Cross posted from Pruning Shears.

It can be difficult to write about activism in an open-ended effort like the one against fracking. It isn’t like a campaign where all the activity is geared toward election day, at which point everyone will know who won and who lost. It’s different even from an issue like the Keystone XL pipeline, which is a single (continent-spanning) contiguous piece of infrastructure, and which will ultimately get a definitive yes or no.

Fracking involves lots of activity in communities dotted across the nation. There are big shale plays in some parts of the west, some parts of the Midwest, some parts of the east, and so on. But nothing connects those dots, and that makes it hard to give the thing a sense of its nationwide scope. Coverage will tend to be on a smaller scale, which makes it easier to dismiss it as a purely local or parochial concern.

Another issue with coverage is that developments tend to move slower than the news cycle. Activists like our group might start something like a monthly water monitoring program, but after kicking it off there really isn’t much new to report on it. You can’t make much of a story out of: We’re still monitoring!

This week there was an interesting new development though. Our county had not approved an increase in funding to our health district since 1955. We’ve had lots of renewals, but no increases. Counties and other regional bodies are capable of providing valuable services to residents, but those services cost money – paid through taxes. Asking people to raise their taxes is a pretty heavy lift, as our track record on this issue shows.

Because of the contacts and knowledge our group has gained through our water monitoring program, we knew about the replacement levy coming up and invited someone from the board to speak. He talked in general terms about what the department was doing, what its challenges were, and so on. We raised our concerns about fracking to him, and he said the department would look into subsidizing the cost of its water testing program if the levy passed.¹

So we ordered a batch of signs and put them out on our lawns:

We also talked up the issue with friends and neighbors, and generally tried to promote the issue as we could. We weren’t in any way prime movers in the effort, but we pitched in as we were able to.² And miracle of miracles, it actually passed.

There are a couple of interesting notes in the article. The eye popping one for me is this: voter turnout of 8.87 percent. My experience at the polls was certainly congruent with that. I got there about a half an hour after polls opened and I thought I’d gone to the wrong place. It was deserted.

Inside, I initially went to the wrong room (misplaced signage – not my fault!) and found out I was the first voter to show up. I then made my way to the correct room and found out I was the first voter there as well. By contrast, last November I arrived about ten minutes after polls opened and there was already a long line. It was quick inside the booth as well – the health levy was literally the only item on the ballot. That wasn’t true county wide, of course, but it’s safe to say there were considerably fewer issues than in November.

These two factors make an interesting dynamic: Lower voter turnout means each voter who does show up gets more bang for the buck. Your vote has more weight if it’s one of ten than it does if it’s one of a million. And the thinner ballot means the election results generally were something of a referendum on the levy itself. Last November’s replacement levy defeat was bundled with votes for president, Congress, and so on. But Tuesday’s replacement levy success was close to an endorsement of the levy, plain and simple.

There are potentially some good lessons for activists. The first is that action on a controversial issue like fracking can be taken through less contentious avenues like health department funding. Lots of people enthusiastically support the oil and gas industry, but the population opposed to local health department funding is pretty much limited to anti-tax zealots.

Second, a group that believes it has popular support on an issue might do well to look to special elections to get on the ballot. There is less chance of the issue getting diluted or obscured by other issues, and activists can translate their support into maximum leverage at the polls.

Finally, the process of identifying issues and reaching out to key players is a great way to build social capital. It gets you in touch with people you wouldn’t have been in touch with otherwise and find ways to support a related issue in ways that might not have been obvious. And every now and then it all translates, as it did on Tuesday, into a surprising and pleasant victory.

1. Technical/legal note: we refer to our program as water monitoring and not water testing, because we don’t want anyone to think the handful of metrics we look at is in any way equivalent to the far more extensive testing done by the county or the EPA. We are very careful about our word choice.
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2. This sort of purely grassroots effort is exactly the kind of situation where a third party could make hay. One would think that a party like, say, the Greens would be strongly in favor of, say, adequate funding for health departments. To the extent they are absent, they are missing out on party building opportunities. They may not have the time, resources or inclination to do so in my neck of the woods, which is fine. But I will be decidedly unimpressed with their guilt trips about supporting the awful two party system when the next presidential election rolls around.
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Cross posted from Pruning Shears.

