Grisanti proposes fracking safeguards

State Sen. Mark J. Grisanti on Friday announced legislation that would prohibit treatment of water from hydraulic fracturing at public facilities statewide, create a tracking program for the waste and enact other environmental safeguards.

But Grisanti, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environmental Conservation, said he would not support or oppose the controversial gas drilling process until the state completes its final environmental impact study.

“It’s preliminary,” he said. “It’s too early to tell.”

As Grisanti was confronted by environmental activists demanding a complete ban on fracking, his chief political opponent called for more education on the issue before any action is taken.

“We need to see the full scope of their final draft of regulations before we rush to start the drilling,” former Erie County Legislature Chairman Charles M. Swanick said as he urged consideration of alternative energy methods.

While four environmental groups lauded Grisanti for the environmental safeguards, a vocal cohort of anti-fracking activists and Occupy Buffalo protesters gathered Friday in the Mahoney State Office Building to pepper him with questions about the effects of fracking.

“I have encountered no single is-

sue as critical, controversial and important as high-volume hydraulic fracturing,” Grisanti said. “Should the DEC ultimately decide to allow for [fracking], I strongly believe environmental safeguards are needed.”

Green groups Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Earthworks, Environmental Advocates of New York and Natural Resources Defense Council applauded Grisanti for “recognizing the lack of oversight and real dangers associated with fracking wastes.”

But organizers from Food&Water Watch, who held large anti-fracking signs during Grisanti’s news conference, said it didn’t go far enough.

“There is more to fracking than the waste it creates, and these bills do not take that into consideration,” said Rita Yelda, the group’s organizer. “The legislation introduced by Senator Grisanti is full of loopholes and would fail to protect Western New Yorkers from fracking’s threats to our health, economy and environment.”

Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families party, said the bills “pave the way” for statewide fracking to begin.

If passed, the legislation would appear to put an end to efforts to treat the fracking fluid at wastewater treatment plants in Niagara Falls or North Tonawanda, which officials have said are capable of treating such water.

“In my opinion, they don’t have the capacity,” Grisanti said. “They can pretreat it, but you don’t want the end result to be dumped in the Niagara Gorge.”

He said a private treatment plant is being built in Pennsylvania to treat the fracking water from Pennsylvania, Ohio and other places where the Marcellus Shale makes gas drilling especially lucrative.

Grisanti’s legislation also aims to prohibit the use of wastewater for road-and land-spreading; create an oil and gas waste tracking program stronger than one proposed under the draft environmental impact statement; strengthen notification requirements for wastewater spills and create a geographic information system for the public on gas and oil production.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is expected to finalize its environmental impact statement and could make a decision on fracking as early as July.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/buffalo/article799997.ece

Congressman Holden under attack from PACs

Already facing a test from within his own party, Pennsylvania's longest-tenured congressman has a new set of voices challenging his bid for an 11th term. And they're coming from far outside of the state.

Democrat Tim Holden, who is facing Lackawanna County attorney Matt Cartwright in the 17th District primary, is under attack from political action committees based in Texas and California.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Dallas-based Super PAC, says it plans to spend six figures on "full spectrum warfare" again Holden. The PAC, which campaigns against incumbent congressmen on both sides of the aisle, aims to use radio, television, the Internet and direct mail to target Holden, spokesman Curtis Ellis said.

Holden, a conservative Democrat, is also facing scrutiny from Blue America, a smaller PAC created in 2005 by three liberal bloggers. Blue America launched a billboard campaign against Holden throughout the district, including a billboard on Route 33 nearPalmer Township.

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The new 17th District will cover part of Northampton County, including the Easton and Slate Belt regions as well as Nazareth,Bethlehem Township and a sliver of Bethlehem beginning in 2013. Some Democrats in the Easton area have already questioned whether Holden is liberal enough to represent the city.

With Holden trying to introduce himself to a district vastly changed under the state's new congressional map, the negative advertisements could hurt his image with new voters, said Thomas Baldino, a political science professor at Wilkes University.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a Scranton native, will campaign in the city with colleague Holden this weekend.

Holden's campaign condemned the influence of Super PACs, political organizations that cannot make contributions to candidates, campaigns or parties and must spend contributions independently. Super PACs, which are allowed under a 2010 Supreme Court Decision, give corporations, unions and other organizations the ability to spend unlimited money in an effort to sway the outcome of elections.

"Tim Holden is firmly opposed to Super PACs and believes that voters are supposed to decide elections, not corporations from outside the 17th District," campaign manager Eric Nagy said.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability's television commercial airing in the Scranton and Wilkes Barre area denounces Holden for receiving campaign donations from '"Wall Street" and voting in 2000 to let corporations exclude foreign income from their gross income for tax purposes. It criticizes his past votes to increase congressional salaries and his vote in 2010 to extend former President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

Founded last year by conservative construction mogul Leo Linbeck III, officials running the Super PAC say congressional elections are rigged by strategically drawn boundaries that favor one party.

Holden's newly shaped district did become more Democratic, though it was drawn by a Republican majority in the state legislature. Laureen Cummings of Lackawanna County is the lone Republican running.

With one party disadvantaged by the district lines, opponents from the other party still have little chance of defeating incumbents in primary elections because of disparities in campaign finances, Ellis said. The Campaign for Primary Accountability, which had $1.6 million on hand at the end 2011, is meant to be an equalizer.

