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Southern Community Groups Call for the Right to Say No to Natural Gas Facilities

Campaign to Safeguard America’s Resources Today community groups in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia called for the establishment of local veto power over natural gas extraction, transport and use. At rallies, marches and other public events extending from Floyd, Virginia, across North Carolina to Valdosta, Georgia, people joined in a chorus of protests against pipelines, compressor stations, power plants, hydrofracking wells and waste dumps and for the restoration of property rights and local control over energy policy in the Southeast.

Lou Zeller, Executive Director of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, said, “Today we launch the campaign to Safeguard America’s Resources because of our nation’s dangerous reliance on fossil fuel, including natural gas, which pollutes the air and water. But we also see a parallel danger to our communities, to our society and to our democracy from a dominant oil and gas industry.”

At press conferences in county courthouses, community buildings, a university and a small church, League chapters called for action to halt natural gas facilities in their communities. Following the speeches, they joined caravans and parades to focus public opposition at the local government level. Events across the region echoed the twin themes of danger and opportunity.

Kim McCall, Secretary of the Concerned Citizens of Richmond County, North Carolina, spoke against hydro-fracking and the expansion of Duke Energy’s natural gas power plant in Hamlet. She said, “We are petitioning local governments for the ability to veto projects that threaten our homes, our families and our neighbors.” The group has petitioned EPA to deny the air permit to increase toxic air pollution by 36% from the combustion turbine electric power plant in her backyard.

To launch their campaign in Lee County, North Carolina, members of EnvironmentaLEE held a prayer vigil and rally at Mount Calvary Baptist Church, which is located in front of the brickyard in Sanford where the dumping 8 million tons of Duke Energy’s toxic coal ash is proposed. Deb Hall, a member of EnvironmentaLEE, said, “We are already ground zero for fracking, and the North Carolina General Assembly stripped local governments of their ability to control fracking and coal ash dumping. This threatens our health, the environment, community self-determination, and property rights.”

Mark Laity-Snyder, a founding member of Preserve Franklin county, joined others carrying black coffins in a caravan to Floyd, Virginia. He said, “We chose a coffin to represent the loss of a basic American right, the right to be secure in our homes without private companies taking our land.” Jenny Chapman, from nearby Preserve Bent Mountain, said, “For a corporation like Mountain Valley Pipeline to override the rights of private citizens to their land, safety and quality of life is unacceptable.”

Pat Hill, co-founder of Person County PRIDE in Roxboro, North Carolina, said, “My husband and I live next to the Republic mega-dump. We want to have a voice in protecting our water and air quality because we live with it every day.” She continued, “The toxic wastes deposited here endanger our health and the health of our neighbors. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead and many other poisons. Because hydrofracking uses secret contaminants, it could have an unknown number of dangerous compounds.”

Michael G. Noll, President of Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy in Valdosta, Georgia, sounded a note of hope, saying, “This is the beginning of a new era, where we see the unified efforts of communities across the nation to safeguard America’s resources, to wean ourselves of fossil fuels, and to protect the unalienable rights of citizens to clean water and air. I am convinced that safe and renewable sources of energy like solar and wind will be the lunar landing of our generation.”

Mara Robbins, Virginia Campaign Coordinator for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and organizer of the Floyd March and Demonstration, said, “We chose to have this action here because we stand in solidarity with all the counties that are resisting the threat of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.” She pointed to many different communities in three states that are calling for community-level veto power over fossil fuel projects. Referring to her success in pushing the pipeline route out of her home county, she said, “Though Floyd is not in the line of fire at the moment, we claim the right to say NO to dangerous proposals that utilize eminent domain over the wishes of the people. And we think all communities deserve that right.”

The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League was founded in 1984. The organization has a thirty-year track record of victories over polluting facilities.

