Let's Talk Fracking

The Delaware River in Autumn

As the Gulf catastrophe plays on, there is - if you can believe it - a slower-moving, much farther-reaching calamity emerging.

It is being caused by something called hydrofracturing, a process that uses a slurry of sand and toxic chemicals propelled at high pressure against layers of shale that hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under them. Called "fracking" for short, it is in use and growing in rural West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York.

The 2005 Energy Policy Act, a direct outgrowth of the secret Cheney energy cabal, exempts hydraulic fracturing from federal water laws and relies on states to monitor and restrict water pollution. West Virginia and Pennsylvania have largely failed in efforts to stop the process. New York State has largely succeeded - so far.

The material polluting ground water and nearby streams is called "leakoff."

Aside from the actual toxics used in the process, fracking releases huge amounts of methane that finds its way into the water supply as do unwanted large concentrations of normally harmless elements such as iron and aluminum.

Already wells in central Pennsylvania have been closed and the drilling and gas companies have begun trucking in potable water by tanker truck to the affected areas.

Reports of people passing out during their morning showers and developing lesions on their skin have become too pervasive and persistent to ignore.

Most ominously for those in the Northeast, this Pennsylvania drilling is going on in the Delaware River watershed. The Delaware is one of the most pristine rivers in the United States, despite its proximity to the large population centers of metro New York and Philadelphia.

More drilling has been planned or been proposed much closer to New York City's main water supply.

According to a report in Vanity Fair:

"Volatile organic compounds (carbon-based gaseous substances with a variety of detrimental health effects) and other dangerous chemicals are burned off directly into the air during this on-site compression [liquefaction] process. Meanwhile, the returned fracking fluid, now called waste water, is either trucked off or stored in large, open-air, tarp-lined pits on site, where it is allowed to evaporate. The other portion of the fluid remains deep underground—no one really knows what happens to it."

Each well that is opened requires between 5 and 8 million gallons of water to operate. This is the equivalent of 650,000 5-minute showers. (It has to be trucked in, requiring 800 to 1,200 round trips by heavy trucks to each site. New York has forbidden the use of municipal water for this purpose, so if fracking ever goes ahead in the state it will require even longer-distance trucking tactics.) And what goes into the ground must come out, somewhere, sometime. In the case of fracking 1/3rd of the water used is returned as polluted waste water.

“There has never been any evidence of fracking ever causing direct contamination of fresh groundwater in Pennsylvania or anywhere else,” said Scott Perry, another Oil and Gas Management official, as recently as April 2010.

This is patently untrue, another instance of the lies that the energy industry has told the American public about oil, coal, and gas extraction, all the while dragging their feet on the way to a clean energy future.

In east-central Pennsylvania, whole towns have been affected by fracking, homes have been shuttered, schools have been tested and their air found to be polluted.

What chemicals are used in the process? Hold onto your gas masks:

They include such substances as benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, boric acid, monoethanolamine, xylene, diesel-range organics, methanol, formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, ammonium bisulfite, 2-butoxyethanol, and 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one.

The last chemical is known as a "bad actor" in the field of toxin studies. It is an ingredient in pesticides and is deemed a highly acutely toxin, a cholinesterase inhibitor (endocrine system disrupter), a known/probable carcinogen, and known groundwater pollutant or known reproductive or developmental toxicant.
 

An intensive study conducted by New York City, concerned about the spread of hydro fracturing into the city’s 1,585-square-mile watershed in the Catskill Mountains and upper Delaware River basin concluded that “Intensive natural gas well development in the watershed brings an increased level of risk to the water supply: risk of degrading source water quality, risk to long-term watershed health... risk of damaging critical infrastructure, and the risk of exposing watershed residents and potentially New York City residents to chronic low levels of toxic chemicals.”

The city’s report went on to say that while a single well may be environmentally benign, the risks become unacceptable “when evaluated in the context of hundreds or thousands of other wells.”

Wes Gillingham, program director of Catskill Mountainkeeper, said of the report, “One of the reasons industry could get away with these incidents is that there was a lack of science. New York City used reputable geologists and came up with the science.”

Finally, the ineluctables.
 

As surprising as this may be to those unfamiliar with the Northeast woodlands and meadows, the rural areas of Pennsylvania and New York are relatively unspoiled. (New York State, for instance, has two of the country's roughly two dozen big city unfiltered water supplies: New York City's, the nation's biggest, and Syracuse's. Both would be put at extreme risk should fracking for "natural" gas be implemented wholesale.)