Two of the more loaded words in contemporary politics are independence and freedom. Despite their similarities in meaning they get used in very different ways. Independence is used in a more national sense, which might be natural because of its prominence in what is arguably our founding document. It doesn’t seem like it is possible to disparage independence in our discourse. Even a word like patriotism, while generally well regarded, has qualifications. Independence is all good though, so anything you can attach to it is improved by the association.

This has played out for years now with the much-invoked phrase “energy independence.” The latest calls for it began in the wake of 9/11 as a way to argue for policies that would remove our need to import oil from abroad. It made sense on the face of it: We send our money to oil-rich states, states that in some cases fund groups hostile to America. Buy from them and you’re funding the terrorists, went the argument. (This is simply a description of what leaders put out for public consumption, not an endorsement of it.)

The initial prescriptions for energy independence were relatively full, or at least fuller than they would become. An increase in domestic production was the favored proposal, but was supplemented with calls to encourage conservation and discourage consumption. As late as the spring of 2008 it was possible for a conservative in good standing like Charles Krauthammer to call for a heavy tax on gasoline. But by that fall Michael Steele made the infamous call to drill baby drill, and from then on it was all about resource extraction.

The curiously elusive goal of energy independence is now being pursued through fracking, or so its proponents claim. There is lots of natural gas just waiting to be forced up to the surface of the earth, we are told. In fact, the Barnett Shale in Texas has enough reserves to supply Texas for the next 200 years. There’s also enough nationwide to supply America for the next 200 years. And 200 years for China! And India! The world! It’s the fossil fuel equivalent of Ulysses Everett McGill’s geographical oddity.

Of course, abundance does not mean independence – at least not long term. That only happens if we take some additional steps. For instance, any resource vital enough to merit a policy of independence is too precious to export. We should flat out ban the removal of any item that receives such an important designation. Selling it to foreigners is downright seditious, isn’t it? Doesn’t doing so hinder our quest for energy independence? We should be keeping it all here. Yet the industry is doing just the opposite – pushing for new ways to get it out of the country. Why does the oil and gas industry hate America?¹

Similarly, we should create a substantial strategic reserve of any such resource. If natural gas truly is so important to America’s future then it is reckless to deprive ourselves of a great store of it in case of emergency. And of course there’s Krauthammer’s price floor proposal. We should just set a minimum price on it and levy whatever tax is necessary to reach that level.

The fact that none of the people making all the noise about energy independence are taking such a comprehensive view on the issue can only be explained a few ways, none of them flattering. Have they not thought the issue through? Are they uninterested in thinking about it beyond empty slogans? Or is the noble-sounding “energy independence” really just a cynical euphemism for catering to a favored political constituency? Those who trumpet energy independence should be expected to either address these issues or lose credibility.

From a citizen’s perspective, the current vision of energy independence might be a bit of a mixed blessing. What price should we be willing to pay to achieve this? Aside from the environmental impact of ongoing fossil fuel dependence(!), what good does it do the average person to give preferential treatment to wildly profitable industries?² Or ones that cripple the democratic process? If you trade rule by a tyrannical king for rule by soulless plutocrats how much have you really gained? This might be a kind of independence we would be better off without.

Freedom, unlike independence, drags a little bit of freight behind it. Over the past few years it has become a rallying cry of the right, invoked in absurd ways (Fox link!) to decry just about anything conservatives don’t like. That has made it something of an object of ridicule on the left; this link should give you a decent look at whatever the outrage du jour is in the fever swamps.