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Health Effects of Fracking – New Evidence

The evidence linking adverse health effects and exposure to chemicals generated during the natural gas extraction process of hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) continues to mount. The latest evidence, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that people living near natural gas wells may be at increased risk for adverse health impacts including respiratory and skin conditions. The study examined nearly 500 people in 180 households in Washington County, PA, home to some of the most intense fracking activities in the U.S. The authors found that residents who lived less than a kilometer (about 2/3 of a mile) from a gas well reported more adverse health symptoms than residents who lived more than 2 kilometers from a gas well (about a mile and a third). Residents living less than a kilometer from a gas well were also more likely to report skin conditions during the past year as well as upper respiratory symptoms. The effects did not go away when adjusted for potential confounding variables including age, cigarette smoking, education level and occupation. The study did not find an association between proximity to a natural gas well and increased cardiac, neurological or gastrointestinal symptoms. According to the author, this study is the largest to examine general health conditions among people living near fracking sites.

Researchers from Yale University, the University of Washington and Colorado State University collected their data by going door-to-door and asking people to participate in a general health study. The authors followed the study participants for two years from 2012 to 2014. They did not tell people that the study was looking at the adverse health effects of fracking. The authors hoped this approach would reduce the potential for bias in people reporting the results. There are plans for an even longer term study.

The authors concluded that “airborne irritant exposures related to natural gas extraction activities could be playing a role. Such irritant exposures could result from a number of activities related to natural gas drilling, including flaring of gas wells and exhaust from diesel equipment.” According to the authors, the results underscores the need for ongoing health monitoring of people living near natural gas extraction activities in order to better understand the potential health risks. “We’re at a stage in which we know enough to recommend prudent precaution and exposure reduction,” stated Peter Rabinowitz, one of the co-authors, from the University of Washington.

To read the full paper, click here.

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Demand What You Want-Not What’s “Feasible”

Truer words have never been spoken. In CHEJ’s recent training on Lessons Learned from New York State, which recently banned fracking until it can be proven safe, Eric Weltman from Food and Water Watch told the group to demand what you want not what is feasible.

I find it frustrating and a bit troubling when I visit communities who are struggling to protect their health and environment from environmental threats and they ask for less than they deserve and need. When I ask leaders, “why short change themselves,” they often respond saying they don’t want to sound unreasonable or worse because their opponents said it’s too expensive. Leaders and community members are often bullied into believing that they must take less or they won’t get anything. This is just not true.

At Love Canal in 1978, our community was told that government does not evacuate families and purchase homes because of toxic pollution. If we didn’t stick to our goal we would never had been evacuated. When the environmental health and justice movement demanded that no more commercial landfills be built, we were all told it must go somewhere. Several years later up until today no new commercial hazardous wastes landfills have been built, although it is still legal to do so.

In one of CHEJ’s consumer campaigns around a multinational corporation, we were demanding they take certain products off their shelves. The corporations response was, we won’t be bullied by radical environmental group. Yet a short time later they did exactly what we and consumers across the country asked.

No one should ask or accept as the final decision, what is not right and fair. However, winning the big ask is more difficult and demands serious discipline. Everyone needs to be on the same page and demand the same goal. Yes, there are always those few who will say out loud and even in the media that they would be wiling to accept less. Yet if the loud vocal people, the base of the majority, the framers of the campaign stick with their larger goal for justice, they will dominate the campaign. Those with smaller goals will be essential drowned out by the voices and actions of this  larger group.

This was the case in New York State around fracking. There were good people who would have accepted better regulations or only drilling in certain parts of the state. In every issue those working from various groups often have different goals. Sometimes their efforts help build toward the larger goal and other times they may be an irritation. The key to win it all is to build larger stronger, more visible opposition and demand for the larger goals. In this way you can win your goals without publicly fighting with others.

As Eric told us, “we were relentless. With op-eds, press events, using the public participation/comment period to submit a hundred thousands of “comments” that said Ban Fracking Now –not detailed line by line comments about regulations that were proposed. Hundreds of groups participated in bird dogging the governor who couldn’t go anywhere without a group, small or large in his face demanding he ban fracking.”