Moreover, the regions under the shadow of this threat have largely avoided industrialization and even extensive residential development. The old mixed farmlands and incidentally preserved lands and waters have been little changed over centuries. Second-growth forests in some areas are now close to 200 years old.

One gas industry spokesman, fighting his dark version of the good fight in Pennsylvania, proclaimed that the drilling and fracking had produced more than 300 jobs already in that state. That's about as many people as attend a large elementary school.

That is worth jeopardizing the water of tens of millions of people?
 

Put up the windmills now, build the solar panels. Use the car less. Drive at 55. Turn off the lights.
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Immigration: Dear Arizona, Here's The New York Model

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 

Is the imprisoned lightning, 

And her name Mother of Exiles.

- Emma Lazarus

Inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty

Imagine for a moment not the fevered Arizona, ramparts up and bristling, on the border with Mexico preventing itself from being "overrun" by brown-skinned immigrants to the south, but an Arizona with Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Belgium as its neighbors. Tens of thousands of fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked young men and women enter Arizona's sacred space. 

Would the Arizona legislature pass a law permitting all fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked people to be stopped anytime, anyplace, anywhere in the state to have their "papers" checked? 

Have a Nordic/Germanic accent? Turn around and put your hands behind you! Bad boy, bad boy, what you gonna do when they come for you?

Don't make me laugh, Arizona. Anyone with a brain the size of a chipmunk knows what racism looks like. And it's ugly.

There is another way, the New York Model, that has been forged through blood and tears over almost four centuries. New York, the Mother of Exiles.

Wave upon wave of ethnic groups dating to the 1630s have disembarked on the shores of the New York metropolitan region of roughly 20 million, beginning with the Dutch, English, Scots-Irish and Africans who displaced the native population. The Indians were pushed aside by the first northern Europeans. (There are about 120,000 people who claim Native American ancestry in New York City's 5 boroughs.)

Next, Germans nuzzled their way into the in-crowd, followed by the Irish who were met with such hue and cry - due to their Catholicism primarily, but also their poverty-stricken state created by the potato famine and British oppression - one would have thought the Know Nothings/Nativists were beset by a clone army of typhoid carriers. 

But New York was just warming up. Next came the garlic-breathed Italians and Greeks, and the ultimate outsiders, the Jews. The exotic Chinese initially came in small numbers, though by World War I were jostling Jews and Italians for their own piece of real estate on the Lower East Side.

The next "problem" groups were Great Migration blacks from the South and Puerto Ricans, although the establishment could not do much about them except to discriminate once they barged into New York, since they were as American as the next folks by dint of citizenship law.

Voila the long, well-known story abbreviated: the Puerto Ricans begat the Dominicans, the Dominicans begat the Haitians, the Haitians begat the Jamaicans, the Jamaicans begat the Bahamians, the Mexicans, the Central Americans, South Americans, Koreans, more Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis, North Africans, on and on.

Fully 60% of New York City's population is composed of either foreign born individuals or the children of foreign born people. (Make note to inform Arizonans: we all work, study, shop, ride, etc., together without having the sky fall upon our heads on a daily basis.)

To say that the waves of immigration did not and do not place heavy burdens on the region's social services would be disingenuous. But, immigrants to New York are almost ridiculously quick to adapt, get to work, and assimilate.

According to a report by the Manhattan Institute in 2009, 52% of foreign-born residents of the New York metro area are naturalized citizens. In the rest of the country, the figure is just 40%. Ninety-four per cent are legal residents or visitors in New York. In the rest of the country, the number is less than 75%.

Immigrants learn English more quickly in New York. Among adult immigrants who have arrived in the past five years, 40% speak English very well versus 32% in the rest of the country. Among recently arrived foreign-born kids, the difference is even stronger: 47% versus 36%. (Click here for a touching story about immigrants learning to read, check this out by Clyde Haberman in the NY Times the other day.)

What makes New York City so facile at absorbing immigrants? Our national caricature paints us as rough n' ready, brusque, cold and self-absorbed. Yet... 

The big city has many things going for it.

New York is not racially or ethnically binary like so many other places. The city’s immigrants come from every corner of the globe, and no single group makes up more than 12% of the foreign-born population. That makes it almost impossible for any single immigrant group to form a large isolated ghetto. 

Sure, the city has ethnic neighborhoods and always has, but it is easy for anyone to head elsewhere to work or shop. New York doesn't have "No-Fly Zones." The day the immigrant lands in the city of dreams mom and dad can parade the kiddies and grandparents down 5th Avenue, Park Ave., anyplace in the city they like.