The debasing of the word freedom is a shame, because it can be very useful to liberals in some cases – like energy. Energy independence may not be all it’s cracked up to be, but energy freedom could be very appealing. The idea of individuals enjoying energy freedom could draw primarily on distributed generating capacity. Household generation of electricity through wind and solar energy, aside from the environmental impact of ramping up the use of renewables(!), promises huge benefits.

The main one is reducing dependence on the grid. Our model has always worked on centralized generation, and the obvious flaw with that approach is that it has a single point of failure. If the power plant, and all the pieces connecting it to your house, are not up and running, you’ve got no electricity. The ability to supplement the grid with local generating capacity would not just save money, it would give families a form of backup – maybe compromised or lower scale but still usable – during outages.

That might be a modest convenience when a spring thunderstorm downs a line, but it could be much more than that in the aftermath of a major event. What if in the wake of a Katrina or Sandy people in the affected areas had some electricity during daylight hours? It’s not as good as being fully operational, but it could be the difference between remaining at home and being a refugee.

(A hurricane obviously might rip off solar panels or crash turbines, but any generating capacity retained is better than none. And maybe these local generators could be engineered with redundancy and durability in mind for just such an occasion.)

People who enjoy energy freedom, as opposed to energy independence, would see direct benefits. Instead of a long, convoluted and dubious process that somehow ends up enriching industry executives more than anyone else, we would see direct monetary benefits to ourselves. It would also serve the very national security that energy independence types love to trumpet: An electrical grid with distributed generation is far more robust than a centralized one – and incidentally is far better able to recover from the occasional whoopsie. We’ve had empty talk about energy independence for decades. It’s time for some substantive action on energy freedom.

1. See how patriotic I am?
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2. By the way, shouldn’t the production of such a vital resource be done by the state and not private companies?
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Read the rest of this entry →

Cross posted from Pruning Shears.

Last summer I wrote about the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinels program for testing water. Our town’s anti-fracking activists have been using it at their homes for a while now, but around the time of my post we also began free monthly water testing for the community. We are careful to emphasize several caveats, though. The most important is that the testing is not comprehensive or EPA certified; it is not meant to be a substitute for a certified test. It measures a handful of items and is only meant to give a basic idea of water quality. Similarly, the testing would almost certainly not be admissible in a court of law; anyone with an eye on future court cases should go with an EPA certified lab.

That said, the tests are a good way to look for changes. If, say, your chlorine level is stable for six straight months and then suddenly triples, something might be up. Prior snapshots are among the crucial missing pieces in assessing the impact of fracking. At the moment there are few institutional incentives – private or public – to establish baselines prior to fracking. Industry players certainly have nothing to gain. They have gotten their favored legislation passed and are moving right along. The best result they could get would be to continue at their existing pace.¹

As for the state, it is failing miserably. There are several possible reasons for that. It could be that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) is woefully understaffed and simply not up to the task. It could be that decades of conservative rhetoric on how faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats are strangling free enterprise with regulations has had its intended effect: regulators are now too timid to be useful. It could be the pernicious (and logical) outcome of an erstwhile conservative project on term limits. It could just be the revolving door, aka cognitive regulatory capture.

The actual reasons don’t matter though; all that matters for citizens is that there is zero support for the kind of preliminary investigation that is a crucial prerequisite for connecting any environmental hazard with fracking. As it is, industry can simply claim the current environment is unchanged. Your water was always like that; prove us wrong.

Colorado is grappling with that very issue right now. Reporting on a proposed water testing rule aimed at discovering spills, Bruce Finley writes: “Unless such spills are near wellheads…state regulators would lack before-and-after data that could be used to assess damage to try to hold companies accountable.” While no testing at all is bad, testing at a handful of spots (selected by whom?) might be even worse if it gives the public a false sense of security. Better that people know they are completely in the dark than to be fooled into thinking an ineffectual agency is adequately monitoring the situation when it isn’t. (See here for additional reporting by Finley on before-and-after issues.)

