National groups getting involved in Le Roy cluster case

National environmental and health groups are beating a path to LeRoy, poking into the Genesee County community's startling cluster of teenage students with troubling neurological symptoms.

Groups led by environmental-activist icons Erin Brockovich and Lois Gibbs have been talking with parents and gathering background. A chapter of the Sierra Club has been digging into the LeRoy school's unusual connection with natural gas drilling. The Healthy Schools Network, Empire State Consumer Project and others are involved.

Leaders of these groups say authorities in New York may have acted too hastily in ruling out environmental contaminants, infectious illnesses or vaccinations as possible causes of the cluster, which now includes as many as 15 LeRoy Junior-Senior High School students who exhibit varying degrees of involuntary twitches and verbal outbursts not unlike those associated with Tourette's syndrome. Some report fainting spells and seizures, too.

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Anti-fracking group to submit county plan

According to a report submitted by the group on their experiences, they were hosted by the Wetzel County Action Group in their tour. Many Athens area residents have been taking the Wetzel tour, and have submitted descriptions of what they've observed as op-eds to The Athens NEWS.

"Northern Wetzel County is home to 33 Marcellus Shale gas wells and three compressor stations installed by Chesapeake (Energy) in a six-square mile area of the county since 2007," the report states. "Chesapeake has a total of 140 wells permitted in Wetzel, and many additional wells and permits exist with other companies. What was once miles of bucolic forested and agricultural West Virginia countryside is now a rural industrial petrochemical complex."

The report was provided by local resident Al Blazevicious. Other members of the group included Ann Brown, Ken Edwards, Jane Jacobs, Bruce Kuhre, Loraine McCosker, Celia Wetzel and Athens City Council member Michele Papai. Some of these individuals, including McCosker and Wetzel, have been outspoken critics of horizontal hydraulic fracturing.

"We saw numerous ridgetop drill pads and compressor stations, and spoke to several farmers who experienced significant impacts on their water, air, land, livelihoods, property values, personal health and quality of life," the group reported.

That change in landscape was a major thrust of the group's report.

"The life and viewscape in Wetzel County has changed from rolling agricultural hills, woods, streams and ponds, to an industrial landscape," they said. "The ridgetops are now filled with gas wells, storage tanks, compressor stations, huge storage ponds with slipping dams, while the trucks, noise, pollution and frack waste roll on (into southeast Ohio)."

They wrote that responsible citizens have an obligation to themselves and the community to view the impacts of the drilling technique firsthand.

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New Study: Severe Health Impact of Fracking

By Bernhard Debatin

A new study on the Impacts of Gas Drilling on Human and Animal Health (*)shows that fracking fluids, methane gas exposure, and other gas-drilling related contamination can have a serious impact on the health of both humans and animals. The study, conducted by private practice veterinarian Michelle Bamberger and Robert E. Oswald of the Department of Molecular Medicine at Cornell University, investigated 24 different sites with gas wells, 18 of which were horizontal hydro-fractured wells. The researchers observed and documented severe changes in health of both humans and animals living close to these sites. The majority of the observed animals were cows; other animals included horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats, and koi.

Bamberger and Oswald interviewed animal owners affected by gas drilling in six different states (Colorado, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas). In addition, they obtained lab test results and data from drilling companies and state regulatory agencies. The most striking finding of the study is the death of over 100 cows, caused by their exposure to fracking fluids or drinking of fracking wastewater that was dumped or leaked into freshwater sources. The researchers also frequently found reproductive problems, particularly lack of breeding and stillborn animals, often with congenital deformations. Other health effects on both animals and humans encompassed a wide range of symptoms, such as upper respiratory symptoms and burning of the eyes,  vomiting and diarrhea, rashes, nosebleeds, headaches, and neurological problems.

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Fracking Moratorium Urged as Doctors Call for Health Study

The U.S. should declare a moratorium on hydraulic
fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are
better understood, doctors said at a conference on the drilling process.

Gas producers should set up a foundation to finance studies on fracking
and independent research is also needed, said Jerome Paulson, a
pediatrician at George Washington University School of Medicine in
Washington.

