Drilling Mora County

Oil’s new world order

2012-01-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Daniel Yergin
October 28, 2011

For more than five decades, the world’s oil map has centered on the Middle East. No matter what new energy resources were discovered and developed elsewhere, virtually all forecasts indicated that U.S. reliance on Mideast oil supplies was destined to grow. This seemingly irreversible reality has shaped not only U.S. energy policy and economic policy, but also geopolitics and the entire global economy.

But today, what appeared irreversible is being reversed. The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere. The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas, past a major new discovery off the coast of French Guyana to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil....continued....

Test-case lawsuit on N.Y. town's drilling ban heads to court

2012-01-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
"The People have a right to use the government closest to us –our municipalities – because, until the state and federal governments cease and desist from licensing and permitting state chartered corporations to deprive our unalienable rights in communities across America, we are on our own.

The People have unalienable rights. The state has no authority to issue permits to state chartered corporations that make it legal for them to violate the rights of the people.

This idea that people have rights and that the state has no authority to license violation of those rights, is the core principle, the underlying premise, for mounting a new civil rights movement for the legal recognition and protection of community rights.

•• Actions to adopt a Community Rights Protective Water Rights Ordinance that bans natural gas drilling-fracking, by the City of Pittsburgh City Council: "Members of the city council recognized that when the state permits the drilling to occur, the state isn’t going to provide municipalities with the authority to prevent it. Accordingly, the council decided to create is own local structure of law, which directly challenges the authority of both the state – and the natural gas corporations empowered by the state – to drill within the city."
Ben Price, CELDF

Colin Sullivan
November 3, 2011

Attorneys in an upstate New York town revealed their legal strategy today for blunting a lawsuit from Anschutz Exploration Corp. that seeks to overturn a local ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The lawsuit challenges an attempt by the town of Dryden to determine for itself whether fracking can occur there. In August, the town's board changed its zoning laws to keep Anschutz and other companies out, voting to deny fracking operations within its borders.

But the Colorado-based Anschutz drilling arm, owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, shot back with a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court, Tompkins County, that says only the state can regulate gas drilling.
Lawyers for Anschutz claim the zoning ban is pre-empted by New York's Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law. They argue that Dryden's ban could set the stage in New York or in other states for a hodgepodge of regulations that would keep drilling in some communities but out of others.

Dryden's counterargument is that it has the right to pass land-use regulations that say nothing directly about the technical side of natural gas drilling or exploration. Attorneys close to the case said Dryden has the right to decide for itself whether it wants heavy industrialization within its borders because of the direct impact on land use.

"The rights of towns to zone out extractive mining is already very well-established in New York law," said Deborah Goldberg, an attorney with Earthjustice, which has filed briefs in the case but has so far been denied amicus, or "friend of the court," status.

The attorneys and local activists held a press conference today in advance of a court hearing tomorrow on the merits of the lawsuit. The town has moved to dismiss the suit, claiming its local zoning rules are not pre-empted by the state.

One way or another, Goldberg said she expects this case to make its way up the ladder in New York's judicial system.

"Everyone knows this is going to go up on appeal no matter which way it comes out," she said.

An attorney representing Anschutz, Thomas West of the West Law Firm in Albany, agreed that the case would be appealed regardless of the initial decision, establishing a precedent for local regulation of fracking. As for Dryden's legal case, he was dismissive.

"I think the argument is extremely weak," he said, arguing that there is a clear difference in New York law between how mining and reclamation are zoned locally and how oil and gas drilling are regulated by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.
>
West said oil and gas laws "don't have the same carve-outs" as mining and reclamation. Municipalities can only regulate roads and local taxation when it comes to oil and gas drilling, he said.

He also sees a broader dynamic in play that may emerge as the case proceeds. A given landowner has the right to lease his land for drilling, so if a town like Dryden can block such activity, to West, that constitutes a taking of the land.

"If municipalities are successful in banning drilling, the next step would be for the landowners to sue the municipalities for taking," he said. "You've just had your property taken without just compensation."

Locals see it differently. Martin Hatch, a volunteer on Dryden's local planning board, cast the town's position in a political light, stealing a page from Occupy Wall Street's anti-corporate credo. He said any group of citizens should have the right to block "an out-of-town billionaire swooping in and telling us what we can or can't do."

"Nobody needs to tell anyone that people are tired of businesses around this country calling the shots," he said.

US ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

2012-01-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Investigative Research

This research explores the current capabilities of the US military to use electromagnetic (EMF) devices to harass, intimidate, and kill individuals and the continuing possibilities of violations of human rights by the testing and deployment of these weapons. To establish historical precedent in the US for such acts, we document long-term human rights and freedom of thought violations by US military/intelligence organizations. Additionally, we explore contemporary evidence of on-going government research in EMF weapons technologies and examine the potentialities of continuing human rights abuses.....continued......

CELDF Community Rights Ordinance: Drilling ban to appear on Borough ballot

2012-01-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

Lucy Bryan Green
October 31st, 2011

When residents of the State College Borough take to the polls on Nov. 8, they will join several other Pennsylvania communities, including Warren and Peters Township, in casting ballots that have the potential to make history and spark controversy.

The citizens of these towns will, for the first time ever, issue popular votes on amendments to their town charters that include environmental bills of rights and bans on natural gas drilling.

These referendums are the fruit of a growing grassroots movement in which communities are asserting their right to self-government, in particular, the right to protect their natural resources. But the possibility that these measures violate Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act has drawn opposition from drilling companies, state officials and local politicians.....continued......

Nature Is the 99%, Too Someone Got Rich and Someone Got Sick

2012-01-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

Chip Ward
October 27, 2011

Occupy Earth: What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems -- its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere -- goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and control by that corrupt and greedy 1% we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America’s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?

Money Rules: It’s not hard for me to understand how environmental quality and economic inequality came to be joined at the hip. In all my years as a grassroots organizer dealing with the tragic impact of degraded environments on public health, it was always the same: someone got rich and someone got sick....continued.....

Oil Boomtowns See Rise In Drunken Driving And Bar Fights, Threatening To Overwhelm Law Enforcement

2012-01-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"We definitely do drink a lot. I ain't going to lie," said Jordon Bourque, a 23-year-old pipe inspector from Lafayette, La., who was drinking beer at a bar in the Williamsport, Pa., area one recent night.

In the North Dakota boomtown of Williston, some bars have become rough, and the number of domestic-disturbance calls and arrests for such crimes as DUI, assault and theft in just the first half of 2011 was twice the total for all of 2010, said Busching, the sheriff.

Stories abound about friction between locals and out-of-towners, whether road rage incidents or fights over women.

Renee Daly, 27, of Montrose, Pa., said she knows of at least three marriages that ended when local women abandoned their husbands for gas-field workers.

COMMENT:
What have we heard from ranchers Gilbert Armenta and Chris Velasquez from San Juan County about increased crime: drunkenness, drug use, prostitution, and their community's needs for larger courthouses and increased law enforcement over the past 40-50 years since drilling for oil and gas overtook their agricultural county?

Appears the size of the Mora County Courthouse might be "just right," at least for the next 10 years, should the commission pass a regulatory oil and gas ordinance which permits drilling to take place.

11-26-2011

TOWANDA, Pa. -- In a modern-day echo of the raucous Old West, small towns enjoying a boom in oil and gas drilling are seeing a sharp increase in drunken driving, bar fights and other hell-raising, blamed largely on an influx of young men who find themselves with lots of money in their pockets and nothing to do after they get off work.

Authorities in Pennsylvania and other states are quick to point out that the vast majority of workers streaming in are law-abiding. But they also say the drilling industry has brought with it a hard-working, hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble element that, in some places, threatens to overwhelm law enforcement.

Some police departments are trying to hire more officers but are hard-pressed to compete with the industry for applicants...continued.......

WildEarth Guardians object to water-rights transfer: Group claims move will hurt existing downstream water rights, river ecosystem

2012-01-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:

"In the middle Rio Grande, including Socorro, water-right prices range from $12,000 to $15,000 an acre-foot.

The most expensive water rights are near water-strapped Las Vegas, N.M. An acre-foot there is going for $20,000 to $30,000, Turner [Albuquerque water broker Bill Turner] said."

COMMENT:

At prices in this range, it will be corporations and state and federal governments who will be able to afford such prices. These water transfers will not be by The People. This is the beginning for New Mexico, folks. Time to act in solidarity.

Staci Matlock

October 26, 2011

An environmental group is protesting a water-rights transfer from a Socorro farm to the city of Santa Fe.

WildEarth Guardians is protesting an application to transfer 163 acre-feet of water owned by Vannetta Perry of Socorro and to stop irrigating 54 acres of land. Irrigation water rights are valuable to cities and housing developments that need the rights to use water within the Rio Grande basin.

When the rights are transferred, the irrigated farmlands are fallowed.

The city is continuing to purchase water rights to offset the impacts on the Rio Grande of past groundwater pumping at the municipality's Buckman well field near the river...continued.....

KUNM Interview with Thomas Linzey, CELDF

2012-01-26T17:09:00.000-07:00

Thomas Linzey is the senior legal counsel for the Community Legal Defense Fund, CELDF, He is speaking about corporate Constitutional "rights" and the inalienable rights of people and nature.

Faren Dancer, Unicopia Green Radio, interviews Thomas Linzey, CELDF

2012-01-25T18:13:00.001-07:00

Listen to the interview with Thomas Linzey, senior legal counsel for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, CELDF, on corporate Constitutional "rights" and community self-government www.celdf.org

Faren Dancer, Unicopia Green Radio:

http://www.unicopia.org/gtr%20home.html

2012-01-25T17:03:00.001-07:00

High water use, contamination top list of shale gas concerns: Memo

2012-01-21T12:59:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"There is potential for water contamination from the use and disposal of drilling muds and fracturing fluids," Boothe wrote in the memo to Kent, dated March 8, 2011. "There is also a risk of natural gas or saltwater from the formation leaking into surface water, water wells or water aquifers.

"Other environmental impacts include but are not necessarily limited to air emissions (greenhouse gases and air pollutants), habitat fragmentation, and the increased traffic needed to transport water, chemicals, and equipment for shale gas production," Boothe wrote. "Further work is needed to assess the risks associated with shale gas development in Canada, including quantity of water used, surface and groundwater contamination, and emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants from shale gas facilities.

Kent announced in September that the government had launched two separate scientific reviews to examine the impacts of shale gas exploration. One review is being conducted by department officials, while the other will be conducted by the Council of Canadian Academies, a not-for-profit agency that provides science-based studies."

COMMENT:
Canada, a socialistic country, with a universal health care system, just might concern themselves with rising health care costs due to drilling, and take a strong stand regarding air and water contamination such as they did on indoor air quality concerns in the 1990s.

MIKE DE SOUZA
OCTOBER 24, 2011

OTTAWA --- Water use and contamination are at the top of the list of environmental concerns surrounding shale gas exploration in Canada, Environment Minister Peter Kent was told earlier this year in an internal memorandum released on Monday.

The advice, drafted by Environment Canada's top bureaucrat and deputy minister, Paul Boothe, acknowledged that the emerging industry is considered a "game changer" in the energy market, but it also noted that most sites are using millions of litres of water and hundreds of thousands of litres of unidentified chemicals that are injected in the ground at high pressure to extract natural gas from shale rock formations.

"There is potential for water contamination from the use and disposal of drilling muds and fracturing fluids," Boothe wrote in the memo to Kent, dated March 8, 2011. "There is also a risk of natural gas or saltwater from the formation leaking into surface water, water wells or water aquifers."

Several jurisdictions in North America, including Quebec and New York, have slowed down development to investigate the impacts of unconventional oil and gas exploration. Environment Canada also launched its own reviews this year, coinciding with the memo that was sent to Kent and released to Postmedia News through access to information legislation....continued......

Small-town politics take the national stage as Range challenges local drilling ordinance

2012-01-21T12:49:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Range Resources, western Pennsylvania's dominant driller, is suing the township of South Fayette for an [regulatory] ordinance approved last November that prohibits surface drilling in the community's neighborhoods, parks, farms and school zones. That regulation amounts to an illegal ban on natural gas drilling, the company argues....."

COMMENT:
A "regulatory" ordinance prohibiting drilling in community neighborhoods is challenged by industry. Would industry sue this community had they passed a "community rights-based ordinance" that prohibits natural gas drilling while protecting the citizens' inalienable rights? The City of Pittsburgh passed such an ordinance December 2010, and is still protected today while countless "regulatory" bans are being challenged by industry across PA.........

October 24, 2011

An affluent Pittsburgh suburb has become a test case for drilling regulations across the Marcellus Shale region, thrusting small-town politics into the national limelight.

Range Resources, western Pennsylvania's dominant driller, is suing the township of South Fayette for an ordinance approved last November that prohibits surface drilling in the community's neighborhoods, parks, farms and school zones.

That regulation amounts to an illegal ban on natural gas drilling, the company argues, and is holding back development on leases set to expire at a time when the driller says it is short on cash. Range estimates that the township's reserves are worth $1.2 billion. That could bring $180 million in royalties to South Fayette landowners, the company estimates...continued......

A Tainted Water Well, and Concern There May Be More

2012-01-20T22:39:00.001-07:00

By IAN URBINA
August 3, 2011

For decades, oil and gas industry executives as well as regulators have maintained that a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that is used for most natural gas wells has never contaminated underground drinking water.

Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, has said that there are no reported cases of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing.

The claim is based in part on a simple fact: fracking, in which water and toxic chemicals are injected at high pressure into the ground to break up rocks and release the gas trapped there, occurs thousands of feet below drinking-water aquifers. Because of that distance, the drilling chemicals pose no risk, industry officials have argued.

“There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one,” Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, said last year at a Congressional hearing on drilling....continued...

Drilling in Fast-Growing Areas Ushers in New Era of Tension

2012-01-20T22:22:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Fort Worth has upward of 2,000 gas wells right in the city itself, with most of that growth within just the last five years. Pittsburgh, facing the prospect of urban drilling, forbade it last year by a vote of the City Council."

COMMENT:
Which city would you choose for your family?

There are two options for all communities when drilling is around the corner in your neighborhood:
• Pass a regulatory ordinance which permits drilling in your community
• Pass a community rights-based ordinance that includes a bill of rights protecting citizen birth rights to clean water, air, land and health and prohibits industry from harming these inalienable rights

Which would you choose? Contact your commission and let them know.

Patrick Andrade
October 24, 2011

DENVER — The pattern is clear in the oil and gas business: drilling fields are going into new places. North Dakota, better known for growing wheat, is now booming with rigs. Fort Worth has upward of 2,000 gas wells right in the city itself, with most of that growth within just the last five years. Pittsburgh, facing the prospect of urban drilling, forbade it last year by a vote of the City Council [the council passed a CELDF community rights ordinance protecting citizen's birth rights to clean air, water, land, health and safety, and banned extraction of natural gas & hydraulic fracturing].

But few areas are facing the prospect of drilling’s new frontier more vividly than eastern Colorado, where 80 percent of this state’s population of five million people cluster in a line of cities and suburbs stretching out from Denver, Colorado’s capital and largest city.

A 90 million-year-old oil bed called the Niobrara — estimated to contain two billion barrels, locked in shale that in past drilling eras was considered too costly to extract — laces down from southeast Wyoming and Nebraska. And like a cowboy with Saturday-night pay in his pocket, ready to spend big and have a good time, the energy industry is riding into town to drill for it....continued....