This is the context for community water testing: essentially acting as the ODNR Volunteer Auxiliary, attempting as best we can to put together a “before” picture for residents. This past Sunday we had a steady stream of people showing up, thanks in part to a couple of larger media outlets unexpectedly picking up our press releases. (My camera did not like the lighting; it offered two options – no flash and dim, or completely washed out with flash.)

Samples were numbered and measured in order:

The results were recorded on a simple half-sheet printout with a carbon copy beneath (we are not a high tech operation). Residents got one copy, our group the other. Those who get the testing done regularly can use the papers to track changes, and our group is using them to slowly build a database. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than waiting for the state to take an interest in our community.

As it turns out, the community aspect is becoming important. In a semi-rural are like ours it can be difficult to get the word out. One of the people who showed up was surprised we’d been testing as long as we have because he’d only learned of it earlier in the week. In a place where there is no community center or regularly scheduled events that bring lots of people together, how do you publicize something? One way, as we are learning, is to keep active consistently over time. We test on the first Sunday of the month, and that message is slowly starting to make its way out.

Having people gather breaks up isolation. Many who are worried about fracking often feel alone because they don’t know anyone who feels similarly. This is particularly true in places where landmen have been pushing leases. Neighborhoods can – and have – become bitterly divided between those who have signed and those who haven’t. Those who haven’t might be preventing operations (and money) from flowing. Where fracking has started, those who haven’t leased often feel great resentment at having communal hazards and quality of life degradation² visited on them against their will. One under-appreciated impact of fracking is the way it rips at the fabric of a community.

People in the middle of a situation like that might think they are the only ones going through it. Community water testing has provided a way to say to everyone who shows up: you are not alone. There are others who feel the same way you do, and who are going through the same thing you are. Come for the water testing, stay for the fellowship. While we don’t know what will ultimately happen with the former, the latter is already creating benefits.

1. Drillers sometimes do provide people with water tests, but the measure of whether those tests are a baseline comes when potential fracking impacts on water supplies are brought up. What we are seeing right now is a lot of hand waving at the initial test along with comments to the effect that the earth is a complicated place and who can say what might have caused that water to become flammable anyway? Rule of thumb: if there is no way for a testing regime to establish a link to subsequent activity, it is not a legitimate baseline.
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2. Fracking makes a hell of a racket, and sound waves are not forbidden from leaving the property from which they are made. Fracking also requires a great deal of heavy truck traffic, but the wear and tear it creates on roads does not have to be compensated for by the companies that cause it. As the saying goes, privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
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(Photo: Bosc d'Anjou/flickr)

The trustee meeting I attended Tuesday actually began over hundred years ago. In 1910 Ohio voters approved the calling of a constitutional convention, and in 1912 a whole series of amendments were adopted. The Ohio History Central link goes to a short but very good summary, and it’s definitely worth taking a minute to read it. The amendments that failed foreshadowed many of the civic battles that followed. In addition, the protection of workers’ rights and exclusion of African American rights prefigured the “devil’s bargain coalition” that made the New Deal possible – then blew the Democratic party apart thirty years later.

One of the amendments that passed was home rule, which essentially said that any power not explicitly granted to the state was reserved for cities. Lawrence F. Keller and Maxine Goodman Levin described (PDF) the conditions that prompted the need for it:

The national and state governments were quite small at the time and the demands for public regulation and services were focused in the burgeoning cities. To provide these services efficiently, cities needed independence from the often corrupt state politics and reform of their own corrupt political machines. The reformers at the time thus focused on cleaning up local politics and creating a legal status for cities that protected them from state politics.

(Considering some of the conditions in our current politics, it may be time for another constitutional convention.)

Home rule is really only meaningful for contentious issues, though. In the same way that only unpopular speech needs defending, home rule only matters when it goes up against some powerful interest. If you can’t have it then, don’t bother having it at all. No one needs home rule to declare Motherhood Appreciation Day.

The measure of free speech is the degree to which unpopular speech is protected; similarly the measure of home rule is the degree to which municipalities can act contrary to the wishes of the state. And in the same way that someone who does not believe in protecting unpopular speech doesn’t really believe in free speech, a government that will not allow home rule to flourish in the midst of sharp disagreement doesn’t really believe in it.

