Alert: Protect New York’s Water from Gas Drilling!
From Environmental Advocates of New York:
The natural gas industry is eager to drill in New York State using a risky technique called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” Fracking has the potential to endanger our drinking water and will turn parts of New York into industrial drilling zones.
Fracking requires millions of gallons of water and hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals—many of which are toxic. Some are known carcinogens. To learn more about fracking, click here. In other parts of the country, fracking and industrial gas drilling have spilled toxic chemicals and poisoned water supplies.
Last fall, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation issued a dangerously inadequate draft plan to guide industrial gas drilling. Nearly 13,000 concerned citizens weighed in on the draft because it’s weak and won’t protect our water. It doesn’t:
- ban using toxic or carcinogenic chemicals in the fracking process that could travel into our water supplies;
- identify areas where gas drilling should NOT take place (i.e. the New York City or Skaneateles watersheds, endangered species habitat, etc);
- account for the fact that New York currently has no wastewater treatment plants that can safely treat the wastes that fracking creates.
- evaluate the environmental impacts of drilling on a large scale;
- propose hard and fast rules or regulations but relies on language such as should, could or may to describe how drilling will be overseen.
To read Environmental Advocates of New York’s full comments on the State’s draft plan, click here.
To protect our drinking water and New York’s environment, the State must revise the draft plan and give the public a chance to review the revisions before it’s final. Click here to tell the Governor and the Dept of Environmental Conservation that New Yorkers need another chance to comment on the drilling guide.
Thank you.
Katherine Nadeau
Water & Natural Resources Program Director
Environmental Advocates of New York