The Fracking Industry's War On The New York Times -- And The Truth

2012-01-20T22:15:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"I [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] confess to being an early optimist on natural gas. In July of 2009, I wrote a widely circulated op-ed for the Financial Times predicting that newly accessible deposits of natural gas had the potential to rapidly relieve our country of its deadly addiction to Appalachian coal and end forever catastrophically destructive mountaintop removal mining.

The industry's worst actors have successfully battled reasonable regulation, stifled public disclosure while bending compliant government regulators to engineer exceptions to existing environmental rules. Captive agencies and political leaders have obligingly reduced already meager enforcement resources and helped propagate the industry's deceptive economic projections. As a result, public skepticism toward the industry and its government regulators is at a record high. With an army of over 40,000 highly motivated anti-fracking activists in New York alone, popular mistrust of the industry is presenting a daunting impediment to its expansion.

* The human health impacts of gas extraction on local communities may rival those associated with coal. A new study by Centers for Disease Control finds that breast cancer rates have dropped in every county in Texas, but have increased in the six counties with the heaviest natural gas air emissions.

Gas fracking flacks routinely make extravagant promises about bringing jobs and income to the depressed rural communities. If those jobs and royalties don't come -- the way they have not come for people in Bradford County, PA -- New Yorkers will be justifiably angry, as they wonder why the government and our panel did not protect them when there were so many warning signs"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
10/20/11
Superb investigative journalism by the New York Times has brought the paper under attack by the natural gas industry. That campaign of intimidation and obfuscation has been orchestrated by top shelf players like Exxon and Chesapeake aligned with the industry's worst bottom feeders. This coalition has launched an impressive propaganda effort carried by slick PR firms, industry funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio. In pitting itself against public disclosure and reasonable regulation, the natural gas industry is once again proving that it is its own worst enemy.

A Music Youtube that explains "fracking"

2012-01-20T22:09:00.001-07:00

New York State Senator Greg Ball (R, C)40th Senate District

2012-01-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
“I can tell you right now that the pain that I’ve seen here today, and the pain that I experienced first-hand speaking with families and farmers in Pennsylvania, it will be over my dead body before I allow what happened in Pennsylvania to happen here in New York,” said Senator Ball speaking at a recent hearing on hydrofracking in Katonah, N.Y.

“I have seen first-hand the devastation caused in communities where gas companies were given a free pass,” said Senator Ball who recently toured Pennsylvania towns where hydrofracking is currently taking place. “Fourth generation landowners whose property values sustained 90% devaluation because of contaminated water wells. Farmers whose cattle suffered unexplained and unusually high still birth rates. So I will not roll out the red carpet for companies that are not willing to be held accountable,” added Ball.

August 30th,2011
Sen. BALL: “OVER MY DEAD BODY” WILL NY HAVE PENNSYLVANIA’S FRACKING PROBLEMS

State Sen. Greg Ball, R-Patterson, is proposing legislation that would set up some rules and guidelines aimed at hydrofracking in New York state. Ball said he witnessed damage to private property during a tour of areas in Pennsylvania where hydrofracking for natural gas is occurring. His legislation is meant to protect property owners.

Rush to Drill for Natural Gas Creates Conflicts With Mortgages

2012-01-20T22:02:00.002-07:00

EXCERPT:
"But bankers and real estate executives, especially in New York, are starting to pay closer attention to the fine print and are raising provocative questions, such as: What happens if they lend money for a piece of land that ends up storing the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool filled with toxic wastewater from drilling?

Fearful of just such a possibility, some banks have become reluctant to grant mortgages on properties leased for gas drilling. At least eight local or national banks do not typically issue mortgages on such properties,lenders say."

Andrew Harrer
October 19, 2011

As natural gas drilling has spread across the country, energy industry representatives have sat down at kitchen tables in states like Texas, Pennsylvania and New York to offer homeowners leases that give companies the right to drill on their land.

Like many landowners, Marie McRae, who has a farm in Freeville, N.Y., says she was not aware she needed her lender's permission for a gas lease.

And over the past 10 years, as natural gas has become increasingly important to the nation’s energy future, Americans have signed more than a million of these leases..continued......

Forest Hills Council Unanimously Adopts Community Rights Ordinance That Bans Gas Drilling

2012-01-20T22:01:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
“I believe this is the most important decision we on Council will make this year… We have to do what we can on this issue, and I urge other boroughs to do the same."
--- Devon Woods, Forest Hills Borough Council

“Everybody’s definitely behind it. I think we owe it to the community and to future generations.”
--- Frank Porco, Council President
October 19, 2011
By a unanimous vote, the Borough Council ofForest Hills, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, voted to adopt a Local Bill of Rights, along with a prohibition on natural gas extraction to protect those rights.

The bill, titled “Forest Hills Borough’s Community Rights and Protection from Natural Gas Exploitation Ordinance” establishes specific rights for Borough residents, including the Right to Water, the Rights of NaturalCommunities, the Right to a Sustainable Energy Future, and the Right to Community Self-Government.

The Ordinance was drafted in consultation with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund(CELDF).

• Prior to the vote, Forest Hills resident and lead community proponent of the law, Elizabeth Donohoe remarked:
“I know the Council has been very diligent in its consideration of this subject. Speaking for many of your constituents --in fact, over 400 residents signed pages of a petition that is still in circulation -- I thank you for doing the work necessary to help you understand that a limited, conditional use ordinance will not protect this town from industries who are bent on extracting what they want from beneath our feet. Only by the banning of polluting industries from within the borders of our Borough will you -- our elected officials -- uphold the PA Constitution,which guarantees us the safety of our water and air. Because of an appalling abdication of leadership in Harrisburg, the protection of air and water fallson local municipal officials. On behalf of future generations, we very much appreciate your rising to the challenge represented by this unfortunate reality.”

• Council member DevonWoods made these comments before Council took up the measure:
“This is something I feel very strongly about. I believe this is the most important decision we on Council will make this year. When I was a little girl, my family would go to the Laurel Highlands; we would eat watercress that we picked from the Loyal hanna River. I would no more dream today of letting my children do that than I would allow them to cross Ardmore Blvd. by themselves. The water has been affected by drilling. Waangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who died recently has been on my mind. She tells a story of a hummingbird putting out a raging forest fire with drops of water from a lake as all the other woodland creatures look on, feeling powerless. 'What do you think you are doing?' she is asked. She replies 'I am doing the best I can...collectively it will make a difference.' We have to do what we can on this issue, and I urge other boroughs [counties] to do the same."

Following the unanimous vote, Council President Frank Porco said: "This was an easy vote. Our strategic plan is to make sure Forest Hills is viable 20 years down the road.”

The key prohibition enacted to protect the rights enumerated states: “It shall be unlawful for any corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas within Forest Hills Borough, with the exception of gas wells and pipelines already installed and operating at the time of enactment of this Ordinance, provided that the extraction of gas from those existing wells does not involve any practice or process not previously used for the extraction of gas from those wells.”

In addition,the ordinance would make it “unlawful for any corporation to extract water from any source, whether surface or subsurface, within Forest HillsBorough, for use in the extraction of subsurface natural gas. It shall be unlawful for a corporation to import water into Forest Hills Borough for use in the extraction of subsurface natural gas. It shall be unlawful for any corporation to deposit waste water, “produced” water, “frack” water, brine or other materials or by-products of natural gas extraction activities, into the land, air or waters within Forest Hills Borough or within its external jurisdiction.”

The ordinance goes on to assert: “Corporations in violation of the prohibition against natural gas extraction, or seeking to engage in natural gas extraction shall not have the rights of “persons” afforded by the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions, nor shall those corporations be afforded rights under the 1st or 5th amendments to the United States Constitution or corresponding sections of the Pennsylvania Constitution, nor shall those corporations be afforded the protections of the commerce or contracts clauses within the United States Constitution or corresponding sections of the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

The bill also recognizes the right of the people to a form of government where they live “which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are founded on the people’s authority and consent, and that neither individuals nor corporate entities and their directors and managers shall enjoy special privileges or powers under the color of state law which purports to make community majorities subordinate to them.”

The bill was modeled after the Ordinance drafted by CELDF and adopted on November 16th of last year by the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. West Homestead Borough adopted virtually the same Ordinance on May 10th,followed by Baldwin Borough on June 21st. Both municipalities are in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Mountain Lake Park, Maryland adopted the Community Rights gas drilling ban on March 6th of this year, and Wales, New York did so on June 14th, 2011. On July 20th, 2011, Wilkinsburg Borough, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania joined the movement to assert community rights over fracking corporations. A similar Community Rights Ordinance prohibiting the depositing or storage of frack-water was enacted last October by Licking Township in Clarion County, Pennsylvania.

In an earlier discussion of the measure, Council President Frank Porco commented “Everybody’s definitely behind it. I think we owe it to the community and to future generations.”

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, headquartered in Chambersburg, has been working with people in Pennsylvania since 1995 to assert their fundamental rights to democratic local self-governance, and to enact laws which end destructive and rights-denying corporate action aided and abetted by state and federal governments.

Canadian Plastics' Wilkinson makes case for converting plastic to energy in North America

2012-01-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Could non-recycled plastics provide a cost-effective alternative to conventional energy? A new study out of Columbia University found that non-recycled plastics in the U.S. could provide energy to fuel 6 million cars annually and enough electricity to power 5.2 million households.

There are three basic groupings [or energy recovery], ..one grouping is something called solid recovered fuel and an example of that is taking mixed plastics and turning them into a fuel cube and then substituting that fuel cube for a dirtier fuel, like coal or petroleum, coke, in a cement kiln or an industrial boiler.

COMMENT:
From a Report by Greenpeace (attached):

"One of the larger concerns in burning hazardous wastes is the generation of new, sometimes exquisitely toxic chemicals during and subsequent to combustion—so-called products of incomplete combustion (PICs). Among the PICs that have been identified, dioxins and furans are commonly regarded as the greatest threat to public health and the environment. These and other POPs, including PCBs46 and hexachlorobenzene,47 are created when chlorine-containing materials are burned. Studies suggest that the populations of the U.S. and some European countries now carry body burdens of dioxins and furans that are at or near those levels at which health effects are known to occur in humans.48

• In Japan, where municipal waste contains relatively high levels of the organochlorine plastic, PVC, 67 high dioxin concentrations in soils surrounding a municipal waste incinerator were found to be “well correlated” with high cancer rates among the surrounding population.68

• A team of doctors reported elevated levels of these POPs in the breast milk of women who live downwind from certain incinerators in Germany.69

• U.S. federal and state agencies assessed the levels of dioxins in the blood lipids of people living near an incinerator burning waste from the manufacture of two organochlorine pesticides, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T.70,71 Over a three-year period, concentrations of the most toxic form of dioxin, 2,3,7,8-TCDD, increased by an average of 25 percent among more than 60 percent of the study participants.72

• Authorities in Spain determined that, over a period of two years, dioxins in the blood lipids of people living near an incinerator burning urban wastes increased by 10 to 15 percent. In addition, their blood lipid levels of PCBs increased by about 5 percent.73

• In Canada, health officials advised against the consumption of wild game taken within a 30 kilometer radius of the Swan Hills PCB incinerator because of the accumulation of dioxins released from that facility.74"

Let us not turn a blind eye to the environmental destruction fossil fuels create in all stages from the initial extraction (contamination of air & water), manufacturing into product (release of toxic chemicals into the air and water), prospects of regeneration for energy replacement (release of toxic chemicals into the air and water, into the land, into human and animals tissues) and be swayed by a seemingly clever and benign way to further the industry's use of fossil fuels. GREEN renewable leadership continues to be lacking in this equation!!!

The mountains of toxic products made from petroleum (fossil fuel) in the form of plastic containers (water bottles, baby bottles, yoghurt containers, plastic wrap, and bags), plastic building products (decking, siding, paneling, power tools, lawn mowers, chain saws, weed wackers) plastic clothing (nylon), dvds, alarm clocks, et al, are as toxic to the environment and all species if not more so given the synergistic impact as a result of incineration.

Fools we are, should we stand for industry and government to continue in this madness. Fossil fuels, in any form, new, or discarded, have no place in a world where global warming is destroying all things living. The contribution to global warming from incineration is well understood--and so are the consequences.

October 18, 2011

Could non-recycled plastics provide a cost-effective alternative to conventional energy? During today's OnPoint, Greg Wilkinson, president and CEO of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association and an adviser to the American Chemistry Council, discusses a new Columbia University study that found non-recycled plastics in the United States could provide enough energy to fuel 6 million cars annually and enough electricity to power 5.2 million households. Wilkinson addresses some of the environmental and economic concerns with waste-to-fuel practice....continued....

In North Dakota, Flames of Wasted Natural Gas Light the Prairie

2012-01-20T21:56:00.000-07:00

EXCERPTS:
"Thirty percent of the natural gas extracted in North Dakota is flared off, like this gas near Ray.

“I’ll tell you why people flare: It’s cheap,” said Troy Anderson, lead operator of a North Dakota gas-processing plant owned by Whiting Petroleum. “Pipelines are expensive: You have to maintain them. You need permits to build them. They are a pain.”

COMMENT:
Ridding of these chemicals by burning them off into our atmosphere is one way to hasten global warming....with the oil and gas industry vying for the #1 or 2 position for the largest contributor to global warming in the world! And in the meantime, it is chocking the breath for millions.

Jim Wilson--The New York Times
September 26, 2011

NEW TOWN, N.D. — Across western North Dakota, hundreds of fires rise above fields of wheat and sunflowers and bales of hay. At night, they illuminate the prairie skies like giant fireflies.

They are not wildfires caused by lightning strikes or other acts of nature, but the deliberate burning of natural gas by oil companies rushing to extract oil from the Bakken shale field and take advantage of the high price of crude. The gas bubbles up alongside the far more valuable oil, and with less economic incentive to capture it, the drillers treat the gas as waste and simply burn it....continued....

Tell Us What's Being Done to Our Groundwater, Demand Albertans: Push for Transparency After Province Closed Once-Public Records on Aquifer Quality

2012-01-20T21:50:00.000-07:00

Andrew Nikiforuk
17 Oct 2011

A retired chemical engineer is trying to get the Alberta government to divulge key water quality data on the province's critical groundwater resources -- a move that could shed more light on the impact of shale gas operations on Canadian aquifers.

Don Davidson, a former oil patch worker, says he got interested in the issue when groundwater experts with the Alberta Geological Survey and Geological Survey of Canada told him they couldn't get access to water chemistry reports on rural water wells.

"It was restricted by Alberta Health and Wellness," says Davidson, who is 65 and lives in Edmonton. Until recently, this information was publically available to all citizens. Without access to long-term data on water quality and contents, scientists can't determine any groundwater trends, explains Davidson: "I think that's wrong.".continued...

Parched Texans Impose Water-Use Limits for Fracking Gas Wells

2012-01-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:

“The rumblings have definitely started in the last six months,” said Chris Faulkner, chief executive officer of Breitling Oil and Gas Corp., a closely held producer in Irving, Texas. “It used to be, ‘Are you going to contaminate my water;’ now the concern is, ‘You’re going to use up all my water.’”
October 06, 2011
By Mike Lee

An intensifying drought in Texas is prompting limits on water consumption that for the first time target oil and natural gas producers.

Local water districts, which have authority to allocate water from subterranean aquifers, are adding a water-intensive production method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to some of the pumping restrictions they’re imposing on farmers and small towns.

The city of Grand Prairie in the Barnett Shale in North Texas in August became the first municipality to ban the use of city water for fracking. Water officials for the Ogallala Aquifer in part of the Permian Basin included fracking when they approved the district’s first-ever restrictions on water use in July.