Secondly, Eric was clear that you need a single target, in NYS it was the governor. “You need to find the person who has the power to give you what you are demanding,” he said. I would add that it always needs to be a person not an entity, like regulatory agency or corporation. You need a human face on your opponent and your messengers to make it all work.

This is a time tested strategy and if you follow it you are more likely to receive a higher level of justice not a compromising solution.

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Backyard Talk

Grassroots Activism Makes the Difference in New York

Right before Christmas, the Washington Post ran an interesting article you may have missed. It laid out the conundrum of two states coming to very different conclusions about fracking within its boundaries. Both states, New York and Maryland, had moratoriums in place and were evaluating pretty much the same technical and scientific information, yet they came to very different conclusions.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo chose to ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” in New York State. Fracking is the process of injecting a chemical/water mixture under extreme pressure deep into the earth in order to “fracture” rock and release natural gas (or oil). Cuomo’s decision followed a report from the New York Department of Health that found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking including concerns about water contamination and air pollution. In a press statement, the state health commissioner stated that there was “insufficient scientific evidence to affirm the safety of fracking.”

On the other hand, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley decided to allow fracking go forward in the western part of the state. This decision was based on a joint report from  the Maryland Departments of the Environment and Natural Resources, which concluded that with adequate regulation, “the risks of Marcellus Shale development can be managed to an acceptable level.” Both reports acknowledged that there are risks from fracking, due primarily to groundwater and air contamination, but also that there is a great deal that is not known about the extent of these risks, or the long term effects.

The articles concludes “that these two decisions on fracking, while draped in scientific language, were — in fact — probably not really scientific decisions at all.” Thank you Washington Post for pointing out what grassroots activists have known for years – that most decisions about environmental risks are based on political, economic and other factors, and not on available science, no matter what anyone tells you.

The article goes on to attribute the different decisions to four factors – politics, who did the studies for each state, the amount of land affected and the use of the precautionary principle by one state (NY) and not the other. All these factors liked came into play, but there‘s another factor not mentioned that likely played an even larger role, and that is the role of grassroots activism. In New York, grassroots activists were overwhelmingly opposed to fracking and this position was repeatedly made known to Cuomo and other state decision-makers. Since being elected in 2010 Cuomo could not go anywhere in the state without seeing signs asking him to ban fracking. This message was delivered time after time by numerous groups in New York as well as by celebrities, scientists and others.

The lesson here isn’t that reasonable agencies and state governors came to different decisions based on different evidence and information. It’s that the grassroots activism in New York made a huge difference and helped convince Cuomo and other decision makers in the state that there was enough known about the risks posed by fracking not to move forward and that the unknown risks were too serious to ignore.

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Backyard Talk

A Mother's Story About Fracking

This is a first hand description by Jodi from PA who was recently dosed with toxic chemical inside of her home that were released from a nearby well pad and gas line. She now has skin rashes on her face, neck and chest. She is nauseous and extremely tired.

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Even if Prepared – If No One Sounds The Alarm Someone Gets Hurt

They called 911 but never alerted the residents – They evacuated 22 families as the oil spilled out but won’t tell us the risks – the train derailment is being cleaned up but people are still sick — the seven inch well stack exploded into the air like a missile – Where are the Protections?

In Montrose Borough, PA a woman was concerned and curious about a loud noise coming from a fracking site not too far from her home. Vera Scroggins decided to take a ride and find out what was happening. She described this journey in her letter to the editor.

“I was in a friend’s living room on March 19th in Montrose Borough, Pa., Susquehanna County, at about 5 p.m., and heard a loud noise going on for eventually over an hour and it sounded almost like a gas flare but later found out it was an ESD release, an emergency shutdown, of pipelines as part of safety measures and routine maintenance.

I followed the sound to Sterling Rd., South Montrose, about 2 miles away or more and it was loudest there. People, like myself, were driving around trying to find out what this was. This was a new experience for me. I have found out that gases were released for over an hour and we, the community are being exposed to this by Williams Gas.”