"We're not concerned with Democrats versus Republicans," Ellis said. "We're concerned about the Washington insiders versus the people."

Nagy dismissed the notion that Holden is a Washington insider, saying he returns to Schuylkill County on the weekends. Holden is from St. Clair, a small town near Pottsville, and was county sheriff before joining Congress.

The Campaign for Primary Accountability has already targeted two incumbents who were unseated in their primaries — Republicans Don Manzullo of Illinois and Jean Schmidt of Ohio. In Pennsylvania, the PAC is also campaigning against U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-18th District.

Blue America, on the other hand, is spending money to campaign against only two incumbents — Holden and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., treasurer Howie Klein said. The House recently passed a Ryan budget that would restructure the tax code and cut domestic programs.

The PAC reported $19,000 on hand in its latest Federal Election Commission report and had spent $12,000 in the first quarter of 2012. Its billboard, which says "Fracking's Got a Friend in Pennsylvania," refers to Holden's vote to remove some regulations on natural gas drilling. It's just one issue in which the PAC disagrees with Holden, who has also been criticized by liberals for voting against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Holden says he did so because the law costs too much.

Holden has defended his voting record, saying conservative votes were a reflection of his former district, which had a Republican majority. Holden has long been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a fiscally conservative group of House Democrats. He is anti-abortion and opposes gun control.

Though Cartwright has never held public office, he's campaigning as a member of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

"If it were up to me, I would be having a diatribe on the billboard," said Klein, who regularly writes about Holden on his blog DownWithTyranny. "There are no other races in the country that are pitting a particularly bad Blue Dog against a real progressive."

Cartwright's campaign has distanced itself from the PACs.

"We see it more as a referendum against Tim Holden and not necessarily a campaign in support of Matt," campaign manager Shane Seaver said.

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/mc-pa-17-holden-superpac-20120412,0,6123619.story

Ohio Fracking: State Agency Proposes Rules For Drilling In State Parks

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A state natural resource agency's proposed rules for drilling in state parks would require natural gas and oil companies to stay at least 300 feet — the length of a football field — from campgrounds, certain waterways and sites deemed historically or archaeologically valuable.

Documents on proposed rules were released by the state Department of Natural Resources this week after the Ohio chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit claiming the agency ignored repeated requests by the group to review them.

The proposals for drilling leases also includes an 89-page report listing "best management practices" on topics like site restoration and guidelines for emergency and pollution incidents. Other proposals include state approval before companies could store drilling waste in pits and an agreement on the locations of all drilling equipment.

Eastern Ohio is in the midst of a natural gas boom as developers seek to capture rights to Utica Shale deposits. The state passed a law in September that opened its parks and other state-held lands for drilling, and officials have been developing leasing terms for drilling companies.

Opponents say they're concerned about the environmental impact of the drilling, which includes hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." The process involves drillers blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to break up rock deposits.

Supporters of the law say there's a potentially vast reservoir of oil and gas in the Utica Shale, which lies below the Marcellus Shale, where oil companies in Pennsylvania have drilled thousands of wells in search of natural gas and oil.

But natural gas drilling has become a contentious issue in Pennsylvania, where public health advocates have criticized a new law that will limit accessible medical information on illnesses that may be related to gas drilling. It takes effect April 14.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than 130 bills have been recently introduced in 24 states to address fracking. It includes a range of topics like waste treatment, disposal regulations and requirements to publicly disclose the composition of fracturing fluid chemicals. At least nine states have proposed fracking suspensions or studies on their impact.

It's unclear whether the 300-foot buffer rule in Ohio will be applied above ground or below. A message left for a natural resource agency spokesman was not immediately returned Thursday morning.

Jed Thorp, the Sierra Club's Ohio chapter manager, said the proposals are inadequate. He said he's hopeful state lawmakers will eventually reverse the law.

"When people go to a state park, they don't want to see fracking, or hear fracking, or smell fracking," he said in a statement. "They want to relax."

Thorp also said the Sierra Club, which filed its lawsuit Monday, won't drop its suit. He said the agency failed to follow the state's public records law by ignoring requests for the documents as far back as October.

We're fracking our way to a warmer and less stable world

It's worrisome but not surprising that the push for unconventional fossil fuels has overshadowed in media coverage and public debate the accelerating global warming that is taking place. It's not too hard to understand why. ExxonMobil and other transnational oil and gas corporations want it that way. They reject the best scientific evidence of global warming as "uncertain" or mount major efforts to discredit the very idea of global warming.

Wikipedia has a 13-page chapter on "Scientific opinion on climate change" in which the principal organizations of scientists from around the world (e.g., Academies of Science, Earth Science, Meteorology and Oceanography) concur with the view that "the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming and it is more than 90 percent certain that humans are causing it through activities that increase concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels."

So what's the point? Sure, the odds are not good that the best science will prevail over big oil. There's not much time to build more ecologically compatible energy systems than we have. But you keep learning, talking, acting, and know that there are people just like you in communities across the country and the world. Time will tell whether it coalesces into something big enough to effectively challenge the powerful, institutionalized forces in the society and to build sustainable and just societies.

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