High-volume, high-pressure hydraulic fracturing into stone shales for methane is not currently banned in New York State. Any company can apply for an individual EIS. What is in effect is a moratorium for wide-scale mass drilling of hundreds of wells without an individual EIS per well. This drilling industrializes. Initial seismic testing involves explosions underground with untested effects on wildlife. Helicopters drop tools over the countryside. Heavy equipment enters to wrench numerous trees from the ground in one motion. Drilling pads can be the size of several football fields. The massive amount and size of vehicles for construction, chemical delivery, water delivery, and frack waste transport creates a 24/7 nightmare, belching numerous toxins into air, increasing ozone, spills of chemicals from trucks, from the pipes at the wellhead, loud swirling fire at night as gas is flared off, etc. Often no fence surrounds the frack waste pit, into which turtles, frogs, and other wildlife have fallen and died, as well as from which farm animals have drunk. Cows in Pennsylvania have been quarantined. The culture of men in man camps from Texas, Colorado, Wyoming on a brutal 12 hours on/12 hours off schedule crashes against upstate New York culture. This type of drilling has occurred in cities like Fort Worth. Pittsburgh is fighting this invasion. Water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and washing has been polluted in communities across several states. Mining of frack sand in Ohio has caused illness.

We need to remove tax subsidies from fossil fuel development and increase incentives for small-scale wind, solar, and thermal sources of energy now, and not delay through a foolish, even criminal dependency on dead dinosaurs as a source of energy. Green Party NY requires that New York State totally ban high-volume, high-pressure hydraulic fracturing.

Cecile Lawrence, Ph.D., Apalachin
Lawrence is Green Party NY 2010 candidate for US Senate.