The Capitol Connection Show 1311, 2013 March 15

Welcome to the Capital Connection, a weekly program questioning New York State leaders
on a variety of issues.
Your host is Dr. Alan Shartock, political scientist and professor emeritus at the University
at Albany.
Distributions for the Capital Connection is made possible with the help of New York
State United Teachers, representing professionals in education and healthcare, online at nysut.org.
That's the Capital Connection, I'm Alan Shartock.
This week we're joined by John Armstrong, who handles communications for Frack Action,
a leading statewide organization working to prevent fracking in New York.
John Armstrong is from Olive Bridge, a small town in the Catskills, and a lifelong New
Yorker.
For the last couple of years, John and Frack Action have been educating communities across
the state about the dangers of fracking in organizing the grassroots opposition.
Welcome, John.
I have to start by telling you that I've talked to many, many people about fracking, and by
far you are the most knowledgeable.
So congratulations for that bit of education.
Well, thank you, Alan, and it's nice to be young with you today.
Tell us about hydraulic fracturing, where it is, where the political debate is, and I'll
then ask you some questions about some of the players.
Most recently in New York State, the debate has focused predominantly on the health impacts
of fracking.
We've seen the state miss a number of key deadlines for proposed regulations for environmental
reviews because the Department of Health Commissioner, the Department of Environmental Conservation
Commissioner, have raised the concerns that they have not looked at all of the health
impacts of fracking.
And in fact, fracking could threaten the health of New Yorkers.
Most recently in mid-February, we saw Dr. Shaw come out with a letter in which he said,
the time to study the health impacts of fracking is before a decision is made.
Other states have rushed ahead in done this, and there have been all of these problems.
I mean, I can tell you from having been to a number of these states and talked to many
of the victims, the health impacts are just horrifying.
Rash is in those pleads, had a poisoning illness, and then there's water contamination.
So Dr. Shaw is right.
We need to look at the health impacts.
Now we're sort of in the state of unknown as the commissioner, most recently has said,
well, within a few weeks they'll have its health review done, which is a secret internal
process the state has undertaken in reviewing the generic environmental impact statement
that's currently a draft the state did more than a year ago.
And the other point I'd make on that is that in February when the commissioner wrote his
letter, he pointed to three outside health studies, comprehensive health studies, which
he said were the first of their kind at the national level or the state level, one in
from the University of Pennsylvania, in a collaboration with state universities and leading
universities like Harvard, one from the EPA, and then one from Geysinger.
So we are waiting to hear what commissioner Shaw has to say, meanwhile listening to
our own independent medical community, scientists, organizations like the American Long Association
of New York and American Academy of Pediatrics are saying it's absolutely paramount that
we wait for the results of those outside studies to be done and look at the data they provide
to determine what are the health impacts, what are the pathways of exposure prior to making
a decision?
I've been fascinated from the very beginning about this very political issue.
I would have sworn in the beginning that Governor Cuomo was basically, biting time was
going to permit it, was going to say under some restricted ways, and then it got opened
up to the public and how many people responded to the question as to whether or not we ought
to do this to the appropriate agencies, how many did you get?
Well in 2009, first we saw a record chattering, 13,000 comments.
Then in 2011 into 2012, over three months, we saw a record chattering, 66,000 comments.
Most recently, when the proposed regulations were released over the holidays this past winter,
in December, we saw just this overwhelming record chattering beyond any expectations, more
than 200,000 comments opposed to fracking.
Really 200,000?
Wow, 200,000, wow.
Over the holidays, people are sitting around for Christmas dinner, writing comments on
these regulations about why fracking was threatened their health.
Now, John, it has come to be that what might have been an obscure issue is not an obscure
issue anymore.
How did that happen?
Well, fracking started out in really rural areas of Texas where very, very few people
live and it got almost no notice.
Define fracking for us just for a moment because there may be somebody who is not in on it.
