On Thursday, October 16, dozens of CCAN activists converged in Annapolis to deliver over 4,000 petitions to Governor O’Malley, urging him to keep our state’s moratorium on fracking in place.
We gathered on Lawyer’s mall, across from the State House to hear the words of Emily Blase, a student at the University of Maryland College Park working on fracking and climate issues, and Dr. Margaret Flowers, the Co-Director of PopularResistance.org, who spoke to the risks associated with fracking, the impacts it’s had on communities in Pennslyvania, and how people are coming together to further resist fracking and natural gas pipelines. Carrying signs that highlighted the communities in Maryland at risk of fracking, we marched into the State House to deliver our petitions to Gov. O’Malley’s administration.
This is a critical time to speak out. In 2011, Gov. O’Malley, took an important first step towards protecting Maryland from drilling: he established a three year commission to investigate how fracking would impact our health, economy, and safety, and said no drilling permits would be issued in Maryland in the meantime. State agencies are scheduled to complete these studies in the next few months, even though a lack of funding, resources and time has compromised them from the start.
As the clock runs out on the review process, Maryland could be left with no protections against fracking when Gov. O’Malley leaves office in January. So we went to the Capitol to remind Gov. O’Malley of the thousands of us that are informed and upset about the threat of fracking, and remind him of the millions across the state that fracking could negatively impact.
In July, the Maryland Department of the Environment released proposed Best Management Practices (BMPs) around fracked gas drilling that they predict, if enforced, would be able to adequately protect Marylanders from the risks involved with fracking–but we know better. The best practices are suggestions, not regulations. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that they will become regulatory requirements, or that these regulations would even be enforceable. For more on the flaws of the BMPs, read “No ‘best practices’ could guarantee Maryland’s safety if fracking is allowed,” a letter in the Baltimore Sun from members of the Governor’s own Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission.
With every passing week, new studies are released on the harmful impacts of fracking, in Maryland and across the country. In August, the O’Malley administration released a study, prepared by researchers at the University of Maryland, aimed at assessing the potential public health impacts of allowing fracking in Maryland. The findings were alarming, and you can read more about the report here.
In the coming months, CCAN will continue to educate our leaders on the dangers of fracking, and fight to keep fracking out of our state to protect the health and safety of all Marylanders.
Additional Resources
Read: Maryland Study shows that protecting our health requires keeping fracking out.