Category Archives: Abuse of public trust

Environmental abuse by major corporations

Act For a Permanent Ban on Delaware Basin Fracking

Groups instrumental in advocacy against Marcellus Shale fracking suggest future action towards achieving a permanent ban.

The vote on fracking the Delaware Basin was postponed when Delaware Governor Jack Markell announced before the Trenton rally on November 21, 2011 that Delaware would vote No on the proposal, and New York’s Governor Cuomo had already decided to cast a No vote too. Because there weren’t enough votes to win, the vote was postponed.

The Food & Water Watch Group, which wants fracking banned in New York, asks that people, “please keep the pressure on President Obama to oppose fracking in the basin and urge Governor Cuomo to maintain his opposition by calling

President Obama: 866-586-4069
Governor Cuomo: 866-961-3208

The group has produced a movie exposing false claims that fracking would produce a landslide of jobs in the region. And, they invite people to join a protest against fracking in Manhattan on Wednesday, November 30 at 4:30 pm at the DEC hearing.

The other message was sent out by Environment New Jersey:

Last Thursday, Environment New Jersey helped to deliver an important victory to protect the Delaware River and our drinking water from dangerous gas drilling—and we couldn’t have done it without your ongoing involvement and support.

After months of deliberation, a little-known agency called the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) delayed a proposal to open the Delaware River Basin—and our drinking water —to harmful gas drilling. Why the delay? Because there weren’t enough votes to approve drilling.

It looks like we won by the skin of our teeth—representatives from the Obama administration joined the governors of New York and Delaware to voice their disapproval for any proposal that would put our Delaware River at risk.

But we’re not done yet. President Obama holds the deciding vote on the commission.

Please, “>Email President Obama today, and tell him to stand up for the 15 million of us who get our drinking water from the Delaware.

PROTESTS
Fracking protests around New York

Dangers of Fracking – Fracturing Shale With Water

Update: See separate post on actions for moving towards a permanent ban on fracking

The New York City Council has a great synopsis about why fracking shouldn’t be allowed in the Delaware River Basin where the Marcellus Shale formation sits

The Delaware River is the critical water source for over 15 million people — five percent of the U.S. population — including residents of New Jersey, Delaware, Philadelphia, and 8 million New Yorkers. Furthermore, experts agree that hydraulic fracturing could contaminate drinking water, causing irreparable harm and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), an agency composed of representatives from four states and the federal government, is taking steps to finalize regulations for hydraulic fracturing in the area near the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. While thousands of gas wells have been developed in Pennsylvania in recent years, development of hydraulic fracturing has been much more limited in the area near the Delaware River due to the area’s status as a critical drinking water source for five percent of the U.S. population.

On September 29th, Councilmember James Gennaro introduced a resolution calling on the DRBC to halt the issuance of regulations for gas production using hydraulic fracturing for water withdrawal for the purpose of hydraulic fracturing within the Delaware River Basin until a cumulative impact study is completed to assess the risks and inform the development of adequate regulations for hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware River Basin.

New York Times writer Eliza Griswold reports on the local environmental dangers of fracking, a practice which in the regions it takes place is ruining water supplies in locations across the country, corroding home and business water delivery pipes and appears to be killing pets and farms animals too. Griswold was directed by a Range Resources spokesman to move away from a “fracking pond” containing chemically treated waste water that had been used in the company’s fracking process which Griswold observed to be sitting in a catch basin at the top of a watershed (EPA definition).

Griswold points out

In Amwell Township, your opinion of fracking tends to correspond with how much money you’re making and with how close you live to the gas wells, chemical ponds, pipelines and compressor stations springing up in the area. Many of those who live nearby fear that a leak in the plastic liner of a chemical pond could drip into a watershed or that a truck spill could send carcinogens into a field of beef cattle. (According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, 65 Marcellus wells drilled this year have been cited for faulty cement casings, which could result in leaks.) But for many other residents, including Haney’s neighbors, the risks seem small, and the benefits — clean fuel, economic development — far outweigh them.

One of her escorts through Amwell Township was 64 year old farmer and science teacher Ray Day of who, “like most of his neighbors, trusted the companies to use best practices. A man’s word means a lot here. After all, without regulation or oversight, he and other farmers worked together to do things like fence streams to keep cattle out of them.”

I first learned of the danger to water supplies caused by fracking when my friend, Sabastian Belfon, returned from visiting family in Arizona. “Kimi, I kept seeing all these pickups driving around with huge tanks in their beds in the back, so I asked my family what was going on.” They told me that’s how most people have to get their water now – by trucking it in. Because of hydrofracking, groundwater’s contaminated now. Just Google the phrase arizona people truck drinking water frack to produce a long list of problems people in that state are having with their drinking water, which some apparently can ignite simply by putting a flame near the water as it runs out of their kitchen sink faucet. Bob Donnan of Pennsylvania blogs about the water in his region turning putrid due to fracking,

TDS, or total dissolved solids in our drinking water were blamed for its chunky state. But water company officials were quick to tell us that even though it may spot glasses in your dishwasher, there is nothing to worry about — the water is safe to drink. Sure, if you can get past drinking something tasting nearly as bad as the prep for your last colonoscopy!