Even before the drought, water was a sensitive issue for gas producers, who now use fracking to develop about 85 percent of the wells drilled in Texas, according to state regulators..continued.......

High court ponders domestic well rights: Two cases challenge statute over constitutional grounds

2012-01-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

Staci Matlock
October 13, 2011

New Mexico State Supreme Court justices are deciding whether a pivotal, decades-old state domestic well law violates the state constitution.

The five justices heard oral arguments Thursday in two cases challenging the state statute. Their final decision has far-reaching consequences.

If the justices find the state law is unconstitutional, the legality of tens of thousands of domestic wells in the state would be questionable.

If the court finds the state law doesn't contradict the constitution, a big question remains, one that the justices seemed to say the state Legislature would have to resolve: How to ensure an increasing number of wells don't impair the water available to people with priority rights.

The debate over how domestic wells affect farmers, tribes and others with the oldest, and most senior, water rights in New Mexico has deepened in the last several years as the number of domestic wells has proliferated and drought has further limited an already scarce resource..continued...

Hampton, New Brunswick, Canada, Blocks Seismic Testing Within Town Limits for Shale Gas

2012-01-20T21:39:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"They [council] received a standing ovation from residents in the gallery after the vote [to ban seismic testing].

Citizen groups and environmentalists have blocked roads and staged demonstrations at public meetings, government buildings and shale gas test sites in their efforts to halt development.

They are worried that groundwater supplies could be contaminated from hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking."

COMMENT:
When the elected officials act on behalf of the citizens to protect the health, welfare and safety of the citizens and environment, communities can join in solidarity and begin to live in harmony with their environment. In the words of Julie Whitten, "Land, animals, soil fungi and rocks are not resources. They are "the community to which we belong."

October 12, 2011
HAMPTON, N.B. - A town council in New Brunswick has voted unanimously to reject Windsor Energy's request to allow thumper trucks to conduct seismic testing *within Hampton town limits* for shale gas.

Councillors voted unanimously Tuesday night to block the testing after dozens of residents protested earlier in the day against shale gas exploration in the area.

They received a standing ovation from residents in the gallery after the vote.

Protests have been growing around the province over Premier David Alward's position to proceed with shale gas development.

Citizen groups and environmentalists have blocked roads and staged demonstrations at public meetings, government buildings and shale gas test sites in their efforts to halt development.

They are worried that groundwater supplies could be contaminated from hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.

The process involves forcing a cocktail of chemicals, water and sand into a gas well to fracture layers of shale rock and release trapped pockets of natural gas.

Groups Sue After E.P.A. Fails to Shift Ozone Rules

2012-01-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
Another lawsuit. When industry and our governments join hands and peal back or prevent human and environmental protection, what is left for the people to do?

A lawsuit.

WIll you wait until the situation gets this bad in your community, or will you work to PROTECT before the damage occurs? It is your choice. It is your voice! There are options.

JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — Five health and environmental groups sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over its rejection of a proposed stricter new standard for ozone pollution, saying the decision was driven by politics and ignored public health concerns.

The groups said that President Obama’s refusal to adopt the new standard was illegal and left in place an inadequate air quality rule from the Bush administration. Near the end of his presidency, George W. Bush overruled the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisory panel and set the permissible ozone exposure at 75 parts per billion.

The current E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, wanted to set the standard at 70 parts per billion, near the maximum level recommended by the advisory panel. But President Obama rejected that proposal on Sept. 2, saying that compliance would be too costly and create too much regulatory uncertainty for industry. He ordered the E.P.A. to conduct further scientific studies and come up with a new proposal in 2013..continued.....

A look at Fracking

2012-01-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

Your Options For your County's Oil and Gas Development:

1. Do nothing, and be drilled by the oil companies

2. Put in a regulatory oil and gas ordinance--this allows drilling in your community through a permit process and industry begins drilling once your elected officials give them "permission" through a "permit" to drill in your community. When damages occur, it will be up to the citizens to prove damage and take the oil industry to court for these damages be it contaminated water, air, ill or dying livestock or family members. When water wells go dry, it will be the citizens' problems.

3. Put in a community rights ordinance--which contains a Bill of Rights protecting citizen birth-rights to clean air, water, health and safety and PROHIBITS industry from harming citizens' inalienable rights. At the core of this community rights ordinance is the right to determine the community's destiny--Local Self-Government. This is the premis upon which the suffrage and civil rights movement were based....and which ultimately resulted in changes to the U.S. Constitution. A change to unjust laws written into the U.S. Constitution!

Which do you choose ? If you choose number 3, call your commissioners and let them know you want a community rights-based ordinance passed in your community that protects the citizen's birth rights!

Tom McDonald
October 9, 2011

If Michael Moore had made Gasland, it would have been wittier. Maybe Josh Fox, who produced the documentary after a natural gas company offered to lease his Pennsylvania land for drilling, was just too close to the story. To him, the threat of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, coming to his homeland and polluting his water and air was a personal affront.

Fracking is the injecting of water, sand and chemicals (including toxic chemicals) into underground rock formations to blast them open and release natural gas. Fox set out on a cross-country journey to see how communities are being affected by this natural gas removal process. He spent considerable time out west, where the industry has been drilling and fracking for years.
What he found was one horror story after another — contaminated water supplies, sick people and animals, court settlements to keep people quiet, and more — all framed into an indictment against the natural gas industry and its fracking operations....continued....

Fracking is toxic for kids, suit says.

2012-01-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

LINDA SATTER
Sept 15, 2011

    A White County grandmother filed a federal lawsuit Monday on behalf of her 2- and 4-year-old grandchildren, who live with her in Bradford and who she fears may suffer ill effects from a nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operation.

    The lawsuit names CUDD Pumping Services Inc., RPC Inc. and CUDD Energy Services, all Delaware corporations with offices in Atlanta and Houston, as defendants. It says the companies stirred up toxic contaminants while using fracturing on three natural-gas wells about 250 feet from the home of grandparents Kevin and Tina Scoggin at 708 Scoggin Road in August.

    Fracking is designed to create fractures in a strata of shale rock beneath wellheads. It involves shooting millions of gallons of a mixture of water and chemicals, including “poisons and carcinogens,” into a pre-drilled wellbore “at extremely high pressures,” the suit says...continued....

CELDF--Democracy Matters: Part III Corporate Constitutional "rights" and Democracy--Preemption

2012-01-20T21:09:00.003-07:00

Democracy Matters Podcast - January 16, 2012

This week on Democracy Matters - we continue our month-long series on the history of corporate constitutional "rights." And, Part II of our interview with author and activist John Stauber on how corporate and governmental propaganda manipulate what we think about food, sludge, and even war.

CELDF--Democracy Matters: Part II Corporate Constitutional "rights" and Democracy--And corporations's use of Dillon's Rule used to override local law-making

2012-01-20T20:56:00.002-07:00

Democracy Matters Podcast - January 9, 2012

This week on Democracy Matters, the second in our month-long series on the history of corporate "rights." And a conversation with John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, on how corporate and government propaganda affect what we think about agriculture, sewage sludge, and even war.

CELDF--Democracy Matters: Part I Corporate Constitutional "rights" and Democracy and how corporations make sustainability illegal

2012-01-20T20:51:00.004-07:00

Democracy Matters Podcast - January 2, 2012

This week on Democracy Matters, with the coming second anniversary of Citizens United decision, we begin this year with a month-long series on the history of corporate "rights" and how those rights interfere with sustainability. And Part II of our interview with Stoney Bird and Rick Dubrow of No Coal in Bellingham, WA, where there's growing opposition to coal trains. Why fighting the traditional "site fight" won't help them.

www.celdf.org

Thoughts on Mora issues-Letter to the editor

2012-01-20T20:48:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"On another note: I was reading a publication put out by “The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund,” entitled, “How to Ban Fracking Despite Corporate Rights and State Preemption.” People wanted to know what “fracking” meant. Fracking simply means “messing with the natural elements, water being the most important.” There were two quotes that caught my eye. The first was, “Getting fracked is not inevitable unless we assume there’s nothing we can do. It’s not inevitable unless we are willing to surrender our fundamental rights without a fight.

In other words, if we as citizens sit around and do nothing, big corporations with money will come in and do as they please with our land and our water."

COMMENT:
Call your county commissioners and let them know you support the "Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance" and want them to vote on it now!
Commission chair: Paula Garcia, 505 429 2621
Commissioner: Laudente Quintana, 575 666 2143
Commissioner: John Olivas (sponsoring this ordinance for the citizens of Mora County) (505) 379-5551

Rosalie Regensberg, Holman, Mora County, New Mexico
September 29, 2011

I would like to follow up on Alex Montoya’s letter to the editor (published Sept. 9) about the Help New Mexico office in Mora County.

As a prior elected official, I can truly say, that the Help office is one of the programs that has been of much help, and proved to be effective to those less fortunate, who are not lazy, but need a shove in the right direction. These people who go to the Help office are the same people who cast their votes on election day. So be very careful with labels. As the saying goes, “There (but for) the grace of God go I.”

On another note: I was reading a publication put out by “The Community Environmental Legal Fund,” entitled, “How to Ban Fracking Despite Corporate Rights and State Preemption.” People wanted to know what “fracking” meant. Fracking simply means “messing with the natural elements, water being the most important.” There were two quotes that caught my eye. The first was, “Getting fracked is not inevitable unless we assume there’s nothing we can do. It’s not inevitable unless we are willing to surrender our fundamental rights without a fight.”

Another quote by (author) Salley Kempton reads, “It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”

I love my people, but they are hard to understand. They gave me such a hard time about the location of the solid waste, which is still in the same place anyway, but the majority seems to prefer not to get involved in such important issues, such as “fracking.”

Fire Shuts Shell'S Singapore Refinery

2012-01-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Shell earlier shut down units in the vicinity of the fire and is flaring off hydrocarbons, saying, "The flare is a safety procedure and is no cause for alarm. There are no toxic vapors released."

"While there is no cause for alarm currently, those with respiratory problems should avoid the western part of Singapore near Bukom," said the agency.

COMMENT:
When flaring occurs, toxic hydrocarbons and other toxic chemicals are burned off the well-head and are emitted into the atmosphere. Recently you read about the flaring taking place in North Dakota...some 30% of the methane is flared, or burned off into the atmosphere there. The rate of asthma is skyrocketing in San Juan County as well, with the 60 years of oil and gas development toppling that New Mexico county.

Royal Dutch Shell is the same parent corporation that holds leases in Mora County, New Mexico. When industry states that no toxic vapors are being released into the atmosphere in Singapore, you can count on the same set of lies that would be given to the people in Mora County.....

Royal Dutch Shell prides themselves in their safety record, yet incidents like the story below continue to occur around the world and at home.
SINGAPORE, September 29, 2011 (ENS) - A fire at Shell's Pulau Bukom refinery on an island near the Singapore mainland was extinguished late Thursday night, local time, after blazing intermittently for 36 hours. The massive fire sent plumes of black smoke high into the atmosphere.

Shell officials said earlier on Thursday that they are closing all refining units at the facility, Shell's largest petrochemical production and export centre in the Asia Pacific region. The procedure could take up to two days.

"We are focused on safety, and are going through the progressive shutdown of the refinery," Vice President for Manufacturing Operations Martijn van Koten told reporters.
Fire at Shell's Pulau Bukom refinery, September 29, 2011 (Photo credit unknown)

"The affected area has lengths of pipelines and connected pumps, and holds a mix of hydrocarbons. This was the reason for the erratic fire, sometimes waning and sometimes growing," Shell said in a statement Thursday...continued....

Is it Safe to Store Fracking Fluid Underground?

2012-01-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

By Rich Bindell
September 29, 2011

When the EPA decided to prohibit the dumping the wastewater in streams, the oil and gas industry opted to truck it over to Ohio and inject it 8,000 feet in the ground.
|
It’s not enough to have to worry about oil and gas companies building more and more shale gas wells in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. We also have to worry about them drilling wells 8,000 feet deep to store the leftover fracking fluid, like they do in Cambridge, OH, with a company called Devco.

Next door, in Pennsylvania, industry tried dumping the wastewater leftover from fracking into streams. When environmentalists questioned this disposal method, industry responded with claims that the streams dilute the chemicals enough to make such a method safe. Then the EPA decided to investigate the matter more closely and found that wastewater treatment plants couldn’t process the chemicals. When the EPA decided to prohibit the oil and gas industry from dumping the wastewater in streams, industry opted to truck it over to Ohio and inject it 8,000 feet in the ground in storage wells—permanent storage wells. Forever. Well, the hope is that it is forever...continued.....

2012-01-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

EXCERPTS:
"Thirty percent of the natural gas extracted in North Dakota is flared off, like this gas near Ray.

“I’ll tell you why people flare: It’s cheap,” said Troy Anderson, lead operator of a North Dakota gas-processing plant owned by Whiting Petroleum. “Pipelines are expensive: You have to maintain them. You need permits to build them. They are a pain.”

COMMENT:
Ridding of these chemicals by burning them off into our atmosphere is one way to hasten global warming....with the oil and gas industry vying for the #1 or 2 position for the largest contributor to global warming in the world! And in the meantime, it is chocking the breath for millions.
Jim Wilson--The New York Times
September 26, 2011

NEW TOWN, N.D. — Across western North Dakota, hundreds of fires rise above fields of wheat and sunflowers and bales of hay. At night, they illuminate the prairie skies like giant fireflies.

They are not wildfires caused by lightning strikes or other acts of nature, but the deliberate burning of natural gas by oil companies rushing to extract oil from the Bakken shale field and take advantage of the high price of crude. The gas bubbles up alongside the far more valuable oil, and with less economic incentive to capture it, the drillers treat the gas as waste and simply burn it.

New Challenges to Gas Drilling: Pennsylvania Foes Seek to Pass Local Bans, but Would They Survive Court Tests?

2012-01-20T20:16:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"In Peters Township, an affluent community whose rolling hills are dotted with newly built homes, small farms and two country clubs, residents will vote this fall on a local bill of rights that would ban gas extraction, a move proponents say is necessary to guarantee residents the right to clean water and air."

COMMENT:
The work by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, CELDF, whose community rights protective ordinances are sparking the new civil rights and environmental movement across the United States, is gaining momentum as more communities insist upon their rights over those unequal rights of corporations. The unjust laws are being challenged strongly.....and change is coming.

BY KRIS MAHER
September 12, 2011
PETERS TOWNSHIP, Pa.—Challengers to natural gas drilling are taking a new approach in Pennsylvania, putting the rights of energy companies to drill in the massive Marcellus Shale basin on the ballot in what are believed to be the nation's first voter initiatives seeking to ban such activity.

In Peters Township, an affluent community whose rolling hills are dotted with newly built homes, small farms and two country clubs, residents will vote this fall on a local bill of rights that would ban gas extraction, a move proponents say is necessary to guarantee residents the right to clean water and air.

Scientists: Drilling threat to water--Municipal systems can't filter chemicals used in hydrofracking process

2012-01-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

BRIAN NEARING
September 16, 2011

ALBANY -- Dozens of scientists, including four from the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, warned Gov. Andrew Cuomo that it will be practically impossible for municipal drinking water systems to protect against chemicals used in natural gas hydraulic fracturing, also called hydrofracking.
>
Their letter to the governor, released Thursday, was signed by 59 experts from 18 states and seven foreign countries, included scientists from Cornell University, the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and the State University at StonyBrook.
>
"We urge the state to reconsider its position that existing waterfiltration systems provide adequate protection against the risk of hydraulic fracturing, should materials from flow-back fluids migrate
to lakes, reservoirs, or groundwater used for municipal water supplies," the letter states...continued.....