It is amazing how this story is the same as the story from families living around chemical plants, pipelines, incinerators, dumpsites and so many more dangerous places. Government and corporate profiteers get away with releasing chemicals accidentally or on purpose and don’t have to notify people at risk.

As a result there is no way for innocent families to prepare themselves for the danger. Families often think about fire and have a fire alarm or explain to children in the event of a fire in the homes here is what you do. Schools across the country have fire drills so that students and staff are prepared in the event of a fire.

Yet in communities like Vera’s or most recently March 29th in Arkansas a pipeline rupture where tar sands sludge spilled 12,000 barrels of oil throughout the community causing the evacuation of at least 22 families. March 30th a fracking explosion shot a huge, long pipe into the air landing in the cab of a construction truck. Earlier in March in Paulsboro, NJ a train derailed and a toxic cloud covered the area people were confused about what to do but worse they were told the risk was low. Yet a 77 year old woman died after breathing those toxic chemicals from the train derailment.

Vera is right when she said in her letter, when she talked about the lack of notification and preparedness for such accidents. “No one in the community was notified except 911 about this. We need to know who to call when this happens and be told what it is to allay our fears and anxiety. And we need to know what the health impacts from gases being released from pipelines in this instance and any more that will happen in the future.”

In all of these situations we often talk about the issues in a bigger broader context but the past month has really demonstrated how local the issues are and that our focus needs to include large policies or regulatory change but also change that can address the many needs for safety notification and enforcement at the local frontline communities.

Vera and other just like her across the country want answers and help. It’s time to focus on these needs.

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Backyard Talk

A day in the life of CHEJ staff.

A Cold Wednesday in March Demonstrated the reach CHEJ has and how much is really accomplished.

A Cold, Windy and Snowy Day Did Not Stop Us.

Wednesday March 6th a storm was brewing across the Midwest and Northeast.  Despite the snow and travel warnings CHEJ’s leaders moved forward.  Here is what happened on that cold, windy and snowy Wednesday in March.

A day in the life of CHEJ

As I juggle calls from activists across the state of Ohio working on fracking, deep well injection, air pollution, cancer clusters and more I’m freezing outside at and anti injection well rally at the state capital.  Cold and tired watching e-mails cross my phone from CHEJ’s home office I realize how much CHEJ does in a day to move the country toward a safe, healthy and justice place for American families.

While I’m in Columbus, Ohio participating with my neighbors and friends to speak out about fracking waste disposal.  Even with the nasty weather, over 125 people gather at the state house to ask legislators to  stop accepting out-of-state fracking wastes. Ohio now has over 200 injection wells and last year accepted  581,559,594 gallons (that’s right over 581 million gallons) of fracking wastes.

My co-worker is working on greening the market place organized a shareholder action in Arizona around Disney’s use of poison plastic in toys and other children’s products.  This morning a shareholder action was held in Phoenix, Arizona.  Leaders handed out informational packets to Disney shareholders to ask them to stop using PVC the poison plastic in their toys.  Many shareholders had no idea that toys were being made in a way that could harm young children.

Commemorating 35th Anniversary of Love Canal

In New York City

That same evening a celebration and fundraiser was held in New York City with our Executive Director Lois Gibbs.  This was our first event  of several, commemorations of Love Canal events 35 years ago were underway.  Chevy and Jayni Chase joined us as our special guest along with 67 others who braved the weather to celebrate with us that evening.  CHEJ surpassed our fundraising goal at the event and launched the Leadership Training Academy.  Great time was had by all with great food, drinks, conversations with colleagues and a preview of the new documentary A Fierce Green Fire, The Battle for A Living Planet.







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Backyard Talk

The Irish—My Heritage—Said “No” To Fracking

Friday Ireland’s government said, “Until the EPA study has concluded and there has been time to consider its findings, the use of hydraulic fracturing in exploration drilling will not be authorized in Ireland.” Mr. O’Dowd, the Ireland Natural Resources Minister, is acting in a precautionary manner unlike the United States.