Tom Suddes wrote earlier this year about how Ohio embraced Potemkin home rule in 2004 when it stripped communities of the ability to regulate fracking. Suddes also noted that “the legislature has forbidden cities and towns to regulate predatory lending (2002); to regulate guns (2006); to require residency of municipal employees (2006); or, in effect, to regulate cable TV companies (2007).” In other words, home rule as long as the state approves.

In a way that’s a good thing. Democracies do not run on autopilot. You can set up a governing document with all the high minded claptrap you want, you can have a theoretically empowered court issue decisions of ostensibly great consequence, but at the end of the day what matters is the enforcement mechanism. Or: moneyed and powerful interests continually look for ways to rig the system against citizens, and the citizenry must fight to hold their gains. If they do not, the gains will erode until they exist only on paper.

A group of citizens concerned about fracking spent the summer drumming up support for more local control. This was an effort of grassroots activists who weren’t paid a dime and who gathered signatures on their own time. We went door to door in the time that was left over after work, family and other obligations were taken care of. We ended up with hundreds of signatures.

Earlier this month we took the signatures to the trustees, along with a nonbinding resolution expressing our concerns about fracking and our disapproval of Columbus for usurping the sovereignty of local communities. The key word is “nonbinding.” It was a purely symbolic resolution, and it was presented as such. Nothing in it required any action, conflicted with the state or put the trustees in legal jeopardy with the oil and gas industry. We emphasized that this was about being representatives: literally representing the views of many of their constituents, even if they themselves disagreed with the sentiments.

One of their refrains over the past few months has been that they would love to help, but their hands are tied. This nonbinding resolution gave them the chance to do something with their hands untied, even if it was just a purely symbolic gesture. Here is how it went (partial transcript here):

So it appears it will take more than the legitimate honoring of home rule to fully restore democracy at the local level.

Cross posted from Pruning Shears.

On Wednesday communities held Freedom From Toxic Fracking Waste rallies to raise awareness on one of the largest environmental risks from fracking: dealing with the waste it produces. In the best case scenario the toxic stew – of unknown composition due to the Halliburton Loophole – is removed from the hydrological cycle entirely. In other words, less water for everyone.

The worst case scenario is considerably more disturbing. The great, unknown hazard that hangs over fracking is this: Everything we think we know about its effects are based on modeling. We don’t precisely know what is going to happen. All we can do is make educated guesses based on the modeling, then try it out on the earth. This isn’t like computer programming, where we have some kind of development copy of the planet to experiment on, make mistakes with, completely trash if we make a mistake, wipe clean and start all over again if need be. We have one environment, the production environment, and if we screw it up we don’t have backup copies to restore from.

This makes it exceedingly important to get it right. But getting it right means taking the long view – the long view in geological terms. What we are putting in the ground will play out over literally decades, and if our assumptions now are wrong we will be left to mostly watch from the sidelines as the destruction unfolds.

There are already indications that some of those assumptions are faulty. For instance, a study from a couple months ago showed that fluids from the Marcellus Shale are likely making their way into drinking water. The fluids in question did not have drilling chemicals, and industry supporters trumpeted that point. What was disturbing about the study, though, was what it revealed about how fluids behave in the shale. The assumption had been that they were static – or extremely slow moving. Now it seems out they can migrate far more quickly than previously thought.

If that is indeed the case then the toxic fracking waste might not be removed from the hydrological cycle after all (which, remember, is the best case scenario). If fracked shale is substantially more permeable than unfracked shale, there could be catastrophic consequences. Since we are testing in production (also Cf.), this represents an enormous risk.

The protests Wednesday were held in many places. At least one was held in California, but there were quite a few right here in Ohio. I attended one in Ravenna, and we had a good crowd. Many of the messages were straightforward:

Some were a little more colorful: Read the rest of this entry →

Cross posted from Pruning Shears.

