Environmental Activism Campaign Summaries

AUBURN, N.Y. -- Some are calling a report about gas drilling wastewater a step in the right direction for the city of Auburn. The report concludes the city's treatment plant is unable to accept gas drilling wastewater.

AUBURN, N.Y. -- An engineering firm hired by Auburn to clear the way for the city to accept wastewater from gas drilling has concluded the city's wastewater treatment plant can't handle it.

The firm's study could have broad implications in New York's debate about hydrofracking.

The report, by the engineering firm GHD, Inc., in Cazenovia, said that because of the high levels of chlorides (a constituent of salt) in gas drilling wastewater, the Auburn wastewater treatment plant "has no additional capacity to accept vertical natural gas well wastewater."

A Southern Tier assemblywoman is asking the state to put an immediate pause on the Health Department’s review of hydraulic fracturing, instead calling for a more-comprehensive analysis that is “transparent and thorough.”

In a letter this week to state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens, Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Endwell, Broome County, knocked the state’s current review of fracking’s health impacts.

A Southern Tier assemblywoman is asking the state to put an immediate pause on the Health Department's review of hydraulic fracturing, instead calling for a more-comprehensive analysis that is "transparent and thorough."

In a letter Wednesday to state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens, Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, D-Endwell, Broome County, knocked the state's current review of fracking's health impacts.

Discharge from this abandoned well killed an acre of vegetation in Oneida County

The debate over natural gas development in New York has mostly been about the future. But residents living over New York’s abundant gas reserves must also figure out what to do about the past.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he's comfortable with the state's review of hydraulic fracturing, telling reporters in Utica that his administration is "doing the best we can to understand all the facts."

That’s exactly why protesters are likely to be out in force tomorrow in Buffalo, and even more so when Obama continues his visit to Binghamton, NY. Fracking remains controversial throughout the U.S., thanks to concerns over potential water contamination and pollution from wells, as well as fears that the new supplies of natural gas will bind the country more permanently to carbon-heavy fossil fuels. Ground zero for that emotional debate is New York state, which has both a massive potential reserve of shale gas and a determined community of environmentalists and activists working to ensure that fracking never happens in the Empire State. “We’re going to be present in Binghamton by the hundreds, if not the thousands,” Walter Hang, the head of Ithaca-based Toxic Targeting, told WNYC.