Residents opposed to fracking meet in Cochrane

2012-01-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
Nikiforuk said water is the most critical issue, not only for the sheer volume of water needed to frack but also what he claims are confirmed cases of well contamination in Alberta.

He said confidentiality agreements between landowners and oil companies have kept the issue from coming to light.

"The only time a landowner can stop a project is when you have 100 landowners saying 'No,' " said Nikiforuk."
By: Rachel Maclean
September 14, 2011

Residents from around Alberta gathered at the Cochrane RancheHouse Theatre on Sept. 10 to talk about the "dangers of fracking."

The free workshop was put on by Protecting Our Water and Ecological Resources Society (POWERS).

"We started POWERS and one of the reasons is to raise a voice for a moratorium (on fracking)," said Cochrane resident Patricia Pearsall from POWERS.

"We need to connect to Albertans to create that voice . . . . Our valley is being fracked to death."..continued....

"Fact sheet about exposing children to hydraulic fracturing"

2012-01-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"While many of the chemicals used in the drilling and fracking process are proprietary, the list
includes benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene, ethylene glycol, glutaraldehyde and other
biocides, hydrochloric acid, and hydrogen treated light petroleum distillates. These substances have a wide spectrum of potential toxic effects on humans ranging from cancer to adverse effects on the reproductive, neurological, and endocrine systems (ATSDR, Colborn T, et al, U.S. EPA 2009)."

COMMENT:
Will we tolerate this exposure for our children? Or will we push back and say "no" to this insanity and stop this corporate invasion into our lives? Our children deserve protection. The only way to protect from this exposure is to stop it within our communities.

See also "PEHSU Information on Natural Gas Extraction and Hydraulic Fracturing for Health Professionals"-

by admin on September 3, 2011

The Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSU) Network encourage families, pediatricians, and communities to work together to ensure that children are protected from exposure to environmental hazards. Children are more vulnerable to environmental hazards. They eat, drink, and breathe more than adults on a pound for pound basis. Research has also shown that children are not able to metabolize some toxicants as well as adults due to immature detoxification processes.

Here is a fact sheet for health care professionals on the dangers of exposing children to fracking and natural gas activity:

http://abcalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/hydraulic_fracturing_and_children_2011_health_prof.pdf

NASA Scientist, Religious Leaders Arrested in Tar Sands Protest

2012-01-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen was arrested today in front of the White House where he was demonstrating in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline

"If the pipeline is to be built, you as president have to declare that it is 'in the national interest," wrote Dr. Hansen in an August 3 letter to President Obama along with 19 other scientists. "As scientists, speaking for ourselves and not for any of our institutions, we can say categorically that it's not only not in the national interest, it's also not in the planet's best interest."

Today, 60 religious leaders of many faiths were among the crowd, which also included CREDO Mobile president Michael Kieschnick, Greenpeace Director Phil Radford and 350.org Executive Director May Boeve.

"Climate change hurts the poor first," said Rose Berger, a Roman Catholic and lead Sojourners organizer for Tar Sands Action. "The tar sands development and the permitting the Keystone XL pipeline will worsen climate change and should be stopped."

COMMENT:
The photograph of the pipeline in the article represents a negotiated cost-cutting move taken by the Calgary-based corporation, TransCanada a few years ago.....how to make this fit within the budget during an economic downturn?.....cut the gauge of the steel in the pipes....and so they did!!!! (inside source at TransCanada)

WASHINGTON, DC, August 29, 2011 (ENS) - NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen was arrested today in front of the White House where he was demonstrating in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that would bring thick crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Dr. Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and is a climate research scientist at the Earth Institute, Columbia University.

Arrests are continuing at the White House, where about 140 people gathered on the sidewalk as part of a two-week long sit-in to protest TransCanada's proposed 1,700 mile pipeline.
Dr. James Hansen is arrested protesting the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House, August 29, 2011 (Photo by Ben Powless)

The protest has led to the arrest of 521 people since August 20, when protestors began the Tar Sands Action sit-in at the White House. The protest will continue until September 3...continued....

When All is Sold Out, Who is Left to Carry the Lie?

2012-01-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

US Energy Department panel endorses shale fracking, suggests pumping ground with millions of gallons of chemical water will help save environment
Ethan A. Huff
August 30, 2011

(NaturalNews) Hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking," for the purpose of extracting natural gas from the earth involves flooding it with millions of gallons of chemical-laden water, a practice that by all
estimates is damaging the environment to some extent.

But a US Energy Department (ED) advisory panel, which happens to be padded with members connected to the natural gas industry, insists that fracking is safe, and even contends that it will help to lower the carbon dioxide emissions allegedly responsible for so-called climate change.

A recent report in The Washington Post (WP) explains the ED panel's notion that, despite continual outcry over fracking operations polluting rivers and groundwater supplies, natural gas fracking can safely continue as long as fracking companies agree to be more open about their actions, and comply with monitoring requirements that track environmental impact and make this information publicly available...continued...

The Real Frackasaurus Coloring Bookby Ben Price, Projects Director, CELDF

2012-01-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

August 30th, 2011

On November 15, 2010, South Fayette Township in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania passed a zoning ordinance regulating the location of oil and gas extraction activities in the municipality. The ordinance was drafted by the Township and cleared by its Zoning Board in an attempt to protect from fracking as much of the community as possible through the land-use regulatory authority delegated to the Township by the State in the Municipalities Planning Code (MPC). What the Board of Commissioners adopted is an ordinance they cleared as to legality with their municipal Solicitor. They played it safe. They colored inside the lines.

One day later, on November 16, 2010, Pittsburgh City Council adopted a Local Bill of Rights Ordinance that bans corporations from extracting gas anywhere within the City. The Council Members decided not to surrender any part of the City to the frackers, arguing that all residents of the City have equal rights, and the Council Members had each sworn to protect the health, safety and welfare of all of the residents equally. Critics of the Ordinance said it is illegal and unconstitutional because it makes people’s rights trump corporate privileges recognized by the courts, and it challenges state laws that preempt local law-making and everybody knows state laws are superior to local ones. This community rights ordinance has the temerity to recognize the right to local self-government, the rights of natural communities and ecosystems, the right to water, and that corporate privileges are subordinate to the fundamental rights of members of the community...continued...

Oklahoma Family Fights Keystone Pipeline And Wins

2012-01-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"The family declined TransCanada's offers of compensation for the use of their land, and eventually refused to negotiate, at which point the company filed a legal claim for the right to run the pipeline through the property anyway."

COMMENT:
What if each family fought back and refused industry an easement through their property?

August 27, 2011

Sue Kelso fought TransCanada's plans to run its Keystone XL pipeline through her family's Oklahoma land. This week, TransCanada gave up.

Opponents of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline won a small and perhaps only symbolic victory this week when TransCanada abandoned an eminent domain claim on the property of an Oklahoma family.

The Calgary-based company is planning a $7 billion pipeline that would carry oil some 1,700 miles from Alberta's tar sands through six U.S. states to the Texas Gulf Coast. It had planned to run part of that pipeline across the southwest corner of a 180-acre slice of land belonging to 69-year-old Sue Kelso and her siblings, who were profiled in The Huffington Post last month...continued...

NO SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE FOR TOXIC FRACKING WASTE-OpEd

2012-01-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"A 2011 report released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee listed 750 additives, 29 of which are known carcinogens, that are routinely used by the scores of gas drillers who are poised to ship their toxic frack wastewater to Niagara Falls for treatment and discharge into the Niagara River.

Hang [Walter Hang is president of Toxic Targeting, Inc., an Ithaca, N.Y.-based consulting firm] contends that the Niagara Falls treatment facility is incapable of effectively filtering many of the toxic compounds, which vary according to the unique additive recipes employed by the scores of different drillers who could potentially send their frack water here.

"There is no place in the country as lax as Niagara Falls with respect to regulatory violations involving water quality," Hang told me in a phone interview. "The granular activated-carbon process is inadequate for filtering and removing the frack constituents."

Where Will "They", Dump It? / Who Are They?
Niagara River, already burdened with a toxicity beyond belief. So who cares, A Little More Poison, No Big Deal!

Opinion By James Hufnagel
The Niagara Falls Water Board, the Andrew Cuomo administration, local environmental groups and the media have all been strangely silent in the wake of a story first reported here two weeks ago detailing a massive plan to import toxic gas drilling wastewater for treatment and release into the Niagara River.

The saga began with the invention of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," a technique that made possible a natural gas drilling gold rush presently centered around northwestern Pennsylvania. Drillers had been merrily dumping the used frack water into rivers, streams, lakes and ponds, or onto fields and along roads, and when they got busted for doing that, they began directing it to municipal water treatment facilities.

Then folks living along the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh were informed that they couldn't drink the water anymore because of contamination originating from an upriver treatment plant engaged in frack water processing...continued...

Earthquakes, Natural Gas Drilling, New Mexico

2012-01-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

Listen at KSFR

SANTA FE, Aug. 23 -- Following a succession of earthquakes near New Mexico's
northern border, geology professor Rick Astor of New Mexico Tech says one
possibility for the "swarm" of quakes in that area is the prevalance of
energy drilling there.

He says faults inside the earth have stress and often can slip. "Earthquakes
could be induced if the fault's frictional properties are altered by the
injection of (fracking) fluids."

Oil, natural gas extraction is clean, says Gov

2012-01-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
Glad to know that the statesmen and governor of Colorado are taking their oath of office seriously--to protect the health, welfare and safety of the people.
8/8/2011
By Peter Marcus
Special to The Colorado Statesman

Gov. John Hickenlooper called negative reports concerning dangers associated with hydraulic fracturing “hyperbole,” arguing that there is no scientific fact to indicate that the oil and natural gas extraction process contaminates groundwater in Colorado.

The Democratic governor made his comments Aug. 2 during a keynote address at the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s annual Energy Epicenter Conference held at the Colorado Convention Center. Hickenlooper himself is an alum of the industry, having worked as a geologist in the 1980s before he ventured into the beer crafting brewing business and later politics. The governor said he would like to see new rules in Colorado that would require the oil and gas industry to disclose ingredients used in the hydraulic fracturing process. But Hickenlooper is not encouraging the disclosure because he thinks the so-called fracking process is dangerous — he believes the public will back off their concerns when they see that the ingredients used in the process, and the process itself, is nothing to worry about in terms of contaminating groundwater.

“Everyone in this room understands that hydraulic fracturing doesn’t connect to groundwater, and we can’t find any chemicals in Colorado… It’s almost inconceivable that we would ever contaminate groundwater through a fracking process, and yet there are reports, not just the New York Times, that have created the impression that this happens and that this is something we should be fearful of,” said Gov. Hickenlooper. “The best way to fight back on that kind of misinformation is to be transparent. To really step out and say this isn’t something that happens, and we’re so confident that this is not going to happen that we’re going to measure before drilling and then after drilling, and we’ll monitor and just clearly demonstrate beyond any possible doubt that this doesn’t happen.”..continued....

Oil shale projects could exhaust Colorado River water supply, enviros warn

2012-01-20T19:15:00.001-07:00

Debra Kahn
August 18, 2011

Mining copious oil shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming could jeopardize water and power supplies for seven Western states, environmental activists warn in a report released today.
Oil companies hold unused water rights in the Upper Colorado River Basin area that could force agricultural and municipal water users to curtail their use, Natural Resources Defense Council analysts say in their report. The system may already be at its limit, according to recent federal estimates that have found the original 1922 and 1944 allocations to be based on atypically wet conditions.

Report co-author Barry Nelson, a policy analyst with NRDC, said the risk of oil shale development was worth sounding the alarm, although the practice is a specter compared to the type of hydraulic fracturing used to pry oil and gas from shale formations in Texas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and other states...continued...

Deadly Gas Industry Cover-up Revealed

2012-01-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Both the industry and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state's agency meant to protect public health and regulate oil and gas, have denied the existence of high levels of hydrogen sulfide in Colorado. In 1997, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment wanted to monitor for hydrogen sulfide at oil and gas facilities after they were designated as confirmed sources of the deadly gas by the EPA.

The COGCC stepped in and told them not to, claiming there were no elevated levels in the state. The public health department listened, and tells us they haven't pursued any monitoring of hydrogen sulfide at oil and gas facilities since."

COMMENT:
According to a recent report "NEW MEXICO AND COLORADO: Toxic Soup of Harmful Chemicals Found in the Air Near Schools and Homes in the Four Corners," “Acrylonitrile, benzene, methylene chloride and ethylbenzene are carcinogens found in the air samples. Levels of these chemicals exceed the level determined to cause an increased risk of cancer,” stated Mark Chernaik, Ph.D., an independent environmental health expert retained to review the sample results.

HUFFINGTON POST: Colorado Officials Investigating Hydrogen Sulfide Reports At Oil And Gas Drilling Sites--August 8th, 2011
http://www.gcmonitor.org/article.php?id=1358

When citizen's health, welfare and safety are ignored and abused by our government agencies, it is time for the citizens to stand up and demand justice!

John Dzenitis
Aug 5, 2011

Before 42-year-old Jose Lara of Rifle died, he recorded a six-hour deposition detailing his work in the natural gas industry.

"If I would have known the damage those tanks would do to me, I would never have cleaned them," an emotional Lara said through a Spanish translator in front of a camera and room full of attorneys.

Dying from pancreatic and liver cancer, Lara described his job with Rain for Rent, a California-based company with a branch in Rifle.

His job was to power-wash waste water tanks for numerous natural gas drilling companies. For years, Lara said he was not supplied with a respirator, protective gear, or any warning of what he could be exposed to.

"The chemicals, the smell was so bad," Lara said. "Once I got out, I couldn't stop throwing up. I couldn't even talk."..continued...

You Can't Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too

2012-01-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

Frank Joseph Smecker and Derrick Jensen,
July 16, 2011

Let's expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running.

With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it's terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this - the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil - thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for "growth."

Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake....continued...

Industry Defends Fracking--Farmington Times

2012-01-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

EXERPT:
"The entire 21st century," he said, "will be dominated by oil, gas and coal."
By Chuck Slothower

08/13/2011
ALBUQUERQUE — New Mexico oil and gas drillers are bewildered by recent controversy regarding hydraulic fracturing, a technique used for decades in the San Juan Basin.

Fracturing jumped into public consciousness as drilling in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York drew the attention of national media organizations.

Pushing back against negative publicity, speakers at the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico's annual meeting at the Sandia Resort and Casino sought to portray fracturing as routine...continued....

Documents Reveal Industry and Gov't Collude on Shale Gas

2012-01-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"After researchers at Duke University in North Caroline found high levels of contamination in groundwater within a kilometre of fracked shale gas wells in New York and Pennsylvania, Alberta's Tories uniformly dismissed the science last spring.

"The experience we have with drilling in Alberta would preclude those kinds of results," said Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner. (Alberta has been ruled by one party for 40 years and gets 30 per cent of its revenue from hydrocarbons.)

The deal also reveals that shale gas will create "a new large water use category" for which best practices and regulations don't really exist. The agreement's three primary goals are to boost public confidence, "address industry's need for water" and achieve vague "regulatory outcomes."

