In the interest of providing as much relevant information as possible regarding the hydrofracking issue, I have uploaded a recent field trip report from George Frantz to the following location:
http://www.ibiblio.org/tcrp/frac/08-8-27_GFrantz_Marcellus_fieldtrp.pdf George has also provided the introduction appended below. Please note that I am taking no position on this and just want to ensure that we have all relevant local data (I consider Pennsylvania's experience relevant to ours). If anyone has other locally relevant data (rather than opinion) in a form suitable for uploading and not available elsewhere, please contact me. Jon ================================================================== [George Frantz:] Over the past several years I have been monitoring first the Trenton-Black River formation natural gas drilling in the Southern Tier and now the Marcellus Formation "boom" in the Southern Tier as well as the Northern Tier counties in Pennsylvania. As a land use and environmental planner who has worked extensively in rural communities on both sides of the NY/PA border my interest has focused on the potential visual and ecological impacts of drilling, in particular the potential implications of hydraulic fracturing. As a native of the region and as a result of my professional work I have an intimate knowledge of the geography of Bradford, Sullivan, Lycoming and Tioga County, PA, the communities in those counties. I have substantial grounding in the regulatory structure for gas drilling that Pennsylvania, unlike New York state) has now had in place for several decades. Moreover I have an extensive grounding in an environmental history of Pennsylvania, a state that over the past 150 or so years has seen its environment ravaged by the oil industry, coal industry, lumber industry and steel industry. Pennsylvania today spends hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up the damage left by the coal and steel industries, and . It's a state that is not at all interested in re-living previous history with Marcellus Formation drilling. It is a member of the Chesapeake Bay Compact committed to cleanup that critical ecological resource. In that effort over the past two decades Pennsylvania has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up the Susquehanna River and its tributaries as party to the Compact. (unlike fellow Compact member New York, which has committed practically nothing to the effort...) As a result in concert with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) Pennsylvania state agencies and municipalities are committed to protecting their investment in cleaning up their rivers and streams. As a result the state, SRBC, and local communities are actively regulating water withdrawals from rivers, streams and ponds and closely monitoring both water usage and disposal of drilling waste water. Since Pennsylvania is far more advanced than New York in terms of its regulatory capacity, and its local municipalities have moved aggressively to protect their interests in terms of potential impacts on local infrastructure and quality of life, I've invested my efforts in studying the impacts of the industry in that state. And since to date there are over 300 Marcellus Formation natural gas wells already drilled, being drilled, or permitted in Bradford County alone, I've spent much of my efforts in that county. I consider my efforts an exploration and a work in progress. It is also a tiny piece of a huge puzzle. _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