The issue here is high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which is this extreme
method of drilling a hole down in the ground approximately a mile and then going out horizontally
another mile, blasting at extraordinarily high pressure, a mixture of water, sand, and
tens of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals to blast apart the shell and create fractures
to release bubbles of methane, which is so-called natural gas.
And so what is problematic about that?
In other words, what is the most serious potential for harm?
To help the impacts, which stem from water contamination, we have seen more than a thousand
documented cases of water contamination as per pro-publica and in the New York times.
What happens is that the well-casing scale from the gas industry's own data is 6 percent
immediately as much as 60 percent over time.
So those toxic chemicals as well as radiation, arsenic, benzene, mercury, and chemicals
that are already down in the shell, when the gas is coming back up and the hydraulic
fracturing fluid, the toxic water is coming back up.
When those well-casing leak, which is the only thing that prevents contamination of our
groundwater, when the well-casing scale, our groundwater is contaminated.
Our drinking water sources get these terrible chemicals in them that then can poison us.
And then a range of other issues such as air quality impacts with well-head benzene,
ozone, smog, silica dust, silica, and our communities, community impacts, environmental
impacts.
The issues are wide and far-ranging, and I think to get to the question of what's different
here, this is an environmental, a public health, and an economic issue that hits right at
home for millions and millions of people.
This is a heavy industrial process that literally comes into people's backyards across the
entire state, across the entire country.
No, I stopped.
I've been liquidating incinerator.
Okay, let me stop you for a minute because I just want to make sure we explore each of
these things that you're bringing up.
So, the pro-fractors would argue and have argued, as you know, that this is below the water
table, it doesn't affect the water because the hydro-frecking basically goes below that
place where our water could be infected.
Is that true?
Well, they have to drill a pole down right through our aquifer, our underground water source.
And the only thing that protects us are a couple layers of cement casings and some steel,
which enormous pressures, fracture and break over time.
And then they're fracturing out the rock underground.
So there's certainly possible communication between the shell layers underground and our
drinking water sources.
The methane has been documented by numerous universities to migrate upward underground.
The same as methane can migrate so can these other chemicals.
And then there are surface water spills and all of the other impacts as well.
The fact is that the gas industry is basing this on nothing.
They're just trying to sell us the product, just like the tobacco industry tried to sell
us cigarettes and told us that those were safe as well.
Indeed, the gas industry uses the same PR firm that the backo industry used for many years.
So John Armstrong, what happens to that surface water?
When it comes up and it's sitting there in some kind of pool, we know that it's got,
as you say, some chemicals.
We know all the chemicals by now or we just sort of guess it out what they're using.
In some cases, the gas industry has released or been forced to release the chemicals they
use.
We often don't know the exact mixtures and then we sometimes and sometimes don't know
what other chemicals end up in the mixtures that are already underground and come up after
the hydraulic fraction process.
But to give an idea of what these chemicals are and what they can do, just take one.
From the gas industry's own data, enough benzene is used in each frac to contaminate 100
billion gallons of water.
That's 10 times the amount of water that New York State uses every single day.
And that's from one frac.
Multiply that by 50 or 100,000 wells that the gas industry wants to produce in New York
State and that's a horrifying, horrifying amount of water that can be contaminated.
One spill, one accident.
We're talking about destroying our water for generations and generations to come.
So in the same way that the nuclear rods that are left over, we never quite figured out
what to do with all that spent stuff which is terribly dangerous.
What do we do with this water that's sitting there on the top of the ground?
What we've brought up.
Alan, I wish we had an answer for that.
But the fact is we don't.
And even in the state's own review, we don't have an answer for that.
What the industry has done so far is put it through public wastewater treatment facilities,
which has ended up contaminating our streams and rivers.
For instance, in 2008, the city of Pittsburgh advised the residents to drink bottled water
for three weeks because their drinking water source had high levels of radiation as the
result of discharge of fracking wastewater.
Ultimately, the gas industry has created these deep injection wells where they blast down
at high pressure and far down into the earth as fracking wastewater because it's destroyed
water that can never be used again.
And those injection wells have been linked to countless earthquakes.
I was going to ask you about that.