 Top independent producers include Chesapeake Energy Corp. and
Devon Energy Corp., both of Oklahoma City, and Encana Corp. of Calgary,
according to Bloomberg Industries.

 "We've got to push the pause button,
and maybe we've got to push the stop button" on fracking, said Adam Law,
an endocrinologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, in an
interview at a conference in Arlington, Virginia that's the first to
examine criteria for studying the process.

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New anti-frack group, “Ban Michigan Fracking” organizes

Contact: LuAnne Kozma, Ban Michigan Fracking

Email: info@banmichiganfracking.org

Novi, Mich.—A new anti-fracking grassroots activist group, “Ban Michigan Fracking,” organized this week to lead the movement for a statewide ban on fracking for shale or “natural” gas. And fresh from their success in preventing the Delaware River Basin Commission from altering its rules to allow fracking in the headwaters of that mighty river, a host of east-coast and Midwest anti-fracking organizations today welcomed “Ban Michigan Fracking” into the fold.

Ban Michigan Fracking formed to educate, advocate and organize to ban fracking and raise awareness of the dangers of gas drilling to the state’s economy, to the environment and to the health and safety of its people. Ban Michigan Fracking sees as its immediate task the critiquing of current legislation on fracking and water withdrawals that would actually facilitate fracking in the state.

Ban Michigan Fracking spokesperson LuAnne Kozma said, “We have learned from the experience of our sister-organizations in the east that only the total banning of this dangerous process can excite and mobilize people. The halfway measures that pretend to deal with fracking are really designed to fracture our movement and get us bogged down in regulatory detail. We know enough now to demand a ban and we stand with the majority of the informed public in telling our legislators to represent us and not corporate polluters threatening our communities and our way of life.”

Grassroots organizations on the east coast and in the Midwest agreed with that assessment.  Maura Stephens, a co-founder of Coalition to Protect New York, extended a welcome to Ban Michigan Fracking:  “Interstate solidarity and co-operation is the next, necessary level in our struggle against the corporations that would turn our country into a polluted resource colony.” In Pennsylvania, John Detwiler, of the group Marcellus Protest, pointed out “We’re not ‘naïve’ or ‘emotional’, as pro-drilling propaganda paints us:  we see what this industry has already done to other Americans.  Pennsylvania shows why our grassroots movement to ban hydrofracturing is gaining national momentum – we cannot rely on so-called regulation by our state government.”

Low Cost, High Expense?

Anita Barkin is on a mission for public health.

That's not surprising for Carnegie Mellon's director of Health Services, but this effort stretches far beyond the university's Pittsburgh campus. And far below.

Barkin's mission is to educate the public about the process and impacts of drilling into the Marcellus Shale for natural gas and to advocate for safeguards. Her message to the industry and government officials is to slow down and weigh all of the factors involved. 

While drilling companies and politicians boast about the positive effects of drilling, such as the low-cost clean energy it provides and the economic boost it gives to residents and communities, Barkin argues that the negative environmental and health impacts may far outweigh the positives. She notes that the economic boost it fosters may be exaggerated as well.

In a Learning & Development session this semester titled "Health Concerns Related to Marcellus Shale Drilling," Barkin, who currently serves as president of the American College Health Association, discussed some of the negatives, the need for a closer examination of the impacts and greater regulation and oversight of the industry.

http://www.cmu.edu/piper/stories/2011/december/barkin-drilling.html#.TuoncguRHwM.email

Shale Gas Industry Insider: We Are Losing the Messaging War on Fracking

The shale gas industry has had its collective ass kicked, and kicked hard, by Gasland and others opposed to hydraulic fracturing and needs to redefine its core messages to defuse a burgeoning negative public perception of the controversial drilling technique, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) said today.

“What we’ve seen in the last few years, and I hope it’s peaking, is a completely heightened public awareness around hydraulic fracturing and an increase in active opposition,” Tisha Conoly-Schuller said this afternoon. “I hate to credit the movie Gasland, but it’s really changed the conversation.”

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