Turns out some of the low river flow, and much of the TDS chunkiness, resulted from the Marcellus Shale gas boom. Unless you have been sleeping, or residing on Mars for the past year, you know about this madhatter gas drilling boom that’s going on, with the epicenter in Hickory, Pennsylvania. Estimates indicate the Marcellus Shale holds enough gas to supply the entire US for 14 years, so main players ante up like it’s the California Gold Rush.

Water is pumped out of streams anytime, anywhere . . . The Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law is supposed to protect drought- stricken streams from de-watering, but is this law being enforced?

Mark Ruffalo stood with Occupy Trenton at the huge anti-fracking rally in Trenton yesterday (on 11/21) with Josh Fox, creator of the movie Gasland, to address the hundreds of protestors and Green Drinks co-host Sally Gellert was there too. Gasland‘s home page features a FAQ on fracking terms, including:

What is the Halliburton Loophole?
In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.

What is the Safe Drinking Water Act?
In 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was passed by Congress to ensure clean drinking water free from both natural and man-made contaminates.

What is the FRAC Act?
The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) is a House bill intended to repeal the Halliburton Loophole and to require the natural gas industry to disclose the chemicals they use.

Slicing and dicing up the earth for natural gas through fracking = no good, no way.

Johnson & Johnson puts formaldehyde in your baby’s shampoo

How’s this for completely messed up? Disturbing enough that that even media giant Forbes is getting on this company’s case. This is probably because a month ago, Forbes fumbled the ball by praising Johnson & Johnson as the most trusted brand in America.

Yes, it’s true. Forbes now reports that there are two known carcinogens in Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo being sold in the United States, Canada and China. Those nasty chemicals have been removed in other countries – I’m guessing the ones where they are outlawed (by law). Thanks to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, the company and its admirers haven’t been able to repress this information.

By the way, in the US Johnson & Johnson sells a formaldehyde free version of its baby shampoo for double the price.

Discussed at Green Drinks Hackensack on 9/12

Marcellus Shale Fracking
Extracting gas from the Marcellus Shale deposit in Pennsylvania – country’s largest deposit – is still being promoted and it’s not good for us. Takes too much water from the region causing the water table to sink dramatically and it creates potable water pollution. Keep learning about fracking and advocating against it. Speak about it with family, friends and politicians.

Reality Climate Project on 9/14
Join the Reality Climate Project starting at 8pm EST on September 14.

24 Presenters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Languages. 1 Message. 24 Hours of Reality is a worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. It will consist of a new multimedia presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once per hour for 24 hours, representing every time zone around the globe.

Natural Resource Monetizing Equated With Public Good
Traditional government policy view the monetizing of natural resources as equivalent with the “public good”: that’s why business interests are able to get away with so much environmental destruction. But it isn’t very good to lack clear air and water, is it?

Investigate Scare Tactics Passed Along by Friends
Morty mentioned that he received a scare letter forwarded from a friend cautioning senior citizens that Medicare rates are going to be much higher in 2012 and even worse after that, so Morty called the Medicare office for verification. The customer service rep laughed when she heard his concern: 2012 Medicare rate figures don’t get released until October; and no one has even a slim idea about what the rates will look like in the years to come.

Real News v. Fox 5 Infotainment Propaganda
It’s important to realize that Fox News doesn’t deliver real news (informed people call it “infotainment“) and furthermore, it has a very apparent aim to create a state of constant panic in viewers; it will pull any dirty tactic possible to discredit individuals wishing to rationally debate ideas; and, Fox presents fabricated versions of history to bamboozle viewers into believing what it wishes them to believe. More info at Fox News Boycott and 14 Propaganda Techniques Fox ‘News’ Uses to Brainwash Americans.

Disneyworld: As Un-American As . . .?
Fox isn’t the only organization promoting buy-in to image over reality. What about Disneyworld? A National Geogrphic exposé unearths a lot of disturbing secrets about this “American Institution” which strangely, doesn’t exactly belong to America.

By the 1960s, all over America, suburbs were replacing old neighborhoods. Malls were driving Main Street out of business. There was hardly a new ranch home or split-level that didn’t have a TV antenna on the roof. Disney realized that in the coming decades shows like The Mickey Mouse Club, not climate and geology, would determine what the majority of Americans would consider a safe and enjoyable place to take a family vacation. That day, flying over central Florida, Disney decided that he, not reality, would define what constituted the Magic Kingdom in the minds and spending habits of millions of Americans in the years to come . . .

Disney’s new empire in central Florida would be marketed as Disney World. Its official name was, and remains, the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Thanks to a sweetheart deal with the state legislature, the lands Disney purchased were detached from the rest of Florida to form a Magic Kingdom, above and outside the law. Even now, Disney World’s rides are exempt from state safety inspections. Democratic process is excluded, too. Power remains in the hands of a board of supervisors composed of Disney allies. However much you pay for a time-share condo in Disney World, you cannot buy property outright, and therefore establish official residence, and therefore vote for the board. Celebration, Disney’s residential community themed to evoke pre-1940s small-town America, has a city hall but no actual municipal government.