There's no answer here.
And yet, I'm fascinated by something and that is that New York City has been spared.
Syracuse has been spared.
Some of the folks in upstate New York, particularly under the Marcella Shale, have not been spared.
What is their rationale for saying, okay, the New York City water is too important to allow
fracking.
The Syracuse water is too important.
But the rest of you have to live with it.
What's the rationale there?
The rationale is that from their side, from the state, is that the New York City and Syracuse
use non-filtered water.
They have this special federal designation of unfiltered water systems.
Basically, they don't have to use reverse osmosis.
To put in that system, it would cost billions of dollars.
But it is this ironic situation where we're saying, oh, it's not safe enough.
It's too much of a threat to New York City and Syracuse.
But all you folks in upstate New York who also drink unfiltered water, myself from the
cat skills we do in the southern tier, which has a sole source aquifer, they do as well.
But politically, I guess, those areas of the state are not important, which leaves this
question, well, right, we don't have the money in upstate New York in the southern tier.
But are we to become the guinea pigs in industrial fracking experiment for New York state?
Are we going to create a monitoring system to see how badly our health is impacted,
how much of our water is contaminated?
Will upstate New York become the guinea pigs of a toxic industrial operation in a human
laboratory experiment?
But don't we have that in Pennsylvania already?
Yeah, we do.
And that comes down to the reason why it would make absolutely no sense for New York state
to go ahead with fracking and even consider making it into the shizzan before waiting for
the result of these outside comprehensive health studies that are looking at these exact
issues in Pennsylvania.
Now, you are, of course, an advocate, a lobbyist, if you will.
It seems to me there's a certain brilliance in the way that the anti-frackers have played
this.
They haven't said to Governor Cuomo, you're a bad guy because you're interested in this.
They said, we want you to be a good guy so that you haven't precluded his doing what
you consider to be the right thing.
Is that your strategy?
We want the governor to be on our side.
We don't have anything against the governor.
We like the governor.
We want the governor to be the hero here.
We're not out to vilify the governor.
We're not out to expect him to do the wrong thing.
On the one side, we have an out of state industry coming into the state and threatening the
vitality of upstate New York, our health, our water, our economy.
And on the other side, we see that this governor who has vowed to lead on climate change,
who's been a progressive champion, he has the opportunity here, perhaps better than anyone
else in the country in the world, to turn his shoulder to this industry and say, we're
not going to play a game of balancing human health against an out of state industry, granted
with great political influence.
We're not going to let that balance happen.
Instead, we're going to build out a long-term economy infrastructure for the entire state
with renewable energy and efficiency that creates jobs for the long term and make sure that
New York State is the progressive champion and the best place in the world to live like
it always has been.
I have so many questions I want to ask you, John Armstrong.
Let me ask you this.
What about his upstate numbers?
Now with his safe act, guns, trying to put a lid on that, his poles are noticeably lower
upstate, stronger downstate.
From the very beginning, it's been clear that governor Cuomo has been interested in protecting
upstate in many ways.
So if you're him and you're sitting there and you're scratching your head and you've
got constituencies over the Marcello Shale saying, let us sell our land to the frackers.
Let us make some money here.
Let us bring industry in here.
Is that right looking at the poles that the upstate folks are more anxious to have it than
others?
That's actually the opposite of what the recent polls show.
We had a new Sienna poll out which is consistently pulled on this issue for a long time now that
it showed that the greatest opposition to fracking in fact is upstate.
Overall the polls showed 43 to 39% of New Yorkers opposed to fracking.
Upstate those numbers were considerably higher.
49 to 39% of upstate New York opposed is fracking.
Now that's a change, right?
That's a growth in terms of the anti-facking.
It's not the first poll that showed a majority opposed but that number has consistently been
growing.
And what I think that shows is that the gas industry is good at selling a 30 second TV spot
where they claim it's going to create jobs, it's going to be clean, it's going to be
efficient.