It also accuses "environmental non-government organizations" of "supporting an ill-informed campaign on hydraulic fracturing and water related issues in British Columbia." The only non-government stakeholder listed on the agreement is the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

According to the plan, the three western provinces will shortly unveil "consistent communication documents and key messages about shale as development" as well as baseline water evaluations within the next couple of months."

COMMENT:
The same industry "speak" we are hearing in the United States is being used by industry in Canada. Look for the well-crafted wording that industry is crafting here, Canada and abroad, to tell the public how safe hydraulic fracturing is, and that their work will give them employment and riches. AND, in the same breath, steal their clean drinking water and air. If ever there was an emperor's new clothes, this is it!
By Andrew Nikiforuk
8-19-2011

Alberta's New Democrats have called for a special provincial investigation of controversial shale gas drilling following the release of two leaked government documents showing strong collusion between industry and government on resource development in three western provinces.

A government of Alberta cabinet briefing note dated Aug. 3, 2011 says, "Shale gas environmental concerns in the media and in the public in other jurisdictions are potentially problematic for energy development and environmental management in Alberta."..continued...

7 Ways Oil and Gas Companies Are Trying to Buy Positive Public Sentiment for Fracking

2012-01-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Their high-dollar campaign to put a happy face on this risky practice is designed to challenge the growing movement to ban fracking that's heating up across the country."

COMMENT:
The push-back by citizens against this industrial contamination is coast-to-coast and across the globe. When people's water wells begin bubbling and spewing methane gas after being fracked and can be lit on fire, it is pretty clear that industry is not telling the entire truth about their practices. But the public is engaging in a strong public campaign and bringing this information forward. Let us also not forget it is not just our water that is getting poisoned by industry. The air next to oil and gas well development is laden with the chemicals from this industrial process as well. If we want to keep our Earth healthy for the species that depend upon clean air and water, it is time for industry to step down and out, and for our government to stop endorsing and encouraging fossil fuel extraction.

Wenonah Hauter
August 17, 2011

Their high-dollar campaign to put a happy face on this risky practice is designed to challenge the growing movement to ban fracking that's heating up across the country.
|
Sometimes reality is stranger than science fiction. That's the case with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking -- a dangerous technology that's much like setting off a giant pipe bomb four or five miles underground. Millions of gallons of water, chemicals and sand are injected deep into shale rock formations at high pressures to break open the rock and release the gas.

The promoters say its safe. Or that's what the oil and gas industry would have you think, anyway. But behind the scenes, the industry is fighting tooth and nail to keep fracking unregulated, and its claims of safety, economic prosperity and energy security unquestioned. Their high-dollar campaign to put a happy face on this risky practice is designed to challenge the growing movement to ban fracking that's heating up across the country: people are saying no to this risky technology that, if pursued, will negatively impact our health, water, and economy...continued...

Sewage as drinking water?

2012-01-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"When the water [treated sewage water] finally reaches the tap, Fuqua [city manager] said, its origin is “something I wouldn’t think about at all.”

COMMENT:
Texas oil companies have been drilling for oil and gas for decades, using countless trillions of gallons of fresh drinking water. Today, the people are drinking reclaimed sewage water for their life-sustaining water source. Does that make sense?

Las Vegas, New Mexico, is considering the same direction. And they are poised to pass a regulatory oil and gas ordinance that allows drilling for natural gas to take place in San Miguel County.

One natural gas well when drilled and "fracked" uses upwards of 5 million gallons of clean drinking water. And that well can be fracked as many as 19 times. That is upwards of 95 million gallons of fresh drinking water per well. To each 1-2 million gallons of clean, fresh drinking water, 3,000 gallons of hazardous/toxic chemicals are added. Does that make sense?

As of 2007, San Juan County, New Mexico, alone, had between 7,000-14,000 active oil and natural gas wells.

When our clean drinking water supply is perviously low and contaminated here in New Mexico already (743 industry reported case in San Juan County from oil and gas drilling according to O.C.D.) does natural gas development that uses and contaminates our clean drinking water make sense?

Angela K. Brown
August 15, 2011

FORT WORTH, Texas — In parched West Texas, it’s often easier to drill for oil than to find new sources of water.

So after years of diminishing water supplies made even worse by the second-most severe drought in state history, some communities are resorting to a plan that might have seemed absurd a generation ago: turning sewage into drinking water.

Construction recently began on a $13 million water-reclamation plant believed to be the first in Texas. And officials have worked to dispel any fears that people will be drinking their neighbors’ urine, promising the system will yield clean, safe water. Some residents are prepared to put aside any squeamishness if it means having an abundant water supply....continued...

Colorado property owners faced with possibility of being forced into drilling plans

2012-01-20T18:46:00.000-07:00

Mark Jaffe

08/14/2011

Elbert County landowner Mark Fault signed a lease that allows Chesapeake Energy Corp. to drill beneath his land in the Cross Diamond subdivision. He is on his property Thursday afternoon, August 11, 2011. (Karl Gehring / The Denver Post)

The landman for Chesapeake Energy Corp. presented Mark Faut with a choice: sign a lease for his oil rights or have his 7 acres forced into the drilling plan by the state.

"That was it, no questions, no discussion," said Faut, who owns a rental home in the Cross Diamond subdivision in Elbert County. "It was, 'Sign or we'll force pool.' "

Across Elbert and Douglas counties, where energy companies are competing for leases, landmen are using the "forced pooling" card as leverage, property owners say....continued....

Radio Interview with Mari Margil, CELDF, on our health and nature's rights

2012-01-20T18:42:00.002-07:00

Part Two-- Radio interview with Thomas Linzey, senior legal counsel, CELDF

2012-01-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

Part 1--Interview with Thomas Linzey, senior legal counsel for CELDF

2012-01-20T18:39:00.001-07:00

Earthquake Outbreak: Arkansas Bans Fracking Operations Inside Thousand-Square-Mile Area

2012-01-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

August 10th, 2011

As if radioactive wastewater, exploding wells and flammable tap water weren’t bad enough, fracking has now been tied to another environmental threat – earthquakes, thousands of them. Geologists have tied fracking wastewater disposal wells in central Arkansas to an outbreak of more than 1,200 so-called “minor earthquakes” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). At least one startled resident is suing the responsible gas companies for the significant damage one of those earthquakes caused to his home.

The good news is common sense has prevailed in Arkansas. According to the Democrat-Gazette, the state’s Oil and Gas Commission has voted to ban fracking wastewater disposal wells within a 1,150-square-mile area north of Conway in the Fayetteville Shale region. According to the Arkansas Geological Survey (AGS), the fracking operations were taking place on top of an active fault line.

More on "fracking"--Letter to the Editor

2012-01-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
For anyone wanting definitive reports on water and air contamination from "fracking," check out the many sources indicated below in the letter to the editor.
August 06, 2011
Gary Adler

I deeply thank Misters Jolly and Whitaker for their letters, because I am open to public discussions on critical issues and agree that facts matter.

I have read well over 100 articles and studies concerning fracking. Some of the sources are: http://www.denverpost.com, http://www.coloradoindependent.com, http://www.propublica.org, http://www.huffingtonpost.com, http://www.nytimes.com, http://www.alternet.org, http://www.truthout.org.

I encourage everyone to access these sites, search "fracking" and read some of the articles. Decide what you think.

One example proves well water contamination by methane near many fracking wells. (http://www.alternet.org/water/150891/scientific_study_links_flammable_drinking_water_to_fracking).

Concerning issues of air pollution, methane and health related to fracking, please see http://www.propublica.org/article/epa-proposes-new-rules-on-emissions-released-by-fracking....continued....

Bingaman, beware of sneak attacks

2012-01-20T18:21:00.000-07:00

7/19/2011

As if congressional Republicans weren't portraying themselves as villains already by toadying to fat cats on whom they can't bear to restore fair tax rates during our national financial crisis, they're also twirling their moustaches on the environmental stage.

In the House of Representatives, where they have a 242-193 majority, they've launched a frontal attack on such basic health protections as the Clean Water Act by seeking to block the Environmental Protection Agency from stepping in where state officials cozy up to polluters.....continued.....

Only Green Technology Can Avert 'Planetary Catastrophe'

2012-01-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
•• "It is rapidly expanding energy use, mainly driven by fossil fuels, that explains why humanity is on the verge of breaching planetary sustainability boundaries through global warming, biodiversity loss, and disturbance of the nitrogen-cycle balance and other measures of the sustainability of the Earth"s ecosystem," the report says.

•• "About half of the forests that once covered the Earth are gone, groundwater resources are being depleted and contaminated, enormous reductions in biodiversity have already taken place," according to the report, and, "through increased burning of fossil fuels, the stability of the planet's climate is being threatened by global warming."

COMMENT:
Since the oil industry is the 2nd or 1st largest contributor (depending upon which article you read) to carbon emissions, seems they gotta go--or we all go. Perhaps they know this and their frenzy to drill for the last of their precious $ from the Earth is the reason we are experiencing such a sense of assault upon our communities, water, air, land and cultures. If you knew your wheel barrel full of gold would be worthless in a few years when a new currency would be replacing it, would you leave it to expire? This, however, this does not give industry the right, regardless.....let us launch the new Environmental Movement today and protect the last vestiges industry has yet to destroy!
NEW YORK, New York, July 5, 2011 (ENS) - Humanity is near to breaching the sustainability of Earth, and needs a technological revolution greater and faster than the industrial revolution to avoid "a major planetary catastrophe," warns a new United Nations report.

"The World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Technological Transformation," published today by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs calls for investments of at least $1.9 trillion per year to avert this catastrophe.

"It is rapidly expanding energy use, mainly driven by fossil fuels, that explains why humanity is on the verge of breaching planetary sustainability boundaries through global warming, biodiversity loss, and disturbance of the nitrogen-cycle balance and other measures of the sustainability of the Earth"s ecosystem," the report says...continued....

Music video on "fracking"

2012-01-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

by Eric Umansky
May 12, 2011

Have you been curious what all the hubbub on "fracking" is about? Here is a fabulous music video explaining it:

Medical experts say “Stop Drilling” now. Cities ignore warnings--PR Newswire

2012-01-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2012

Industry Called Upon to Set Up Foundation to Conduct Needed, Independent Research

Leading U.S. medical experts urged today that the rapid expansion of unconventional natural gas drilling (known as "hydrofracking") for natural gas extraction be paused so that necessary research can be done into the potential harmful effects on human health.

The comments were made in statements delivered today at a conference sponsored by the nonprofit Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) and the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children's Health and the Environment (MACCHE).

The major PSE/MACCHE event brought together public health experts, physicians, epidemiologists and other experts from various research areas to address the public health aspects of unconventional natural gas drilling....continued.....

Ohio Earthquake Was Not a Natural Event, Expert Says

2012-01-10T15:39:00.001-07:00

Kim Palmer

Jan 3, 2012

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - A 4.0 magnitude earthquake in Ohio on New Year's Eve did not occur naturally and may have been caused by high-pressure liquid injection related to oil and gas exploration and production, an expert hired by the state of Ohio said on Tuesday.

Ohio's Department of Natural Resources on Sunday suspended operations at five deep well sites in Youngstown, Ohio, where the injection of water was taking place, while they evaluate seismological data from a rare quake in the area.
The wells are about 9,000 feet deep and are used to dispose of water from oil and gas wells. The process is related to fracking, the controversial injection of chemical-laced water and sand into rock to release oil and gas. Critics say that the high pressure injection of the liquid causes seismic activity....continued.....

Federal agency cancels water delivery to Dimock, Pa.

2012-01-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

COMMENT: Why did the EPA abruptly cancel delivery of fresh water to residents of Dimock? Supplying untainted water admits contamination. Curiously, the feds discontinued the supply of clean drinking water to the citizens of Pavillon Wyoming as well........

January 7th, 2012

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency abruptly changed its mind Saturday about delivering fresh water to residents of a northeastern Pennsylvania village where residential wells were found to be tainted by a natural gas drilling operation.

Only 24 hours after promising them water, EPA officials informed residents of Dimock that a tanker truck wouldn't be coming after all. The about-face left residents furious, confused and let down -- and, once again, scrambling for water for bathing, washing dishes and flushing toilets.

Agency officials would not explain why they reneged on their promise, or say whether water would be delivered at some point....continued.....

How a Small Wyoming Town Might Be the First to Prove its Water Damaged by Natural Gas Production

2011-12-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

Andrea Peacock,
March 25, 2011 |

Despite the testimonies of the people living by gas drilling, the companies have yet to be held accountable for damages. That might change.

Jeff and Rhonda Locker's water changed abruptly one day in the mid-1990s while Rhonda was doing the laundry. A Denver-based gas company was working over an old well in back of their house, when the wash water turned black. "It happened just like that," Jeff Locker says. "I stopped him and asked him what he did to our water, and of course he didn't do anything to our water... It's been bad ever since."

Donna Meeks' well water was so good, she used to haul it to town for the school office coffee pot. Neither she nor her husband Louis noticed anything wrong until her co-workers stopped drinking the coffee; it was 2004, and a Canadian company, EnCana, had just drilled a new well about 500 feet from the Meeks home. Some visiting friends later said they noticed the water tasted and smelled like gas, but didn't want to be rude by saying anything about it.

John and Cathy Fenton had no reason to suspect there was anything wrong with their water--it tasted fine. But just to be neighborly, they went along with the Lockers, the Meeks, and other Pavillion-area residents when the Environmental Protection Agency came in 2009 for an initial round of testing. That's when they found out that their family had been drinking water laced with methane. Follow-up tests a year later found a whole soup's worth of semi-volatile organic compounds in the family's stock well.

There's something karmic about the possibility that Pavillion, Wyoming, might be the first community to prove its water damaged by natural gas production. While water literally is life everywhere in the arid West, here it's the epicenter for deep social and political divisions.

Gas Company Financing is Preventing Residents From Getting Mortgages

2011-12-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"The mortgage is technically on the mineral rights, but it has to be filed on the property," Ward said. "In the courthouse, there is no separation (between the mineral rights on the one hand, and the land and buildings on the other). So unless you've separated your property, it's just one deed."

"For some people [those who want mortgages], it has started to cause some issues, because, for one, they were not notified of this, so the first time they find out about it is when they go to the bank because they need to put a mortgage on their home to get a little cash, and the bank says to them, 'By the way, you are fully mortgaged to the hilt. There is no way we can give you a mortgage.'"

COMMENT:
This is something the 'landman' and the gas companies don't tell you about when they offer to 'lease' your mineral/gas/oil rights. This is NOT a lease, but a transfer of sub-surface real estate. ie: a corporate land grab.

For folks who have leased their mineral rights, mortgages are not an option.

JAMES LOEWENSTEIN
August 1, 2011
TOWANDA - Chesapeake Energy Corp. recently mortgaged the mineral rights on over 1,000 properties in Bradford County, which in at least a couple of cases has prevented property owners from taking out a mortgage on their homes, a former Standing Stone secretary/treasurer said.

Diane Ward, the former secretary/treasurer of Standing Stone Township, brought up the matter at the most recent meeting of the Bradford County commissioners.

Chesapeake has mortgaged the mineral rights on over 1,000 properties on which it has a gas lease in Bradford County, in order to fund its drilling operations, Ward told the commissioners.

She said that many local property owners aren't aware that Chesapeake can mortgage the mineral rights on their properties.

"For some people, it has started to cause some issues, because, for one, they were not notified of this, so the first time they find out about it is when they go to the bank because they need to put a mortgage on their home to get a little cash, and the bank says to them, 'By the way, you are fully mortgaged to the hilt. There is no way we can give you a mortgage.'"

