scarce. That's why 'frack' has become a dirty word.
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