The fracking industry has dramatically increased its activity in Portage county recently. In some cases the activity is unmistakably tangible (more on that next week), but the real action at the moment seems to be preparing the ground for the deluge. The paperwork is coming in fast and furious, so much so that we are now one of the top ten counties in the state for fracking.

Those of us concerned about that have found using the tools theoretically available to us can be a daunting task. The attempt to learn more about the Soinski Wells really brought the point home. For instance, permit applications are supposed to be submitted to the largest local paper in the effected area. Instead they were published in the Portage County Legal News.

Let me tell you something about the Portage County Legal News: I cannot tell you anything about the Portage County Legal News. I have lived in Portage county all my life (minus two years) and until the Soinski Odyssey I had never heard of the Portage County Legal News. There is not even a print edition of the Portage County Legal News. The Portage County Legal News is the best kept secret in Portage county. Anyone who has lived here longer than a week could have told ODNR that the Record Courier is Portage county’s largest general circulation newspaper – with a print edition and everything.

A minor outcry ensued, and the applications went into the appropriate paper. Incidentally, this is now part of activists’ daily routine: checking the legal notices in the paper to see what latest outrage is planned. Similarly, learning how to read permits, pore over maps, check local leasing records, and so on are developing skill sets among activists. A big part of the fight involves eye glazing tedium. That’s not a complaint, just a description.

Several citizens contacted ODNR Geologist Tom Tomastik with questions. One was procedural – did the fifteen day public comment period begin on the applications date from the Portage County Legal News announcement or from their announcement in a proper outlet? But there were also questions on the details in the applications. There appeared to be some information missing in the application – there seemed to be more there on the ground than the application described. I emailed Tomastik on Sunday:

It is my understanding that there is supposed to be an informational meeting on the Portage county wells listed in the public notices below. I would like to get some clarification on this.

First of all, is it true that there will be a meeting?

If so, will the meeting be held during the public comment period? That would be the most useful; having it after would be like closing the barn door after the horse left.

Will this be a public hearing, or just an informational meeting? It would be much better to have an actual public hearing.

I urge you to hold any session at a time when the most people could attend: on a weekday evening or a weekend.

On Tuesday he responded:

Below is the link to the rules regarding public notice requirements for Class II injection well applications under Section 1501: 9-3-06 (E) (c) of the Ohio Administrative Code. Please read this section. No meeting is held until after the end of the public comment period. A Public Hearing is only required when the objections are relevant to public health, or safety, or good conservation practices. The chief of this Division rules upon the validity of each objection. Since we are receiving a number of comments regarding the Soinski applications, I have agreed to hold a public meeting to do a presentation about Class II injection well applications and answer questions regarding the public’s concerns.

http://www.ohiodnr.com/portals/11/oil/pdf/uic_emergency_rule_9-3-06.pdf

The “after the end of the public comment period” part really doesn’t seem good, so I responded:

I’d like some clarification on this, if possible. The greatest urgency in our community is right now – during the comment period. Being able to ask questions and (hopefully) get answers will help us to make more informed comments while the state is accepting them. The value of any additional information we learn will be greatly diminished once the comment period is over.

Would you please consider meeting with our community during this very brief and crucial window?

To which he responded the next day:

We are planning on having a public meeting after all comments are received and the deadline is passed. That is how the rules are set up under the Ohio Administrative Code, 1501: 9-3-06 (E) (c).

At that point it started getting difficult to give Mr. Tomastik the benefit of the doubt; his reply was completely unresponsive. I decided to give it one last try though:

Yes, I was clear on the rules and your intentions. My request was this: that you hold the public meeting during the comment period so citizens can make the most informed comments possible.

As far as I know you are not legally enjoined from doing this, and it would be of much greater value to the community. As I wrote before, having the meeting after the comment period smacks of closing the barn door after the horse is gone. We need to be able to ask questions now – during the comment period.