She said that local banks need to realize that the mortgages are only on the mineral rights, so that the banks will continue to give out mortgages to local residents....continued....

Greetings From "Frackistan"

2011-12-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"Up and down the Rockies, in Texas, across much of the northeast, and perhaps soon in your community, engaged citizens are coming together to prevent the harms of rampant gas development. Like activists across the country, they are motivated, creative, persistent. But they are fighting with a half-empty toolbox."

COMMENT:
The "regulatory system" by which industry is permitted by the state government, does not allow citizens to say "no" to development within their communities such as natural gas/"fracking" and gives citizens less than a "half-empty toolbox." This system permits industrial harm and citizens are powerless to say "no." They must accept a "sacrifice" zone which grows in leaps and bounds once industry has their legalized right (permit) to drill within the community.

But look at the City Counsel of Pittsburgh who passed a Community Rights Ordinance in 2010 that protects the citizen's right to clean water, air, land and to their health and safety and prohibits corporations from harming those rights. And most importantly, this Ordinance gives the elected officials the power to decide what development will take place within their city. The Counsel banned natural gas development/"fracking!" This right to local self governance gives the citizens and the elected officials a "full toolbox."

Check out the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and walk this walk, talk this talk, with a "full toolbox." Let us "push back" against the corporate red carpet that is paving our communities through federal and state government recognition of corporate rights over those of the People! In solidarity,

22 JULY 2011,
Trip Van Noppen

Last week, I sat with just such a group in Gunnison County, Co., a beautiful place in the mountains that is confronting rapidly expanding drilling and fracking for gas. People took time away from work and family to gather and talk about what to do.

Fruit growers are concerned that the contaminated waste water from fracking will damage their crops
Parents worry about the quality of the air and whether Gunnison will become like Farmington, New Mexico and Pinedale, Wyoming – small towns in the west plagued by some of the worst air quality in the nation because of intensive gas production.

Local business people don’t want to lose the county’s treasured mountains and streams that make Gunnison a recreation destination.

They have good reason to be concerned.

They know about health studies showing toxic contaminants in the air at fracking sites, the reported episodes of chemical poisoning, the flaming water faucets, exploding houses, and fish kills.
They don’t want their community to become like the intensely drilled area to the south, the San Juan Basin, which has been so decimated by gas development that they refer to it as “Frackistan.”...continued.....

Let the People Decide: Pittsburgh City Initiative

2011-12-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"A majority vote in the affirmative will mean that Pittsburgh makes history by taking a stand for Community Rights over corporate privilege, once again."

Just as a constitutional amendment is much stronger than a statute passed by Congress, this proposed amendment will strengthen the voice of the people by putting it directly into the Charter:

"Should the Pittsburgh Home Rule Charter be amended to add Section 104 “The City of Pittsburgh Bill of Rights”, which enumerates the right to water, the rights of natural communities, the right to a sustainable energy future, and the right to self-government, and which secures those rights by banning corporate gas extraction within the Cityand subordinating corporate rights to the rights of Pittsburgh residents?”

Councilman Doug Shields: “On matters of such importance how can you not go to the people for their advice and consent? That is something the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania forgot to do. . . When corporate special interests outweigh people’s rights, well, then where do we go from here? Throughout history, democracy has served us well. I hope we continue to embrace that concept and let people govern themselves."

Mrs. Harris went on to say that “the Solicitor even goes so far as to say that property owner rights to enjoy their property would fall on the side of drilling rather than banning drilling, and that they might sue. The fear of such suits should not deter us from letting the citizens of Pittsburgh vote on this legislation. The fear of death or degrading of our life, health, and property is much more important. This one is for the children. It’s their future, and we have to get it right.”

COMMENT:
When unjust lawmaking deprives the citizens of clean water, air, land and local self government to determine what takes place within their own communities, it is possible to take justice into our own hands and create just laws----"thank you" City of Pittsburgh Councilmen for showing the country how to what we did not know was possible!

August 1, 2011
CONTACT: Ben Price, (717) 254-3233
benprice@celdf.org

(Tuesday, August 2, 2011) On Monday,August 1st, Pittsburgh City Council, by a vote of 6-3, approved the placing of a referendum question on the November ballot that will allow City residents to amend the Pittsburgh Home Rule Charter. The proposed amendment includes a Community Bill of Rights, and a ban on extraction of“natural” gas within the City to protect those rights. Council members voting in favor of the measure were Burgess, Harris, Kraus, Peduto, Rudiak and Shields. Voting against the measure were Dowd, Kail-Smith and Lavelle.

Councilman Burgess, who had abstained from voting the measure out of Committee on July 27th, indicated that no matter what reservations he may have about the amendment, voting his conscience and principles meant that Council should leave it to the People to decide. His vote created a veto-proof majority for the measure, which is significant since the mayor has indicated he may chose to use his veto power to strike the ballot question. However,the Mayor has ten days in which to sign, veto, or let slide any legislation. If he waits the full ten days, it will be past the date when the Division of Elections must have the referendum to put it on the ballot. Council President Darlene Harris has requested in a letter to him that the Mayor act early. There is no guarantee that he will do so. If he decides not to act, the measure might not appear on this coming election’s ballot....continued...www.celdf.org

Thoughts on Norway, Oil and the Berserker: Affluence, the Tragedy Reminds Us, is No Defence Against Extremism

2011-12-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"And in a strange sort of way, it was oil money and easy living that set the scene for the bloody drama that brought thousands of immigrants from Iraq, Somalia and Pakistan to Norway's shores. And it was this migration, sometimes motivated by the search for cheap labour and sometimes by do-gooderism, that led 20 per cent of the Norwegian electorate to vote for the right-wing Progress Party last election.

And so bad things can happen to a people blessed and cursed with oil. Arrogance can blind a people, too. And affluence is no defence against extremism. Nor is petroleum any guarantor of anything other than greater complexity and vulnerability."

COMMENT:
This is a tale of how culture, health, community, and values are destroyed by the hunger for money......

Andrew Nikiforuk,
27 Jul 2011

• Geography, scarcity and then oil, have defined the Norwegian ethic.

• Norway Nightmare Sounds Alarm Bells in Europe

I grew up in a Nordic household and I am a Son of Norway. So when I learned of the bombing in Oslo and the massacre of young Norwegians, a part of me felt as numb as frostbite. Horror does that to a parent: it freezes the soul.

I also immediately knew that only a Norwegian could be the author of something so dark and cold. And Steig Larson, the Swedish journalist and thriller writer, would have known it too, if he still lived. He understood how comfort and self-satisfaction can write bloody disasters and spawn Nordic monsters.

Now everyone has heard the cliché: Norway is a small and peaceful country inhabited by a generous people with Lutheran reading habits and a sense of humor that could, as the Swedes say, benefit from a massive dose of Vitamin D therapy. It's the sort of treed place where people pay big taxes so that everyone can live well. Or at least not suffer much.

It is also a small nation (five million people) both blessed and cursed by oil. In 1969 the discovery of large offshore reserves dramatically changed Norway's fortunes and character. Despite the best of intentions and some of the world's most thoughtful public policy, petro dollars bedeviled and softened the place as only oil can do.

And in a strange sort of way, it was oil money and easy living that set the scene for the bloody drama that brought thousands of immigrants from Iraq, Somalia and Pakistan to Norway's shores. And it was this migration, sometimes motivated by the search for cheap labour and sometimes by do-gooderism, that led 20 per cent of the Norwegian electorate to vote for the right-wing Progress Party last election. And it was these very developments that ultimately served as an excuse for the fatherless and affluent video-game player Anders Breivik, a member of the Progress Party and a climate change denier to boot, to behave like some berserker. (Berserkers, "tasters of blood," were Viking warriors who fought combatants or slaughtered innocents in a trance-like state.)

Before oil

Now before oil, Norway was a nation of hardy sardine canners, ship builders, and small farmers. It also made a creative impression on the world. It nurtured Edvard Greig one of the world's finest composer, Knut Hamsen, the father of the modern novel, and Henrik Ibsen, perhaps the best playwright since Shakespeare. You can't walk down the main street of Oslo without stepping on Ibsen quotes embedded in the pavement. (Ibsen famously noted that a man can't wear good pants when fighting for the truth.)

After oil, Norway lost much of its creativity but still produced some remarkable petroleum critics. Gro Harlem Bruntland, Norway's first female prime minister and one of Brievik's targets (she left the island one hour before the killing began) gave the world a bold recipe for sustainable development that unfortunately became a global chorus for business as usual. It also fathered Arne Naess, the mountaineering green philosopher who argued that humans don't have the right to reduce the world's biological diversity.

An Inside Look at What Happens When Gas Drillers Are Exempt from Environmental Law:

2011-12-27T17:49:00.001-07:00

May 6, 2011 |
BLANCO, New Mexico -- Chris Velasquez sees the impacts of gas development in the San Juan Basin of northern New Mexico through the eyes of a rancher, and those of a man whose roots in this country pre-date both the gas rigs and the arrival of Anglos.

He and his dad ran cattle, until recently, on a grazing allotment called the Rosa, rolling high desert lands punctuated by bluffs and arroyos, ringed by mesas, adjacent to the Carson National Forest on the east, the Southern Ute reservation to the north, and bordered on the west by Navajo Lake. In a way, it's what's left of Velasquez' ancestral homeland. "We used to live where the Pine River and the San Juan meet up here, then when they built the lake, it either was drown or move," he says. In 1962, the Bureau of Reclamation completed a dam stretching three-quarters of a mile across the San Juan River. The idea was to control flooding and provide irrigation water for the Navajo tribe. It also displaced Velasquez' community. "All my ancestor's on my mom's side, well on my dad's side too, came from right up here," he says. "My grandpa and my grandma on my mom's side, they were the second farm below the dam. They got chased out too. From right here on, all the people who lived here -- they were all Spanish people -- relocated. Threw them to the four winds. Scattered them all over the place."...continued.....

EPA Releases New Air Quality Rules for Drillers

2011-12-27T17:44:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"A package of air quality standards proposed today by U.S. EPA would require the oil and gas industry to cut its emissions to protect people from smog, cancer-causing chemicals and climate change -- and would also save drillers millions of dollars per year, the agency said."

COMMENT:
Now that there is acknowledgement that the oil and gas industry's air pollution causes cancer, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing some air quality standards. Will the standards take into account multiple wells or will the standards relate to individual wells as is currently the case? Whatever happened to the "Protection" rather than remediation on the part of the EPA?

Gabriel Nelson
July 28, 2011

A package of air quality standards proposed today by U.S. EPA would require the oil and gas industry to cut its emissions to protect people from smog, cancer-causing chemicals and climate change -- and would also save drillers millions of dollars per year, the agency said.

The four rules, which would need to be finalized by the end of February 2012 under a settlement with environmentalists, include new limits on both volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and toxic emissions. EPA says the standards would cut smog-forming VOCs across the industry by 25 percent and toxics by about 30 percent, and as a side benefit, would cut methane -- a potent greenhouse gas -- by about 26 percent.

At a time when the Obama administration is taking fire from business groups that claim its environmental rules are too costly, the new standards were touted as saving money for the oil industry by forcing companies to do more to keep natural gas from escaping into the air.

The rules would cost businesses an estimated $754 million in 2015, but the natural gas and condensate that would be captured by new pollution controls could be sold for $783 million, the agency's analysis shows....continued.....

Quakes Push Arkansas to Limit Gas-Waste Wells

2011-12-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

BEN CASSELMAN
July 26th 2011

Arkansas regulators are expected Tuesday to order the closure of some underground storage facilities that natural-gas drillers use to dispose of contaminated water because of concerns they are causing earthquakes.

The ban would only affect part of the state and wouldn't stop drilling in the Fayetteville Shale gas field there. But it highlights how water issues—including the disposal of waste tied to the controversial hydraulic fracturing process—have emerged as a major challenge for the oil and gas industry across the U.S.

Hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking," involves injecting water, sand and chemicals deep into the ground to break up oil-and-gas-bearing ...

Oregon LNG terminal plans reverse from importing to exporting gas

2011-12-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"If natural gas producers and LNG terminal backers have their way, Oregon could become a significant hub in exporting domestic gas to Asia, joining a nationwide push that could have a meaningful -- and according to critics, disastrous -- impact on the price of natural gas for U.S. consumers.

With domestic reserve estimates surging because of successful drilling in tight shale formations, gas producers and terminal developers are pushing hard to export what they describe as surplus gas."

"This is the bastard marriage of our oil industry and the financial industry," said Paul Sansone, a former energy company executive and LNG opponent who lives in Gales Creek. "All along, the goal has been getting gas to be like oil; to break up these regional markets and have a world price so they can speculate on it."

"I am already on record opposing the export of natural gas from Alaska," said Sen. Ron Wyden in an e-mailed statement. "I have the same concerns today that exporting natural gas will benefit gas companies at the expense of the American consumer."

COMMENT:
To further compound the damage to American's rights, industry and the U.S. government call citizens "unpatriotic" who oppose natural gas development. Today, we see the full intentions of industry and our government.....to become the world's largest natural gas exporter. This has nothing to do with patriotism, but everything to do with money. The ruse of "patriotism" that is being used to hush "the people" from speaking out and stepping up to stop the damaging drilling that is destroying the last vestiges of land and polluting our water is yet another act making history wherein Earth's resources are for the "taking" by those in power.

It is time to act, in solidarity!

July 16, 2011
Ted Sickinger

Two years ago, energy companies trying to build terminals to import liquefied natural gas to Oregon laughed at the notion of using their projects instead to export burgeoning supplies of U.S. and Canadian gas to lucrative markets in Asia.

The idea, LNG backers said, was a conspiracy theory concocted by environmentalists and landowners who didn't want pipelines laid across public and private lands.

Today, those opponents can safely remove their tinfoil hats.

If natural gas producers and LNG terminal backers have their way, Oregon could become a significant hub in exporting domestic gas to Asia, joining a nationwide push that could have a meaningful -- and according to critics, disastrous -- impact on the price of natural gas for U.S. consumers.

With domestic reserve estimates surging because of successful drilling in tight shale formations, gas producers and terminal developers are pushing hard to export what they describe as surplus gas.
Two LNG terminals on the Gulf Coast have already applied for -- and in one case received -- regulatory approval to retrofit their idle facilities for export. In British Columbia, energy companies are contemplating multiple liquefaction terminals to export gas produced from that province's shale formations.

Those same trends could breathe new life back into Oregon's LNG proposals -- projects that many left for dead due to collapsing domestic gas prices and stiff local opposition....continued.....