This debate's been going on for years and upstate New Yorkers have the most to lose and so they
have taken it upon themselves to consistent media coverage and looking at the researchers
and quite literally listening to their doctors to figure out what is the truth on this issue.
And the more upstate New Yorkers learn, the more they're opposed to that.
We've seen those numbers shift in our favor.
They're going to keep shifting in our favor.
We got for dead if fracking were ever allowed.
We'd see those numbers going our favors so far that it would be politically destructive
for the governor if fracking were allowed.
And he knows that he's got a very good pollster, Drew Zambele, and they can pull with some
real sensitivity on these issues.
Are you concerned that the president of the United States seems to be pro-fracking?
We're very concerned with the president's position.
He has definitely turned a blind eye to the science on fracking and to the concerns of the
medical professionals.
It was just recently an EPA inspector general Arthur Elkins came out and said in a report
that the EPA did not have good data on leakage from fracking and pollution and emissions.
And in fact, the EPA's lack of data could result in states designing incorrect and damaging
regulations for fracking.
And that was I think a very strong message to states across the country.
But also goes to show that Obama is not basing his position on gas on sound science.
He desperately needs to take a step back, consider the climate implications of fracking, the
environmental implications, the health implications, and turn away from the gas industry and this
rhetoric that is not based in reality from them.
So I think what you're saying is that there have been reports coming out from the EPA
and others that contradict the president's position.
Am I correct on that?
Exactly.
I actually pulled up the quote here.
The inspector general from the EPA said with limited data, human health risks are uncertain.
States may design incorrect or ineffective emission control strategies and the EPA's decisions
about regulating industry may be mis-informed.
End quote.
Previously to that, we saw the EPA and the inspector general was involved here as well.
Very a case of water contamination in Texas with range resources and some folks who have
had enormous health problems and water contamination issues for years.
He needs to live up to the promises he's made to the American public about climate change,
about health impacts and about jobs and going with the natural gas industry is in stark
contradiction to those promises.
Meanwhile, we as an amazing grassroots movement in New York State implore Governor Cuomo to
protect us clearly.
The Environmental Protection Agency and Governor Cuomo is not living up to the bar they
should be.
So we have to call on the governor to be that leader, to be that leader who can protect New
Yorkers and act in our best interest.
So you see Governor Cuomo sending in the plays much like a football coach to his health
commissioner and his EPA commissioner, or do you think that it's working the other way
around?
We think the governor is the ultimate decision maker here and what comes from Dr. Shaw
and Commissioner Martinz ultimately is coming from the governor.
New Yorkers have no reservations about this.
They know this decision is in the governor's hands and the governor will build their complete
responsibility for what happens here.
He will either be the lone hero who we will have his back for, you know, the coming generation
and his political future, or he will be the New York governor who poisons New Yorkers
and destroyed upstate New York.
Do you see?
Because here we are sitting, does it disagree to you?
We're sitting on all of this reserves.
They say more than Saudi Arabia oil.
Let's just assume that that's right for a minute.
And we can't get it out because of all the issues that you're raising.
It's not safe.
You got to protect the public health at all the rest.
But do you see a time that we could get some of that gas out?
And if you do, how would we do it?
Listen, there's no safe way to get that gas out.
No one has any qualms about that.
It just can't be done.
But beyond that fact, the international energy agency has come out and said, if we burn all
of this natural gas, this supposed Saudi Arabia of natural gas, it's game over.
We're going to see disastrous climate impacts.
So it will mean that our energy or lack thereof, it won't even be a concern.
The climate impacts will be so bad.
And that's a major point.
New York state, we've now lived through Hurricane Sandy.
We had Irene and we had Lee.
And the damages are in the billions and billions of dollars.
Other parts of the country have experienced droughts, the likes of which we've never
seen before.
We've shattered climate records for heat.
It doesn't make any sense to exacerbate this problem, which fracking enormously does
through the leakage of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, and then the carbon dioxide
that's released through combustion.
It's completely backward.
And for a governor who has bravely and courageously come out and led on climate change, who has
touted the need to address this problem, going after fracking makes no sense.
