Hydrofracking Wastewater

 

Radioactive Wastewater

We in Ithaca  recently found out that 20 million gallons of radioactive hydrofracking wastewater was dumped in Cayuga Lake. It was dumped at water treatment plants that could not handle the flow or level of particulates, much less chemicals, in the water. This is the water we drink. The local papers are totally uninterested in the story. They are more concerned with controversies like whether it’s OK to shoot deer or have a dog park. The local press are a bunch of craven panderers too pusillanimous to do their jobs. God curse them.

Hydrofracking wastewater is getting dumped into streams lakes and rivers all over Pennsylvania and New York. In Ithaca it is a huge controversy. There is a moratorium on the drilling in NY, but not in PA. In PA it has been devastating.

There is a great group in NY, Walter Hang’s Toxics Targeting. He is mapping all of the pollution sites in the state, and you can find out what’s buried up the road and seeping into your water. He has a whole section just on Marcellus Shale drilling. There is a letter there for Andrew Cuomo. They need more signatures. Please follow the links and sign the letter. If you want, sign up for the newsletter.

I don’t think we can trust Cuomo, any more than Obama, to be strong on this. The gas drilling companies are being bought up by ExxonMobile etc. As gas prices rise so do natural gas prices and as in 2008 the pressure to drill will be immense. I can’t overstate how awful this is. Not just for the environment but for the quality of life in the small towns where this drilling occurs. Not only do they dump poisonous wastewater in our rivers and lakes (and this affects large municipalities downstream, like Philadelphia and Pittsburg) but they destroy our roads and communities with monstrous trucks and the influx of workers for whom there is no housing. It is part of a larger trend that will intensify as energy becomes short and the political will to regulate corporations withers from it’s pathetic state of attenuation today to nothing. These then are political issues of local control and the exploitation of poor families who need the leasing money and are too stupid to realize what they are giving up in return, or worse, powerless to oppose the companies who tell them one way or another, with or without a lease, they will drill beneath their land.

While it is my personal opinion that we are headed towards violent revolution and civil war, in the meantime activism is in order. Had I known they were going to dump this water I would have gladly laid down on the road to prevent it.