Taking a precautionary action, Mr. O’Dowd commissioned and funded three part study that will determine of fracking is harmful to the environment. He is concerned about widespread pollution especially of water sources where fracking will take place.

The studies include a geological study which will determine the impacts that fracking may have on groundwater and bedrock, seismic impacts, whether tremors, earthquakes or subsidence, and the third will be defining regulations around the fracking process. All of these studies are to be completed within 20 months.

Additionally the commission has asked for the public to suggest the terms of reference to be given to researchers. Wow, the Irish get a say in the study design and methodology.

Friday, Irish Eyes Were Smiling.

Other countries have banned the process as well, while the U.S. continues to move forward in ways the mimic the wild, wild, west. The cost of fracking in the U.S. has shown us that this extraction process is too expensive. We’ve seen environmental damages, poisoned water and water that ignites, health care costs increasing from victims as well as the migrant workers who are uninsured and use county facilities, lost land values and property values and the list goes on.

Not only is fracking moving forward at light speed compared to other industries’ ability to get permits and begin to set up their facility, the fracking industry has historically played dirty with communities by threatening, suing and attempting to undercutting local leaders credibility. However, the U.S. Frackers just recently said they’ll stop being bullies (my words not theirs) and try a new approach—civil communications.

In a strategy paper on combating the anti-fracking movement, analyst Jonathan Wood of Control Risks, a global consulting company, advised drillers to acknowledge that communities have legitimate grievances, in order to begin to repair a “crippling trust deficit.” Wood advised, among other things, openness, voluntary disclosure and “meaningful consultations” with communities, rather than “didactic information sessions to market the presumed benefits of drilling.”

Jim Cannon, whose job at Range focuses on local government relations has changed his ways. He recently said, “We’re probably more active listeners now, so we’re probably better able to hone in on what local governments need from us. A couple years ago, maybe we weren’t as sensitive to it. … Now we recognize how vital it really is.”

We’ll see if that happens. It is difficult to overcome “crippling trust deficit but maybe the companies can begin by taking down the bill boards along the PA highways that claim if you think fracking is dangerous “You’ve been Slimed.” I believe, and it has been my personal experience, that it will be difficult to come back from being a bully in the community to having people sit around the table and have a trusting meaningful conversation. It’s not easy after you have been beaten, robbed and violated to come back and trust those who did the nasty deeds.

The answer is for the industry to stop what they’re doing, not just be more open in communications, and follow the lead of the Irish and other countries. Step back, take a breath, take time to understand what you are actually going to do to communities, the environment, water sources and decide what to do based upon real studies, real science to determine how and if we should move forward.

Today I’m proud to be an Irish woman.

For more information see:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/state-bans-fracking-until-environmental-tests-are-carried-out-3349818.html

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/12/31/gas-drilling-companies-work-on-community-relations/

