NYS draft SGEIS on hydraulic fracturing

Dear Commissioner Martens and Administrator Enck:

I was unable to attend the Albany rally on March 25th, but I am writing to say that I fully share the concerns of those who attended as well as their four key goals:

Expanding the scope of the draft SGEIS to include additional concerns, notably how to manage gas drilling wastewater;

Establishing Citizens and Technical Advisory Committees to help DEC revise the draft SGEIS;

Providing at least 30 days public comment ASAP to identify additional issues that must be included in the draft SGEIS scope;

Requiring individual EIS reviews for horizontal hydrofracturing permits, "GA effluent limitations" for hydrofracturing, deep well injection and wastewater treatment as well as updating DEC's 1992 GEIS.

There is a rapidly growing body of evidence from Pennsylvania and states out west showing that hydraulic fracturing of shale gas deposits is far from the benign process the gas industry wants us to believe it is. Impacts on both human health and the environment are turning out to be substantial. This is not surprising either. Key take-away lessons from the BP fiasco of last April and this year’s nuclear disaster in Japan are that energy industry claims about the safety of their operations are not in the least credible, that these industries frequently cut corners for small increases in profits with large adverse impacts on safety, that they have totally inadequate response plans when something does go wrong, and that an important reason the fossil fuel industry really doesn’t care about its impact is because its managers do not live where their extraction or generating operations are causing harm.

I believe it is morally wrong to allow fossil fuel industry profits to trump the common good. And I also believe that no landowner has a right to a financial gain from his or her land that comes at the expense of human neighbors as well as other life forms who are also entitled to their existence. In my view, the current draft SGEIS is totally inadequate to protect the well-being and interests of those who will receive no benefit from Marcellus Shale exploitation. This is of course the vast majority of the people as well as 100% of the other species living above the Marcellus.

Experience from elsewhere clearly shows that shale gas drilling needs to be much more stringently regulated than what has so far been proposed in the draft SGEIS. That is why I support the four goals listed above and why I also believe we need to wait until the results of the EPA study are in, so they can be taken into consideration too.

Sincerely,

Marie T