And that’s where we stand at the moment: going back and forth via email while the comment period moves to a close. This is your democracy on fracking, kids.

On Tuesday a group of Shalersville, Ohio residents attended a meeting of its trustees to voice their objections to fracking. Video of all the statements can be seen at the Shalersville No Fracking web site. There was a three minute speaking limit so the clips are short. (If you cannot watch video where you are, this is a rough transcript of my own remarks.) Here is just one of them, and note how the resident talks about her opposition to fracking from both a technical and visceral perspective. There are logistical, technological and environmental reasons to not want a fracking operation in your town, but there are emotional ones too:

Those speaking out at the meeting were prepared. In general people were not speaking off the cuff, but working from a prepared statement or note cards. We did our homework on this.

One of the recurring themes environmental activists have been hearing at the local level is that fracking is a state-level issue and that municipalities have limited ability to address it. That has been true in Portage county generally, and it was the case in Shalersville on Tuesday night. At the start of the meeting, one of the trustees announced that the speakers were strictly there for public comment and that no questions would be permitted.

The trustee then stated that they were essentially powerless to do anything because the state of Ohio had eliminated most mechanisms of local control (which incidentally is in defiance of the state constitution’s guarantee of home rule – more on that here). Fortunately, one well prepared resident addressed that issue head on in her response. Namely, at times in our history we have had immoral laws – ones that permitted slavery and banned universal suffrage, to name just two.

Simply declaring that the law must be obeyed under all circumstances is not persuasive. It’s fair to ask first if the law is right and just. And if a great many people are persuaded it is not, that is an issue that ought to be addressed instead of swept aside. Read the rest of this entry →

The Beauty of Fracking (image: SS&SS/flickr)

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The fight against fracking in Ohio comes at a time when the state is approving new wells at a rapid pace. Local activists are organizing in an environment where the ground is constantly shifting under their feet – sometimes literally.

Anti-fracking activism has been influenced by developments both inside the state and beyond. At a recent public anti-fracking meeting a representative from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) described the experience of activists in western Pennsylvania several years ago.

Residents there began seeing lots of drilling sites, processing plants and other fracking infrastructure pop up. Neighborhood opposition responded through the regulatory process. Drillers needed permits, so locals educated themselves on permit writing. They enjoyed some early victories as improperly written permits were thrown out.

The wins were only temporary though. Drillers came back weeks or months later with rewritten permits that fixed the problems in the earlier ones. The new permits passed regulatory muster and the frackers moved in. At one point counsel for the companies jokingly thanked a CELDF representative for its help in putting together a bulletproof permit-writing process. As you might imagine, this was not the intended outcome.

The regulatory process may not be a suitable one for anti-fracking activists for other reasons as well. For one, regulations are not ultimately about protecting citizens; they are about legalizing harm. Regulation on, say, arsenic in drinking water is not based on the maximum amount that humans may safely consume, but on the maximum amount the industry can get legislators to allow. If they allow an amount that is unhealthy for humans or animals, those who suffer as a result have no legal recourse. The harm was permitted.

If you do not want the fracking to occur at all – if you think it is too unregulated, too opaque, and generally too hazardous – then fighting over regulation is a sucker’s game. You are not fighting over whether or not your community will expose itself to the tender mercies of the oil and gas industry, but over how much damage the industry will be allowed to do to it; and since the oil and gas industry is flooding the statehouse with lobbyists how do you think that fight will go?

Read the rest of this entry →

"Halo" (Photo: hdevalence, flickr)

The tech industry has long enjoyed an enviable reputation in the business world. Most sectors, particularly those dominated by large multinational corporations, usually struggle with some kind of bad reputation. They might be perceived as corrupt (Wall Street) archaic (cars, especially gas powered ones), etc. But tech is new and exciting, consumer electronics get lots of buzz, and they are generally assumed to not have a big environmental footprint – even when they do.