And I'll say one more thing.
We are greatly concerned that we have not looked as New York state at the climate impacts
of fracking in New York state.
The DEC's analysis does not include a review of the methane emissions and the climate impact
and how that relates to New York's goals.
And at the same time, the director of the DEC's division that's in charge of the Eskys,
Brad Field, the division of mental resources, is on record as a climate denier.
This is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be addressed immediately.
Is there a way that you see alternative energy sources too fracking being developed in
the state?
I mean, realistically.
Absolutely.
The renewable energy sector has grown tremendously.
Yesterday, we saw a report come out from leading researcher at Stanford University, Mark Jacobson
in collaboration with many researchers in New York state and elsewhere, put out a plan
for 100% renewable energy in New York state based on solar and wind and efficiency and
various other sources.
It's a detailed plan, it's an ambitious plan, but it goes to show that it really is possible
to turn away from fossil fuels and the destructive effects that they will have on all of our
futures and instead bring renewable energy.
And the report highlights a number of interesting things.
It would actually be economically feasible in a relatively short term to do.
It would save thousands of lives on a yearly basis and it would create the jobs that we desperately
need to turn our economy into a really thriving economy that leads to the entire nation.
So what do we do?
We just need the political will.
We need the governor to look at the anti-fracking movement and say, this is the most unparalleled
movement of people we've ever seen.
It spans the entire state from the tip of Long Island to Buffalo.
These people are ready, willing, able and organized to revolutionize renewable energy and efficiency
in New York state.
We just need the governor's sound leadership that he's showed on so many other issues to
go all in on it.
And we could do it.
And he would be a champion and he would create a legacy deserving of the greatest of all
New York governors.
John Armstrong, what I worry about, frankly, is that while we know that this alternative
energy development is really the way to go, as soon as you propose something like, for
example, wind turbines, another movement developed saying, we don't want them, they'll
hurt the birds, they'll mesmerize us and they'll screw up our view on our mount-tops.
How do you, as a leader in the anti-fracking group and your group, deal with those who
would deny the alternative, the other alternative energies?
Obviously, there are issues with a lot of different places and a lot of different specific
projects, but ultimately we know that New York state will line up behind a renewable energy
plan and investment infrastructure.
The nature of this has certainly changed over the last decade.
At first people thought windmills are their hideous, they don't fit anywhere.
In fact, a lot of people think that they look good and they see the value now.
We've definitely seen the public perception change.
We've seen public acceptance of solar growth.
We've seen the technology improve dramatically, such that they're not so loud.
They're not as much of a danger to birds and other parts of the environment.
We need to, obviously, carefully consider all of those concerns and figure out where
they make sense, where they don't make sense and ultimately find the smart way to do it.
And I know we can do that as New York state.
We just need the governor to lead it.
Now, John, I'm running out of time here one minute, but the New York State Assembly
has just checked in.
You want to tell us about that?
New York State Assembly voted overwhelmingly 103 to 40 of Edo proof majority to pass a
two-year moratorium in order to ensure that New York state can adequately consider the
health effects of fracking before making a decision.
Can such a thing pass in the Senate?
The independent Democratic conference introduced their own two-year moratorium bill with five
members.
And we know from Senator Vella that the regular Democratic conference of 27 members will all
support a ban on fracking.
So certainly they'll support a moratorium, meaning we have 32 members of the Senate in support
of a moratorium on fracking.
So certainly it has to support.
And if it's allowed to come to a vote on the floor, we think it will pass.
And New Yorkers will make a strong statement that we don't want fracking.
We need to look at the health impacts and figure out what this means and make sure we won't
become the guinea pigs of an industrial fracking experiment before making a decision.
Well John Armstrong, I can't thank you enough for taking time out of your busy schedule
and talking to us.
This program of course has heard all over New York State and I'm sure there'll be lots
of reaction to it.
We're out of time.
I guess it's been John Armstrong from Frack Action, a leading statewide organization,
talking to prevent fracking in New York.
John, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you Alan.
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