This American Life" series on natural gas and the impacts this fossil fuel extraction is having on the world

2011-12-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

Game Changer
Originally aired 07.08.2011
A professor in Pennsylvania makes a calculation, to discover that his state is sitting atop a massive reserve of natural gas—enough to revolutionize how America gets its energy. But another professor in Pennsylvania does a different calculation and reaches a troubling conclusion: that getting natural gas out of the ground poses a risk to public health. Two men, two calculations, and two very different consequences. (Transcript)

PROLOGUE:
Host Ira Glass tells the stories of two professors, each making a calculation that no one had made before. One gets acclaim. One ends up out of a job. The first, Terry Engelder, a geologist at Penn State, was estimating the amount of natural gas that's recoverable from the Marcellus shale, a giant rock formation that's under Pennsylvania and several other Eastern states. The second, Conrad "Dan" Volz, at the University of Pittsburgh, estimated how much toxic crap—chemicals and pollution from gas exploration—might be getting into water supplies. (6 1/2 minutes)

Act One. You've Got Shale.
Producer Sarah Koenig continues the story Terry Engelder and Dan Volz, their rival calculations about natural gas in Pennsylvania, and how each was treated by his university. She explains how Pennsylvania's universities, politicans and industry have united to develop natural gas. Other states have been more cautious. (26 1/2 minutes)

Act Two. Ground War.
Sarah takes us to Mt. Pleasant, PA, where a gas exploration company called Range Resources has leased 95% of the township's land. This led to a standoff between Mt. Pleasant and Range, starting with zoning disputes and ending in a full scale PR war—a war in which the town was seriously outgunned. (23 1/2 minutes)

PART V--USDA Attacks Rural America with Smart Meters

2011-12-27T17:26:00.001-07:00

By Barbara H. Peterson

July 2011

Farm Wars

On June 9, 2011, the Obama Administration Established the “White House Rural Council to Strengthen Rural Communities” via Executive Order. “Strengthening Rural Communities” is the spin. The real issue is control. Rural communities are where food is grown, and control of food is a main priority for the New World Order.

So, who is in charge of this Council? Why the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, of course!

Sec. 3. Membership. (a) The Secretary of Agriculture shall serve as the Chair of the Council… (PDF of E.O.)

Just what is this new Rural Council?

The White House Rural Council will coordinate programs across government to encourage public-private partnerships to promote further economic prosperity and quality of life in rural communities nationwide. Chaired by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the Council will be responsible for
providing recommendations for investment in rural areas and will coordinate Federal engagement with a variety of rural stakeholders, including agricultural organizations, small businesses, and state, local, and tribal governments.

PART IV--Who is in Charge of Your Local Community?

2011-12-27T17:03:00.004-07:00

EXCERPTS:

"Today the World Health Organization/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B). This is the same classification used for lead, and DDT and EMF’s from power lines.

Cell phones, SMART METERS, cell towers, DECT and other cordless phones, baby monitors and other wireless devices all emit non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation. Governments and decision makers can no longer hide behind the “no RF health effects” industry mantra."

"On July 5, 2011, a federal district court judge in New Mexico ruled that the Telecommunications Act preempts the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), even if such an interpretation would "condemn a class of citizens to death because of their disability." He further ruled that the Telecommunications Act supercedes the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

by Arthur Firstenberg, Santa Fe

PART III--IARC CLASSIFIES RADIO FREQUENCY ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS AS

2011-12-27T17:01:00.006-07:00

The type of radiation emitted by both cell phones and smart meters has been linked to cancer by the World Health Organization (WHO), reversing its previous stance. Radio frequency (rf) radiation has been placed in the same category of carcinogens as lead, DDT, engine exhaust, pesticides, and chloroform. That means smart meters even more so as Hirsch reports smart meters to emit up to 160 times the whole body radiation compared to cell phones. (SMD)

IARC CLASSIFIES RADIO FREQUENCY ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS AS
POSSIBLY CARCINOGENIC TO HUMANS

31 May 2011
Lyon, France, May 31, 2011 ‐‐ The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer1, associated with wireless phone use.

Over the last few years, there has been mounting concern about the possibility of adverse health effects resulting from exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields, such as those emitted by wireless communication devices. The number of mobile phone subscriptions is estimated at 5 billion globally.

From May 24–31 2011, a Working Group of 31 scientists from 14 countries has been meeting at IARC in Lyon, France, to assess the potential carcinogenic hazards from exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields. These assessments will be published as Volume 102 of the IARC Monographs, which will be the fifth volume in this series to focus on physical agents, after Volume 55 (Solar Radiation), Volume 75 and Volume 78 on ionizing radiation (X‐rays, gamma‐rays, neutrons, radio‐nuclides), and Volume 80 on non‐ionizing radiation (extremely low‐frequency electromagnetic fields).

The IARC Monograph Working Group discussed the possibility that these exposures might induce long‐term health effects, in particular an increased risk for cancer. This has relevance for public health, particularly for users of mobile phones, as the number of users is large and growing, particularly among young adults and children.
The IARC Monograph Working Group discussed and evaluated the available literature on the following exposure categories involving radio frequency electromagnetic fields:

Does the WHO Decision Pertain to Smart Meters? SCIENTIST WARNS OF SMART METER DANGERS, JULY 9, 2011

Part II: Who is In Charge of Your Health? Corporations, the state, or YOU?

2011-12-27T16:59:00.002-07:00

COMMENT:
This Spring, La Jicarita Coopertive in Mora County began a county-wide installation of their new "smart" meter program for their fiber optics upgrade. At a town meeting in Wagon Mound, their spokespersons explained the advantages of faster internet to a town of 300 residents who average about 1% on computer/internet services. What the spokespeople did not tell them about the intended "smart" meter installation at every home and business, was that the "type of radiation emitted by both cell phones and "smart" meters has been linked to cancer by the World Health Organization (WHO), reversing its previous stance. Radiofrequency (rf) radiation has been placed in the same category of carcinogens as lead, DDT, engine exhaust, pesticides, and chloroform. That means smart meters even moreso as Hirsch reports smart meters to emit up to 160 times the whole body radiation compared to cell phones."

On July 5, 2011, a federal district court judge in New Mexico ruled that the Telecommunications Act preempts the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), even if such an interpretation would "condemn a class of citizens to death because of their disability." He further ruled that the Telecommunications Act supercedes the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
>>
This decision by Judge James A. Parker goes to the essence of the conflict between wireless technology and health. But the breadth of the decision will also have implications for every person with a disability in this country, all disability organizations, and fundamental civil liberties. What remains of the ADA if it cannot even prevent a taking of life? What remains of our constitution? This opinion is so egregious and clear that it presents an opportunity on appeal to link our issue to popular issues, to generate real publicity, and to involve influential people all over the country.
>>
The case, Firstenberg v. City of Santa Fe, Case # 1:11-cv-00008-JAP-WDS, relates to AT&T's upgrade of all of its cell towers in Santa Fe, which occurred last November 15. In district court, I argued that the city's failure to require a permit from AT&T for its upgrades is part of a systematic policy that discriminates against people with disabilities. I also argued that because the Telecommunications Act requires universal coverage of the United States with "advanced telecommunications
services," people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity will have no place to live where they can survive.
>>
You can help. The judge's ruling must be appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by August 4. On July 10 I was on a teleconference with people in several parts of the country who are involved with this issue,
>>
including some who have brought related lawsuits or are considering doing so. They are looking for a lawyer or disability organization to appeal this case. However, time is short, and there is a good attorney here in Santa Fe who will take the case if we can raise $20,000 in the next two weeks. We already have commitments totaling $5,000.
>>
If you work with a disability organization, please forward this email to them and ask them if they want to be involved, either by filing an amicus brief later or taking on the case now. Also forward it to other individuals or organizations who may be interested in helping.
>>
We are asking those who can help to respond by email telling us the amount that you can pledge toward this legal case. Donations will be tax deductible.
>>
Thank you.
>>
Arthur Firstenberg
PO Box 6216
Santa Fe, NM 87502
(505) 471-0129

PART I--World Health Organization: Wireless May Cause Cancer

2011-12-27T16:56:00.001-07:00

Nate Seltenrich —
Jun 1, 2011

Reversing its long-held position on the safety of wireless radiation from cell phones, wi-fi, and “smart” meters, the World Health Organization announced yesterday that it had re-classified such non-ionizing radiation as “possibly carcinogenic.” The organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer placed radiation from these devices in the same category as DDT and leaded gasoline.

PG&E, which leads the nation in deployment of wireless “smart” meters, has relied heavily on the WHO’s assertion of the meters’ safety in defending its devices to critics. However, the WHO’s previous position dated to 1996 and did not reflect the findings of more current research. According to activist group Stop Smart Meters!, a “broad investigation into the peer-reviewed science” ultimately convinced the organization to reconsider its stance on wireless radiation....continued...

La Veta, Colorado and SWEPI

2011-12-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

Grassroots People Power is vital* to the effort of protecting the Town of La Veta and Huerfano County from destructive natural gas development and fracking. In approving Shell's drilling permit without adequate safeguards
for our air, water and safety, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) and elected County Commissioners have shunned the concerns of hundreds of affected constituents. On July 8th, the *Citizens
for Huerfano County filed a complaint for judicial review against the COGCC and Shell Western Exploration & Production, LP.* to ensure the public receives a fair and proper hearing, consultation and review, as required by law.

The Bay Area Gets Fracked: PG&E will soon receive natural gas from a drilling process that threatens the country's air and water

2011-12-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
This article says it all....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDXqEk9W-Cw --Santa Barbara documentary
Robert Gammon
July 13, 2011

Hydraulic fracturing, better known as "fracking," is quickly becoming one of the most serious threats to the environment nationwide. The controversial process involves shooting thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals and water at high speeds deep into the earth so as to fracture underground shale deposits and release otherwise impossible-to-get natural gas and oil. Fracking, in fact, is becoming so widespread, it's spurring a natural gas boom in the United States. But, so far, it has garnered little attention in California because most fracking has taken place elsewhere. But the spotlight on it could soon shift...continued.

Banning Corporate Personhood: How Communities Are Taking the Law Back from Big Companies

2011-12-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund explains how communities can fight corporate power with a new legal weapon.

These last few days for gas drilling news in New York as been critical and a new level of urgency has been reached as the country watches how New York defines and decides its fate, the future of its famous unfiltered water supply, and communities in the directly impacted regions, whether for or against drilling are forging ahead to determine their immediate future and that for future generations.

It's coming down to Home Rule and self-determination as a way to protect municipalities from frackingAs the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) releases New Recommendations for Drilling in New York explained in the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) released a few days ago, environmental groups, like Catskill Mountainkeeper are calling for a statewide ban and municipalities organize to decide the fate of their towns.
>

'Fracking' benefit to T.A. landowners arguable

2011-12-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"The benefits of the upper Chama Valley are not measured in dollars. Benefits are measured in clean water, clean air and abundant wildlife achieved by good stewardship of the land."

COMMENT:
The cat is out of the bag!

Edward L. McMillen
7/18/2011

According to the June 13 article, "Firm: Deal opens area to drilling" by Tom Sharpe, the CEO of Wind River Energy, Jack Steinhauser, asserts that there has not been "one proven case of groundwater contamination" from fracking. He is only half right in his assertion.

Let's talk facts instead of assertions.

Fact: Landowners and communities are experiencing changes in water quality and quantity that occur during and after fracking. There have been documented claims of degradation in quality and quantity of water in Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming following fracking operations.

Fact: Steinhauser and others refuse to disclose the chemicals used in the fracking process.

Fact: Hydraulic fracturing fluids are known to contain toxic chemicals. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, toxic chemicals in fracturing fluids include substances such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide and diesel fuel, which contains benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and other chemicals. These chemicals have known negative health effects, such as respiratory, neurological and reproductive impacts, impacts on the central nervous system and cancer....continued....

Canada and Alberta governments succeed in preventing Beaver Lake Cree Nation from obtaining free legal representation:

2011-12-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
Where justice lies is clearly evidenced by the recent Alberta Courts!

June 28, 2011

*UK barrister denied "right of audience" and is not allowed to work /pro bono/ in an Alberta court*

On Monday, June 27th, an Alberta judge turned down an application for a team of UK lawyers to work for free to assist the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in its massive and /costly /fight to prevent the tar sands industries from destroying their traditional lands and decimating the animals and fish that sustain them.

In issuing his judgment, Mr. Justice Yamauchi opted to follow the government's line of thinking - that Michael Mansfield, Q.C. is not a member of the Alberta Law Society and therefore does not have the right to appear in an Alberta court room. An unfortunate and rather narrow-minded decision.
*
Michael Mansfield said he is deeply disappointed in Canada's justice system. "It’s hugely disappointing when a court cannot see its way to exercise its inherent jurisdiction to permit lawyers from the UK willing to act pro bono rights of audience. The case raises enormous issues of local, national and international importance. The environment and the way of life of First Nations living in Alberta is being dramatically affected by the activities of multinational oil companies, banking institutions and government agencies. They have already lost hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land, had water resources depleted and contaminated, air polluted, and wildlife decimated. *

"This project which has been escalating since 1967 is the largest of its kind in the world and has repercussions for all of us with regard to climate change and global warming. The Cree nation in particular has taken a stand against a vast array of vested interests, who wish to continue this exploitation in the name of dirty oil. They are entitled to all the help they can garner particularly as they are a vulnerable community with limited resources.

"It is peculiarly ironic that this decision should occur in the very week that Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive in Canada, because it is the Prince’s forbears who pledged to ensure that there would be “no forced interference with the First Nation's mode of life” (treaties 1876 and 1899 between the Queen and the First Nations). The Royal Family has been repeatedly requested to address this promise which has been seriously violated and this is another opportunity for this matter to be raised."

New air study finds dangerous chemicals near gas drilling communities in Colo., N.M.

2011-12-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

David O. Williams
7/13/2011

At least 22 toxic chemicals, including four known human carcinogens, were found in nine separate air samples taken near natural gas drilling operations by community advocacy and environmental groups in Garfield and La Plata counties in Colorado and the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, according to a new report from Global Community Monitor.

Entitled “GASSED! Citizen Investigation of Natural Gas Development (pdf),” the report details how the air samples, taken near homes, playgrounds, schools and community centers, were analyzed by a certified lab.

“Carcinogenic chemicals like benzene and acrylonitrile should not be in the air we breathe – and certainly not at these highly alarming levels,” said Dr. Mark Chernaik. “These results suggest neighboring communities are not being protected and their long-term health is being put at risk.”...continued....

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY DIGS IN FOR MASSIVE EXPANSION

2011-12-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

By Keith Schneider
A new energy boom is transforming U.S. communities and landscapes as oil and gas companies spend close to $100 billion in the hunt for dirtier and more dangerous sources of fuel. First in a five-part series.

http://www.nrdconline.org/site/R?i=sY3NUcU6viS9dtKvsv8ZVA..

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)

2011-12-27T16:06:00.003-07:00

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) writes:

Attorneys for a West Virginia Corporation threaten to sue the City of Morgantown West Virginia for violating the Civil Rights of the corporation if the City's ordinance banning natural gas drilling is upheld as legal by the Monogalia County Circuit Court.

So, even if the ban is legal, the corporation attorneys say the corporation has rights that the City has no authority to violate.

Too bad Morgantown didn't adopt a Community Rights Ordinance to ban the drilling. Then the attorneys for the City could readily make the case that the City adopted the ordinance precisely to protect rights: the legitimate rights of the residents of the City, which are under threat of violation by the North East Energy Corporation.

The Community Rights ordinances adopted by Pittsburgh, West Homestead, Balwin PA, as well as Mountain Lake Park WV and Wales NY recognize the rights of the people as superior to privileges granted to corporations in the name of the people, and those ordinance revoke such privileges from corporations that would attempt to violate the prohibition against drilling and thereby violate the rights of community residents.

So which is it? Corporations have Civil Rights, or People have Civil Rights?

Isn't it time we took a stand to clear the air? Isn't it time for your community to adopt a Community Rights Ordinance and stop letting corporate claims to superior rights for corporations over people go unchallenged?

Contact info@CELDF.org

France Vote Outlaws ‘Fracking’ Shale for Natural Gas, Oil Extraction

2011-12-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"French senators voted to outlaw hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, making France the first country to pass a law banning the technique for extracting natural gas and oil."