They are helped by a largely friendly tech press. In an environment where the greatest value is placed on getting exclusive previews of hot new items and scoops from well placed insiders, there is not much ROI in hard hitting journalism. Add to that the ease with which players like Michael Arrington move between media and industry, and you get a clubby atmosphere where your interview subject could easily be your next employer.

So executives are generally lionized and the industry celebrated as the last true meritocracy: the place where an offbeat genius with a powerful idea can make a new world out of some wildly creative tinkering in a garage. It’s an intoxicating fable, but it’s just that – a fable. Tech is just like any other industry, subject to the same human foibles and biases, driven by the same motives and subject to the same constraints.

Arrington himself showed just how true that was last week when details of an upcoming CNN interview became public. Asked about diversity, he said some things that were at best poorly considered. Tech writer – not singer! – Hank Williams pointed out the ways Arrington was contributing to the very problem he was speaking against. Read the rest of this entry →

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) extracts pockets of natural gas far beneath the earth’s surface via a process called directional drilling,

which involves steering a downhole drill bit in a direction other than vertical. An initially vertical drillhole is slowly turned 90 degrees to penetrate long horizontal distances, sometimes over a mile, through the Marcellus Shale bedrock. Hydraulic fractures are then created into the rock at intervals from the horizontal section of the borehole, allowing a substantial number of high-permeability pathways to contact a large volume of rock.

(See the map at the USGS site for the area covered by the Marcellus Shale. Fracking can be done anywhere, but the Marcellus Shale is one of the most actively targeted areas.)

The water is injected and comes back out as a toxic stew:

Along with the introduced chemicals, hydrofrac water is in close contact with the rock during the course of the stimulation treatment, and when recovered may contain a variety of formation materials, including brines, heavy metals, radionuclides, and organics that can make wastewater treatment difficult and expensive. The formation brines often contain relatively high concentrations of sodium, chloride, bromide, and other inorganic constituents, such as arsenic, barium, other heavy metals, and radionuclides that significantly exceed drinking water standards (Harper, 2008).

There are substantial hurdles associated with importing the frack water and then safely disposing of the resulting liquid Superfund waste (euphemistically termed “brine”). But there is perhaps an even more insidious hazard created by fracking. Think about it: A pocket of natural gas is deep underground. The surrounding area gets drilled, flooded with water, and then all of it – dislodged rock, water, gas – is removed.

What’s left? Nothing. A whole lot of nothing, with a lot of earth pressing down on it. What will that produce? Earthquakes. And people have started to notice. So in addition to the unbelievably dirty extraction, it literally leaves holes in the earth – holes which do not get filled in gracefully. At least not by human standards.

The entire process is so risky and damaging that insurers have started to ask questions (via). According to Jaime L. Brockway of Insurance & Financial Advisor, “an insurer may cancel or discontinue a policy if the consumer concealed information needed to determine risk, or if there was an increase in risk after the policy was issued. ‘Some carriers have started canceling policies for increasing hazard,’ [Claire] Pantaloni[, industry affairs director for Insurance Agents & Brokers,] told IFA.” (via)

A fracking protest has been organized by Food & Water Watch for tomorrow. (Here in my neck of the woods the groups No Frack Ohio and NEOGAP have partnered with them; environmental groups everywhere are doing so as well, so you might be able to find a local group to coordinate with.) Anyone who supports a halt to this environmentally harmful activity is urged to call the White House comment line (866-582-4813) from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. EST and ask the president to publicly and energetically support a fracking ban.

Please note: You do not have to take an angry or confronational tone. This is not about peering into the president’s soul or trying to guess at what he, in his heart of hearts, really thinks about the issue. It is about petitioning for an environmentally friendly policy, and signalling to not just the White House but all of Washington that not just industry lobbyists are interested in the issue. Building and sustaining a green message helps create the room for politicians to comfortably move in that direction.

So if you were upset about the recent changes to smog rules or if you were making your voice heard in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, here is another opportunity to send a message. Tuesday, September 13th, 866-582-4813, from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. EST. Get at it. Keep at it.