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SANDRA STEINGRABER CALLS YOU TO ALBANY ON JANUARY 9, 2013

Dear fellow New Yorkers and anyone else.
For weeks now, I’ve been trying to finish a letter to you, but interruptions have been frequent. Here’s what I’ve got.
Dec. 7, 8:00 pm
After days of wild, record-breaking weather, our village winter festival was cancelled because of rain and flood warnings. When I told Elijah the bad news on the walk home from school, he began to cry. I told him I was sorry and that I knew how much he was looking forward to the festival.
He said, I’m not upset about the festival. I’m upset because the planet’s dying. I know this is all because of global warming. Just like the hurricane.
And this is what I heard myself say: Mom is on the job. I’m working on it. I’m working on it really hard, and I promise I won’t quit.
Now you are all my witnesses.
Dec. 26, 5:00 pm
These words are being written in a cinema bathroom. I’m the chaperone for my 14-year-old daughter and her friends—the movie is rated R—but I’ve snuck out of the theater to read the proposed revised draft regulations for fracking. There are 328 pages of them, and we’ve been given only 30 days to offer public comments—right in the middle of the holiday. Pretty much all I’ve done since December 12 is read regs and help people create comments. To that end, I’ve dreamed up an Advent calendar project called Thirty Days of Fracking Regs.
It’s tough sledding. None of us has access to the previous draft of the regulations—which was removed from the DEC website—so we can’t judge how it’s been revised. We don’t have access to the environmental impact statement that’s supposed to serve as the scientific basis for the regulations. That study is not even finished yet. But, as a last-minute maneuver to avoid blowing a deadline, the Department of Environmental Conservation released a huge batch of regulations anyway. They are hastily drawn and full of glaring errors. They are legal placeholders in the march toward fracking in New York State, which makes the whole exercise of submitting comments absurd and maddening.
But this I know: silence is consent.
It’s Day 15 in the regs comment calendar. I need to finish tomorrow’s post (Section 560.6, on the use of diesel fuel in fracking fluid) before the movie ends. Happily, it’sAnna Karenina. I can only hope that Leo Tolstoy and Tom Stoppard are keeping the sex and violence quotient under control.
Am I a terrible mother?
Dec. 27, noon
The deadline for finalizing the regulations is exactly two months from today: February 27.
It’s weird to see people shopping, heading out for the gym, and meeting for lunch as though life were normal. As though an army were not massing on the border with plans for occupation. Is that a crazy thought? But that’s how the gas industry talks: The shale army has arrived. Resistance is futile. Those were the actual words of Bill Gwozd, vice president of gas services for the Ziff Energy group.
I choose not to believe the second half of that statement.
The shale army is an accident-prone, carcinogen-dependent industry with no boundaries. The shale army seeks to use our land as its beachhead, our water as its battering ram, and our air as its receptacle for its toxic fumes. The proposed regs for New York are no defense. They do not prohibit flare stacks, open pits, or indefinite venting of toxic gases.
My son has a history of asthma. The land all around us is leased.
My daughter will be learning to drive soon. By that time, our rural roads could be filled with fleets of eighteen-wheelers hauling hazardous materials. Data from other states show that the arrival of drilling and fracking operations brings sharp upticks in traffic fatalities.
Resistance is not only necessary, it feels like a fundamental responsibility of parenthood.
This is what I tell my kids: Until further notice, mom is on anti-fracking detail. That’s where all our money is going. That’s where all my time is going. You’ll have to pack your own lunch. We’re on wartime footing now.
Am I a terrible Quaker?
Dec. 31, 11:00 pm
New Year’s Eve with the regs. It’s quiet. I’m working on Section 750.3 tonight. As I type, I see my father’s hands. He was an amazing typist. When I was a girl, he let me practice on his prized Selectric, and he challenged me with typing drills: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Over and over I typed those words. Faster and faster.
My father was a life-long Republican. He believed that the words “conservative” and “conservation” shared more than etymology. So do I.
Jan. 3, 2:00 am
I was about to go to bed when a story broke: someone just leaked a document from the NY Department of Public Health. It’s an eight-page analysis—drafted last February—that looks to be the beginnings of the health study that is being carried out in complete secrecy. If so, it confirms the worst fears of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. In letters to the Governor, in policy papers, and at press conferences, we’ve been calling for a transparent Heath Impact Assessment with public participation. This document repudiates that request.
In fact, this document repudiates the power of science altogether. In a series of assertions unencumbered by data, it seems to say that the health effects of fracking are both unknown and unknowable. A Health Impact Assessment is unnecessary because the uncertainties are too great to analyze, therefore the risks can be safely mitigated.
That’s not a scientifically sound line of reasoning.
Meanwhile, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are reporting an alarming 9 percent leakage rate from drilling and fracking operations. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas—way more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. Methane leaks like that, if typical, would mean shale gas is a worse enemy to our climate than coal.
What role will science play in Governor Cuomo’s decision on fracking in New York, which grows ever nearer?
Jan 5, 1:00 pm
This is what I want to tell you:
Please come to Albany on Wednesday. The Governor is giving his annual State of the State speech, and the New Yorkers Against Fracking coalition is calling all New Yorkers to a rally outside the auditorium where he will be speaking. Buses are coming from all over our state. In those buses will be farmers, students, faith leaders, elected officials, scientists, doctors, nurses, parents, teachers, children, grandparents.
I want you on the bus. With all your friends. With signs and banners. With love and fierce resolve. Change all your plans and come.
There is nothing more important. Not your kid’s soccer practice. Not your yoga class. Not your career. We still have a chance here—in the still unfractured state of New York—to stop a brutal and extreme form of fossil fuel extraction, to show the world how to build a green energy economy, and to help Governor Cuomo keep his promise to lead on climate change. All that necessitates saying NO to fracking. Our children’s lives depend on our success.
To paraphrase my friend, Derek Jensen: The New Yorkers who come after us will not care how busy we were, nor how much we worried or grieved about their future. They are only going to care whether they can breathe the air and drink the water. They’re going to care whether the land is healthy enough to support them.
The Marcellus Shale is our Greensboro lunch counter. It’s our Stonewall riot. It’s our Seneca Falls Convention. This is our moment, and it hangs in the balance.
Love,
Sandra

