DID YOU KNOW?

Lax Rules for the Natural Gas Industry

The natural gas industry has exemptions or exclusions from key parts of at least 7 of the 15 major federal environmental laws designed to protect air and water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals.

Below are the seven laws listed in the order they were passed.

National Environmental Policy Act

1969 Requires that government agencies evaluate environmental impacts of major federal actions like authorizing oil and gas drilling on public land.

2005 Congress exempts drillers from having to produce certain types of rigorous reports on the potential environmental impact of some types of oil and gas activities.

2006-7 The Bureau of Land Management grants the exemption to a quarter of all wells approved on public land in the West.

Clean Air Act

1970 Limits emissions of toxic air pollutants.

1990 Congress amends the act, strengthening limits on emissions of more than 180 hazardous air pollutants, but exempts all oil and gas wells from certain protections under this rule.

Clean Water Act

1972 Limits discharges into rivers, lakes and streams. Establishes goals of water that is “fishable and swimmable” by 1983 and zero discharge of pollutants by 1985.

1987 Congress amends the act, requiring the E.P.A. to develop a permitting program for stormwater runoff, but these amendments largely exempt oil and gas exploration, production and processing.

2005 Congress expands the industry’s exemptions to the act.

Safe Drinking Water Act

1974 Protects the quality of drinking water and regulates the injection of waste into underground areas.

1995 Carol Browner, head of the E.P.A., writes that hydraulic fracturing is not regulated by the part of the law that pertains to the “underground injection” of waste.

1997 A federal court rules that hydraulic fracturing constitutes “underground injection” and falls under the regulation.

2004 An E.P.A. study focused on coalbed methane concludes that the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into underground wells does not present a threat to drinking water. An E.P.A. whistleblower later charges that the study’s conclusions were unsupported and that some members of the study’s peer review panel had conflicts of interest.

2005 Congress exempts hydraulic fracturing from regulation under the act unless diesel is used.

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

1976 Sets standards for the handling of hazardous wastes.

1980 Lawmakers tell the E.P.A. to study oil and gas exemptions and report back to Congress.

1988 Over objections from agency officials, the E.P.A decides not to apply some hazardous waste rules to specific oil and gas wastes.

Superfund Act

1980 Establishes a governmental response to releases of hazardous substances into the environment and holds polluting industries liable for cleanup costs. But natural gas and oil are not considered hazardous under this law, making it more difficult for the E.P.A. to hold some oil and gas operations liable.

Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act

1986 Requires certain industries to report to the E.P.A. on the storage, release or transfer of significant levels of toxic substances. But much of the oil and gas industry has not been required by the E.P.A. to follow the law’s reporting requirements.

What we have to keep in mind is that the proposed shale gas extraction is an extremely radical idea.

Pick any one of the major problems that accompany the drilling and ask yourself if it is in any way reasonable to ask anyone to live with such a problem.

• Is it okay to have so much late-night noise and bright light that you can't sleep, night after night, with no end in sight?
• Is it okay to live with roads that are so badly damaged they are too dangerous to travel, and that, once repaired, are quickly damaged all over again?
• Is it okay to live without green space?
• Is it okay to live with constant, choking dust from the damaged roads?
• Is it okay to live with the fear that part of your property will be taken from you so a private company can use it to build a pipeline?
• Is it okay to live with the fear that you and your neighbors may have to evacuate your homes due to nearby industrial accidents like chemical spills or gas well fires?
• Is it okay to have a huge, ugly, dangerous shale gas well pad as your new next-door neighbor?
• Is it okay to have an ugly, noisy, polluting compressor station in the middle of a residential neighborhood?
• Is it okay to live with gas well flaring?
• Is it okay to introduce dangerous chemicals into the streams and lakes that we swim and fish in?
• Is it okay for wild and domestic animals to have access to open pits of water laced with toxic chemicals?
• Is it okay to introduce dangerous substances into the air we breathe?
• Is it okay to introduce dangerous substances onto the land that supplies our food?
• Is it okay to transport and store large quantities of dangerous chemicals in residential areas?
• Is it okay for our drinking water to ignite?
• Is it okay for our water wells to explode?
• Is it okay to ruin someone's only source of drinking water and render their home worthless?
• Is it okay to have to devote a huge chunk of your time, without pay, to policing the gas industry because the DEC doesn't have the employees (or the will) to police the industry?

We are being asked to uncomplainingly live with ALL of these problems and more.  Is that okay?

Suppose we had been asked these questions before we had ever heard of the Marcellus Shale: what would we have said?