"Energy companies that plan to use fracking to produce oil and gas in France will have their permits revoked and its use could lead to fines and prison, according to the law passed by a vote of 176 in favor, 151 against by the senators in Paris."

COMMENT:
The first country to hold human, animal, environmental, and cultural rights and values over government/corporate growth and wealth.

By Tara Patel
Jul 1, 2011

French senators voted to outlaw hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, making France the first country to pass a law banning the technique for extracting natural gas and oil.

“We are at the end of a legislative marathon that stirred emotion from lawmakers and the public,” French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said late yesterday before the vote. Hydraulic fracturing will be illegal and parliament would have to vote for a new law to allow research using the technique, she said.

Energy companies that plan to use fracking to produce oil and gas in France will have their permits revoked and its use could lead to fines and prison, according to the law passed by a vote of 176 in favor, 151 against by the senators in Paris.

Lawmakers of the ruling UMP party voted in favor of the bill while the opposition Socialists rejected the proposal for not going far enough. Before the French vote, the ban had moved between the upper and lower houses of parliament since March....continued....

The Strange Silencing of Liberal America

2011-12-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote, “When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”

7 July 2011
How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, 'Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia', was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? 'Year Zero' had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant’s rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

Six months later, a PBS official told me, “This wasn’t censorship. We’re into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry.”

In Britain, the long war in Northern Ireland spawned a similar, deniable censorship. The journalist Liz Curtis compiled a list of more than 50 television films in Britain that were never shown or indefinitely delayed. The word “ban” was rarely used, and those responsible would invariably insist they believed in free speech....continued....

First Successful Case Enforcing Rights of Nature in Ecuador

2011-12-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

Mia
July 1st, 2011

On March 30, 2011, the Provincial Court in Loja, Ecuador ruled in favor of Nature – specifically the Vilcabamba river – marking the first successful case enforcing Rights of Nature outlined in the 2008 Constitution.

The case was brought in response to excessive dumping of large quantities of rock and excavation material in the Vilcabamba River from a project to widen a nearby road.

This road project had been underway for three years without studies on its environmental impact. The associated dumping violated the Rights of Nature by altering the river’s flow, increasing the risk of disastrous floods and dangerously fast currents, and negatively affecting the riverside populations who utilize the river’s resources..continued....

Cuomo Will Seek to Lift Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

2011-12-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
The current action taken by the EPA for air and water studies in response to citizen outcry over the impacts from hydraulic fracturing has yet to result in completed studies. In spite of the grave health concerns over water and air contamination, Cuomo is calling to lift the ban on hydraulic fracturing in NY.

In the words of Manfred Max-Neef: "The politicians know exactly what not to do, they just do it anyway."

In the words of John Pilger: "If power was truly invincible, it would not fear the people so much as to expend vast resources trying to distract and deceive them."

DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
June 30, 2011

The Cuomo administration is seeking to lift what has effectively been a moratorium in New York State on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial technique used to extract natural gas from shale, state environmental regulators said on Thursday.

Protesters in Albany rallied in April against a drilling technique widely known as hydrofracking.

The process would be allowed on private lands, opening New York to one of the fastest-growing — critics would say reckless — areas of the energy industry. It would be banned inside New York City’s sprawling upstate watershed, as well as inside a watershed used by Syracuse, and in underground water sources used by other cities and towns. It would also be banned on state lands, like parks and wildlife preserves.

It will most likely take months before the policy becomes official. On Friday, the State Department of Environmental Conservation will release a long-awaited study of the process, widely known as hydrofracking. The report will include recommendations about how to proceed, and then there will be a lengthy period for public comments before a final determination can be made...continued.....

Garfield County commissioners choose industry over people

2011-12-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Bill Grant

June 28, 2011

In 2008, Judy Jordan, Garfield County liaison officer for oil and gas, was asked by ProPublica what she thought of their theory that “natural faults and fractures exist in underground formations in Colorado and that it may be possible for contaminants to travel through them.”

Jordan answered, “It challenges the view that natural gas … is isolated from water supplies by its extreme depth. It is highly unlikely that methane would have migrated through natural faults and fractures and coincidentally arrived in domestic wells at the same time oil and gas development started,
after having been down there … for over 65 billion years.”

These words may not have been responsible for the Garfield County Commissioners’ decision to fire Jordan, but they illustrate the kind of common sense, straight talk she brought to her job as county liaison with oil and gas companies operating in the county....continued...

Economists on Rockies Energy Boom: How's It

2011-12-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

*The answer, according to a new study by Headwaters Economics, is it depends on the state, but its lead writer concludes: "If we can't make it work in Wyoming, that's a bad sign for everywhere else."*

By Brodie Farquhar, 4-27-11

Cover photo for a new study by Headwaters Economics analyzing the impact jobs tied to fossil fuel has had on the Western economy.
Cover photo for a new study by Headwaters Economics analyzing the impact jobs tied to fossil fuel has had on the Western economy.

Back in the 1980s, when fossil fuel development fell off a cliff in Western states, there was a popular sticker pasted on the bumpers of aging pickups, rolling on tires of diminishing tread: "Dear Lord, please give me another boom, and I promise I won't p*** this one away."

Air Quality Concerns Threaten Natural Gas's Image

2011-12-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Shogren
June 21, 2011

Massive stores of natural gas that lie underneath big portions of the United States offer a cleaner source of electricity to a country that relies heavily on coal, but producing all that gas also can pump lots of pollution into the air.

Gas production already has caused unhealthy air in Wyoming's Sublette County and Utah's Uintah Basin. And experts project that booming shale gas developments like Haynesville, stretching through Texas and Louisiana, and Marcellus, which lies beneath several Mid-Atlantic states, will start contributing to unhealthy levels of ozone or smog in coming years.

"This isn't just next to where the development is actually happening — the poor person living downwind of the compressor — this is ozone levels in Philadelphia and [Washington] D.C. and New York City and places like that," says Carnegie Mellon University professor Allen Robinson....continued.....

Lawmakers Urge Obama To Pursue Energy Security Through Natural Gas Natural Gas Fracking

2011-12-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:
"We owe it to our citizens, and most importantly, our military," the letter concludes, "to be free of the constraints of having to fight abroad over resources that can be safely recovered here at home."

COMMENT:
Connect the dots, citizens:
"US Becomes Net Exporter of Fuel"
By Gregory Meyer in New York
May 2 2011 22:32
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3c2c1b9c-74de-11e0-a4b7-00144feabdc0.html
EXCERPT from "US Becomes Net Exporter of Fuel:"
"After a five-year decline in net imports, the US became a net exporter
in late 2010, a trend analysts say is confirmed by the latest data."

Seems there is some double-talk going on...perhaps it is the money these senators are looking after rather than our security, health and welfare at home! Time for a short stay in the Senate for these nine members!

06/27/11

Rep. Michael Conaway (R-Tex), topped a list of nine members of Congress who signed a letter to be sent to President Obama Monday urging him to press for natural gas development in the U.S.

Eight members of Congress, including several representatives of powerful national security committees, have prepared a letter imploring President Obama to press for expanded natural gas exploration and production in the United States -- primarily though the use of an unconventional and contentious technique known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing.

"As members of both political parties and as citizens in support of your call to get serious about a long-term policy for secure and affordable energy," reads the Monday dated letter from the group, comprised of four Republicans and four Democrats, "we urge you and members of your administration to take a leadership role in encouraging the continued development and utilization of our nation's vast natural gas resources by any means necessary, but most specifically, by unconventional shale gas recovery."....continued.....

Wyoming passed over in EPA fracking study

2011-12-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

EXCERPT:
"State and industry officials said that not including Wyoming in the study is an acknowledgement by the Environmental Protection Agency that the state's "fracking" regulations are adequate and that there are no documented cases of fracking activities contaminating groundwater."

COMMENT:
If the federal government ignores the most obvious cases of hydraulic fracturing contamination, then industry and the gov can continue their ruse a bit longer, thereby sequestering the last few drops of their precious money-making resource at the expense of life on this planet.

In 2008, Gillette, Wyoming, an EPA test of water wells at 300 feet produced benzene at 1,200 ppb. There are no safe levels of benzene. It is a known human carcinogen. The water wells are located nearby a large gas field.

Today, the EPA continues to test water wells in Wyoming and continue to find nothing conclusive. The ruse continues. Where is our "People and Ecosystem Movement?" When is our revolution going to take place?

JEREMY PELZER
June 24, 2011

CHEYENNE-Federal environmental regulators have passed over Wyoming in a closely watched study of how hydraulic fracturing affects drinking water.

State and industry officials said that not including Wyoming in the study is an acknowledgement by the Environmental Protection Agency that the state's "fracking" regulations are adequate and that there are no documented cases of fracking activities contaminating groundwater.

Environmentalists, though, voiced skeptism over those claims.

On Thursday, the EPA picked seven areas around the country to investigate whether groundwater is affected by fracking, a procedure in which a mixture of sand and various fluids is pumped deep underground to fracture rock to create pathways for gas or oil to flow toward a well bore....continued....

Mass Extinction of Ocean Species Soon to Be 'Inevitable'

2011-12-27T15:08:00.000-07:00

COMMENT:
While there is shock about this latest data, the drilling permits in the gulf coast continue....one of the most recent, to Royal Dutch Shell.

Perhaps it is time for an Environmental Movement!

LONDON, UK, June 21, 2011 (ENS) - The oceans are at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history, a panel of international marine experts warns in a report released today.

A deadly trio of factors - warming, acidification and lack of oxygen - is creating the conditions associated with every previous major extinction of species in Earth's history, the panel warned.
Sunset at Huntington Beach, California (Photo by DHN)

The combined effects of these stressors are causing degeneration in the ocean that is "far faster than anyone has predicted," the scientists report.

The urgent warnings emerged from the first-ever interdisciplinary international workshop held April 11-13 to consider the cumulative impact of all stressors affecting the ocean.

"The findings are shocking," said Dr. Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean which convened the workshop. "As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the ocean, the implications became far worse than we had individually realized."...continued.....

EPA Identifies Case Studies for Hydraulic Fracturing Study

2011-12-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

EXCERPT:

Five retrospective case studies were selected and will examine areas where hydraulic fracturing has occurred for any impact on drinking water resources. These ares are located in:

Bakken Shale - Kildeer and Dunn Countiesy, ND
Barnett Shale - Wise and Denton Counties, TX
Marcellus Shale - Bradford and Susquehanna Counties, PA
Marcellus Shale - Washington County, PA
Raton Basin - Las Animas County, CO

Cathy Milbourn
Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov
202-420-8648
June 23, 2011

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today, in keeping with the administration's focus to ensure that the agency leverages domestic resources safely and responsibly, announced the next
steps in its congressionally mandated hydraulic fracturing study. EPA has identified seven case studies to help inform the assessment of potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources. The sites identified were selected following extensive input from stakeholders, including the public, local and state officials, industry,
and environmental organizations. To ensure the Agency maintains the current timeline for the study, the EPA will begin field work in some of the selected regions this summer.

Natural gas plays a key role in our nation's energy future, EPA is working closely with other federal partners to ensure that this important resource can be developed safely.

"This is an important part of a process that will use the best science to help us better understand the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water," said Paul Anastas, Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office of Research and Development. "We've met with community members, state experts and industry and environmental
leaders to choose these case studies. This is about using the best possible science to do what the American people expect the EPA to do: ensure that the health of their communities and families is protected."

The studies, which will take place in regions across the country, will be broken into two study groups. Two of the seven sites were selected as prospective case studies, where EPA will monitor key aspects of the hydraulic fracturing process throughout the lifecycle of a well.....continued...

own of Wales, New York, Adopts Community Rights Ordinance That Bans “Fracking”

2011-12-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

EXCERPTS:
"Procedural questions on the authority of the Board to enact the Ordinance were addressed by Council member Mike Simon, who said "I don't want to wait for any other agencies, federal, state or county to tell us what to do. The more I learn about the harms of fracking, the more I know that we have to act on this...It comes down to the principle of home rule versus state rule."
“This local law embodies the will of our residents to protect our natural resources from destruction, so our children and grandchildren can have the quality of life we enjoy.” – Councilmember Mike Simon

June 15, 2011
www.celdf.org
Ben Price, (717) 254-3233
benprice@celdf.org
Tuesday, June 14th, the Town of Wales, NY, adopted a community rights ordinance titled "Town of Wales Community Protection of Natural Resources.” The Ordinance ( No.3-2011) was enacted as a local law under NYS Municipal Home Rule Act, which recognizes broad police powers under the statute. The Ordinance establishes a Bill of Rights for Wales residents and “recognizes and secures certain civil and political rights of the residents of the Town of Wales to govern themselves and protect themselves from harm to their persons, property and environment.”

The Ordinance was drafted in consultation with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and advocated for by the community group Protecting Our Water Rights (POWR).

Two key prohibitions are enacted to protect the rights enumerated. The Ordinance bans “ any individual or corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas or oil utilizing in whole or in part the process commonly known as and herein defined as hydraulic fracturing” and also prohibits “any individual or corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas or oil utilizing in whole or in part the process commonly known as horizontal gas well drilling,” with the exception, in each case, of gas wells installed and operating at the time of enactment of the Ordinance.

The bill also recognizes the right of the people to a form of government where they live “which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are founded on the people’s authority and consent, and that neither individuals nor corporate entities and their directors and managers shall enjoy special privileges or powers under the color of state law which purports to make community majorities subordinate to them.”

Prior to the vote, POWR member Susan Everett commented "I hope tonight you will be voting to pass this local law. You have listened to the people and acted responsibly to protect our families and our natural recourses for generations and I speak for many in thanking you."

Procedural questions on the authority of the Board to enact the Ordinance were addressed by Councilmember Mike Simon, who said "I don't want to wait for any other agencies, federal, state or county to tell us what to do. The more I learn about the harms of fracking, the more I know that we have to act on this...It comes down to the principle of home rule versus state rule."

The town submitted the proposed law to the Erie County planning board in April and they were to make their recommendation within 30 days. Instead they asked the Town submit the law to another state agency before voting on it.

"I think the county is trying to pass this off to the state" commented Rickey Vendetti, Wales town supervisor

The Town Board voted 4 ayes and one abstention to vote on the ordinance without submitting it to the state, then the Board voted 4 ayes and one abstention to enact the Community Rights Ordinance.

"This is a truly unique example of government working like it should. The people of Wales went to their town board members and the board responded to their concerns," stated Sarah Buckley, founder of POWR.

The Ordinance includes a local “bill of rights” that asserts legal protections for the right to water; the rights of natural communities; the right to local self-government, and the right of the people to enforce and protect these rights through their municipal government.

The bill was modeled after the Ordinance adopted on November 16th of last year by the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Similar ordinances have been enacted by Mountain Lake Park, Maryland, West Homestead PA, Licking Township PA, and have been introduced as bills by communities in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

The gas extraction technique known as “fracking” has been cited as a threat to surface and ground water throughout the region, and has been blamed for fatal explosions, the contamination of drinking water, local streams, the air and soil. Collateral damage includes lost property value, ingestion of toxins by livestock, drying up of mortgage loans for prospective home buyers, and threatened loss of organic certification for farmers in the affected communities.

Ben Price, Projects Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, applauded the Council for taking a stand on behalf of community rights. “State law preempts municipalities from regulating the industry to protect the community. But residents have the right to decide whether or not they get fracked. We don’t have a gas drilling problem. We have a democracy problem. Its symptoms are the State’s refusal to recognize the right to local, community self-government, and the issuance of permits to drilling corporations that empower them to violate the rights of the human and natural communities.”