SAVE THE DELAWARE RIVER
Save the Delaware River! – Gasland: Blog: Please see this video that Matt Sanchez and I just created to highlight the critical importance of the upcoming vote on October 21st in Trenton NJ
Delaware River Basin Fracking Decision Delayed
November 23, 2011
Eric Weltman, an organizer with Food and Water Watch, chants along with a crowd opposing natural gas drilling in the Delaware River watershed during a rally, Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 in Trenton, N.J. The Delaware River Basin Commission had been set to vote on regulations regarding hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. However, the commission canceled the meeting after Delaware's governor said he would oppose the draft rules. New York is also opposed. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Environmentalists are cheering after a meeting on the future of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas in the Northeast has been postponed.
The Delaware River Basin Commission, consisting of the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and a representative from the Army Corp of Engineers, was set to meet this week and vote on regulations for natural gas drilling in regions near the Delaware River.
Three days ahead of the meeting, the DRBC commission's website announced the meeting was postponed with no rescheduled date listed. The announcement came after Delaware withdrew its support, threatening the draft regulations' chances of receiving a majority vote from the five-member commission.
Last week, Delaware Governor Jack Markell sent a letter to the commission's other members, announcing that he would not vote for the currently-proposed fracking regulations, joining New York in opposition.
Despite the postponement, a planned protest rally still took place Monday at the meeting site in Trenton, N.J. The Wall Street Journal reports that the hundreds of activists in attendance shared a celebratory mood. Yet their victory only means an extension of a fracking moratorium for the time being.
Filmmaker Josh Fox, the director of "Gasland" and one of the rally's organizers, told HuffPost, "I think that what we're dealing with here is obviously a very practical issue, 15.6 million people's water, but also something symbolic, because we're there with an enormous amount of strength on the ground."
An important concern for activists is fracking's history of groundwater contamination. Earlier this year, a peer-reviewed study from Duke University linked "natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire."
The Delaware River Basin provides drinking water to over 15 million Americans -- roughly five percent of the country's population. This includes the city of Philadelphia and about half of New York City's water supply...
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An Open Letter to Lisa Jackson from Josh Fox, Please Intervene in Dimock! Save the Delaware River Basin
By Josh Fox
Dear Administrator Jackson-
The town was swarming with gas drilling and fracking trucks from Halliburton and Cabot Oil and Gas and there was a palpable state of fear and dismay from the residents who had been overrun by a drilling industry that was running rampant over their previously beautiful and bucolic town... |
Earlier this year, you gave me your word that you would apply federal EPA’s might and enforcement capabilities when State governments were failing to protect citizens. I am writing to you to appeal for EPA’s immediate intervention on behalf of families in Dimock, Pennsylvnaia who have been contaminated by Cabot Oil and Gas fracking activities. We urgently need EPA to step in and take over for Pennsylvania DEP and Governor Tom Corbett’s abject failure to appropriately respond.
Before I go further into the details, I would like to thank you personally for all of your excellent work on fracking. The people of gas drilling areas have cried out for help and you and your EPA have come to their aid time and time again.
I am sincerely grateful for how responsive you have been to the nation’s outcry for help in curtailing and researching the damage being done by fracking for natural gas. Under your leadership, EPA has truly been listening to the citizens urgent complaints about fracking and fighting for environmental justice.
You heeded the citizens call to investigate groundwater contamination in gas drilling areas and you initiated a careful and transparent 2 year groundwater study. We asked you to address the crisis of air pollution in gas drilling areas and to look into the extreme abuse and mishandling of toxic flowback wastewater from the fracking process and you have initiated the adoption of strong new rules in both categories.
When you sat down for an interview with me for Gasland 2 this year, I asked you to work with me and my staff as we identified cases that needed federal attention. My exhaustive (and exhausting!) 3 1/2 years of ongoing research into the catastrophe of gas fracking in the USA has brought me intimate knowledge of dozens of extreme cases of water contamination in gas fracking areas and the hints of information into hundreds if not thousands more cases in the US.
Today, I am asking you to pay attention to the water contamination cases of 11 families in the now infamous and beleaguered disaster area known as Dimock, PA.
Dimock was the first stop on my tour of gas drilling areas throughout the USA for my film, GASLAND in February 2009. It is just 60 miles from my home in Northeastern PA, an area which has also been leased in large part for fracking and drilling. When I first got to Dimock, I was in utter shock at the sheer destruction that had taken place in just a few months of drilling and fracking there. The town was swarming with gas drilling and fracking trucks from Halliburton and Cabot Oil and Gas and there was a palpable state of fear and dismay from the residents who had been overrun by a drilling industry that was running rampant over their previously beautiful and bucolic town...
more > An Open Letter to Lisa Jackson from Josh Fox, Please Intervene in Dimock! Save the Delaware River Basin
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Delaware Riverkeeper
Grounded in the power of the River and the community, the Delaware Riverkeeper, backed by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, staunchly champions the needs of the Delaware river and in so doing ensures its unfettered ability to protect and provide for all the human and nonhuman communities that love, appreciate and depend upon it.
what next: "Gasland" Director Josh Fox Arrested | does your water catch on fire ??? - DOWN WITH FRACKING !!!
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