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Backyard Talk

Great Lakes Are Improving from Legacy Chemicals but Fracking May Change That

Environmental Health News recently reported that,

“The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. The good news is that legacy contaminants are decreasing more quickly than previously reported in three of the Great Lakes, but have stayed virtually the same in two other lakes, according to new research… Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the pesticide DDT and other banned compounds dropped about 50 percent in fish in Lakes Michigan, Ontario and Huron from 1999 through 2009, although there were no significant changes in Lakes Superior and Erie fish, according to the study to be published this month in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

“These are very positive results. The lakes are improving and slowly cleaning themselves up,” said Thomas Holsen, co-director of Clarkston University’s Center for the Environment and co-author of the study . “Even with the decreases, it will be 20 to 30 years until the decades-old contaminants in Great Lakes fish decline to the point that consumption advisories can be eliminated,” Holsen said.”

All good news, except as we clean up the old chemicals like Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the pesticide DDT and other banned compounds they are being replaced by newer ones, such as flame retardants that are building up in fish and wildlife and chemicals we are not yet even looking for from oil and gas development.

Today corporations are beginning hydro-fracturing (fracking) all around the Great Lakes to extract gas. It is against the law to frack under the lakes but there are no laws about fracking near streams, creeks, rivers that empty into the lakes. This is insane. Hundreds of very toxic chemicals are injected under pressure into the ground to fracture the shale formation. Not all of these chemicals are retrieved after the fracking is done. In fact the common gas well leaves behind about 30% of the chemicals, radioactive materials and brine. It’s unbelievable, hundreds of chemicals injected all around our fresh water lakes that both the U.S. and Canada have worked for decades to clean up.

This destructive activity is a prime example of governments’ tunnel vision. Oil and Gas development moves forward, cleanup of the lakes moves forward, air deposited of chemicals from many sources continues – – – it’s like shoveling the sidewalk in a blizzard, it won’t be cleaned until the snow stops falling. There is no sign of the chemical blizzards retreat.

I grew up near the lakes in Buffalo and understand their beauty and value. My sister and brother-in-law were active in advocating the cleanup of the lakes in the 1970’s. Our family vacationed on the lakes. It was exciting back then to hear that a serious effort from both sides of the boarder would advance to make the lakes swimmable, the fish safe enough to eat and so many other promises. Now over 35 years later reports are praising the cleanup of historical chemical deposits while at the same time new chemicals are allowed to enter the lakes without protest.

Fracking is not yet widespread around the great lakes. Yes there are some wells in PA, OH, MI but we can stop widespread fracking that would further contribute chemicals to our beautiful lakes by taking a stand and insisting that regulations are put in place and bans where necessary to protect this amazing gift of nature. It is up you and me to make it happen. For more information about the recent study of the Great Lakes, click here.