Even in well-etched ethnic enclaves, the immigrant encounters native-born Americans and representatives of cultures other than his or her own. The city is a public place where residents have no choice but to share quotidian experiences. As immigrants and natives share experiences, they become more alike. Immigrants don't come here to displace us, they come here to be just like us as they add a little more seasoning to the broth.

In my day-to-day life in this past week alone, I interacted with West African cab drivers, Indian newsstand owners, the Greek diner staff, a Bosnian building super, a Yemeni deli guy, many Dominicans, a small number of Mexicans, a British-born baseball coach (yes!), a few native Irish floor re-finishers, and a sprinkling of native Italians. None of them were born here. (This is to say nothing of the countless Americans from other regions I encounter on a daily basis. When my young neighbor smiles and says "I'm from Des Moines," she might as well say "Hallo. I am from La Cote d'Ivoire.")

The immigrants, aside from generally appearing exhausted from work or worry, seem earnest, eager, fascinated with America and New York, and extremely interested in my own family's immigrant journey. What happened to my family in the 1870s and 80s is possibly more important to them than it is to my own social and ethnic peers. The biggest assimilation machine is The Golden Dream itself, past, present, and future.

Importantly, we in New York have a history of dealing with immigrants - not always pretty, but very concrete and incredibly well-documented. We've made our mistakes and have moved into a new era. New York has a helpful network of legal advocates and local assimilation institutions born of our contentious past ready to help immigrants navigate contemporary rapids.

Most New Yorkers don't live in gated communities, or play golf on private courses, travel in private cars isolated from each other, or swim at residents-only beaches. Our kids thrive in a huge, roiling mash-up in schools, sports, theater classes, dance, music, and on public transportation, cabs, shops, libraries, medical facilities, and the thronged streets. We also mix with 55 million visitors per year from all corners of the Earth.

There is barely time to ponder one's role in this large millennial swirl of humanity. But one conclusion you reach pretty quickly is that human beings are pretty much alike no matter where they hail from.

I am sure New York officials would be happy to take a few minutes to speak with those old, scared and cranky folks down in AZ. Give us a call, ya hear? We'll tell you how it all went down.

You know us in the crazy city. We LOVE to talk. You could learn a lot, Arizona. But the first things you have learn is some humility and you do that by finding your humanity. People crossing the border only want what your grandparents or great grandparents wanted, that which the United States delivered so well.

When the census form arrived a few weeks ago, I deliberated whether I should check my race as white or not. It seemed absurd to check "other" and write in "Italian-Irish." These days, in this place, it would have felt affected.

Eventually, I did actually check "other," then scrawled in "New Yorker" in a prominent place.

Health Care, National Polls, Local Sentiment and Common Sense

The "National Poll" is American political dialogue's red herring factory, pumping out misconceptions, misperceptions, and thoroughly useless information. Pick your favorite poll - whether it's from the left or the right.

Ignore national polls. Especially right now.

Even in the bluest of states, the current reception being given health care reform is modest at best. So, states such as Masachusetts and New York, ol' reliables in the liberal column, may "only" be in favor 57 to 43%. But in Texas, the anti-reform fever is running at 63 vs. 37%.

When you combine Mass. and NY states' opinion with that of Texas you get an overall 47% approval of reform with 53% against. Sounds damning.

This sort of scenario is playing out across all the states, and like national presidential polls these have no real bearing on legislation or future prospects.

We are a republic, not a direct democracy.

It makes no difference if a Democrat wins a district by 1,000 votes in New York State while a Republican wins a Texas district by 50,000 votes. They both go to Congress as equal members. At the moment both represent 650,000 citizens.*

The media are doing a disservice by not particularizing such splits and explaining the meaning of them. And politicians - especially the masters of misinformation on the right wing - are seized by tics, hiccups and a case of the whoops every time a national poll shifts one way or another.

On top of this, a more thorough set of polls would parse out the number of people who position themselves on points farther left in the Democratic Party who are dissatisfied with the outcome of health care reform. They, too, are unhappy, no doubt because of the loss of a public option, and perhaps are communicating their feelings by "disapproving" of the bill.

*Interestingly, of Texas's 32 House seats, 13 are held by Democrats. Of the combined 39 seats of the New York and Massachusetts delegations, 37 are held by Democrats.

...

JFK at Madison Square Garden, 1962, on Health Care Reform

To read the entire text of his stirring speech, click here