Our Own Sally Get Arrested Protesting Alaska-Mexico Pipleline
I’ve saved the most exciting news for last. Green Drinks 3 co-host Sally Gellert, travelled to DC last week in order to get arrested along with 1200 plus other protesters including NASA’s James Hansen – who is speaking about the environment at Bergen Community College on 9/22.

Green Drinks Paterson/Clifton
Next week is Green Drinks Paterson/Clifton. We’ll be back with a report on what was discussed, or you can come out and help shape the conversation yourself.

Third Mondays at 6:30pm
Sultan Restaurant
429 Crooks Avenue, Clifton, NJ 07011
973-772-1995
Food and Drinks: Pay only for what you order
Parking: street parking
More info

Black Gulf Fisherman – Struggling Mightily

In his August 28 New York Times article, Trymaine Lee reports,

Way down in the delta, just south of the Belle Chasse Ferry at Beshel’s Marina here, black men with work-worn hands and several generations of fishing in their blood sat around on old milk crates, hoping for a piece of the oil cleanup action that seems to have bypassed their little stretch of the bayou.

Nearly all of them have taken BP’s courses on oil cleanup, but few said they had been called to work; their little skiffs remain moored and forlorn, tied side-by-side like wretched sardines.

“The little guy loses again,” one of them lamented.

There was Hurricane Katrina five years ago. And now the great spill.

But even before those two blows, the fishermen in Pointe a la Hache and other small, historically African-American fishing towns and villages that dot the east bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, have long had to fight hard for every dollar, every oyster and every opportunity they could drag out of the bayou.

The Huffington Post adds,

But ever since the BP oil spill back in 2010, their hauls have gotten lighter and their hopes and prayers a bit dimmer. The seafood industry and the livelihood of those who make their money off the side of boats is collapsing beneath them, fishermen said.

“We don’t have millions of dollars sitting in the bank where we can go do something else. We live and die on the seafood industry. This is our culture,” said Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association. “This is how we live.”

The oysters in many beds haven’t reproduced, he said. And early reports from shrimpers said the outlook for this season doesn’t look good, if today’s catch is any indication.

Encalade blames the 87-day oil spill in the Gulf and the dispersants used by BP to thin the oil caked on the water for blighting the sea life here.

“I don’t know where this concept of ‘Everything is alright and they are doing what they are supposed to do’ came from,” he said. “These people are suffering down here, and I don’t think they have the slightest idea of how these communities are surviving. But they’re doing it on the back of Catholic Charities, nonprofits and each other.”

Encalade said BP’s public relations machine kicked into high gear from the start of the disaster, but he and others in the Delta know all too well how devastating the spill has been.

BP’s Oil Spill Is All Cleaned Up Now, Right?

Last night I argued with a friend who claimed that environmental damage is now under control in the United States, and offered the BP oil spill as evidence of how well environmental disasters are being handled, and their impact minimized. This is so not true, but it’s not enough to say so – it must be proven, so here are a few facts:

A post from the NY Times’ Green blog about the BP oil spill published on its anniversary in April shows that the associated problems have far from ended.

“Nearly 2,000 responders are actively working in the gulf to aid in the ongoing recovery efforts. We continue to hold BP and other responsible parties fully accountable for the damage they’ve done and the painful losses that they’ve caused. We’re monitoring seafood to ensure its continued safety and implementing aggressive new reforms for offshore oil production in the gulf so that we can safely and responsibly expand development of our own energy resources. And E.P.A. Administrator Lisa Jackson is leading a task force to coordinate the long-term restoration effort based on input from local scientists, experts, and citizens.”

Law firm Beasley Allen publishes news on its website and has this to say about Dead Zones in the Gulf caused by the oil spill

Marine Biologists have issued a grim forecast for Gulf shrimpers and fishermen in the wake of the BP oil spill: the 2011 “Dead Zone” in the Gulf, they predict, will likely be the largest on record, choking some species of sea life and hindering others from properly migrating and developing. The implications of a super-size dead zone, estimated to grow as large as the size of Delaware and Maryland combined, could be huge . . .

While the BP oil spill isn’t directly responsible for the Mississippi River dead zone, the 200-million-plus gallons of oil and the millions of gallons of toxic chemical dispersants that BP dumped into the Gulf have caused a dead zone of their own. Scientists have found several square miles of Gulf sea bed blanketed by oil untouched by hungry microbes.

Pictures taken during submarine excursions to some of the oil-choked areas showed crabs, starfish, coral, tube worms, and other creatures smothered to death under thick blankets of oil. Highly toxic gases released from the well and noxious soot from the burning of oil on the surface have deepened the devastation. The effects of Corexit, the chemical dispersant used by BP to break the sludge into smaller particles, are still largely unknown and widely feared in the scientific community.

Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts’s 7th congressional district, adds these sobering thoughts: “Chris Jones, the brother of Gordon Jones, one of the 11 workers killed the night of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, delivered some of the most powerful and touching testimony I have seen in my 36 years in Congress.”

Congressman Markey also points out,

We now know BOPs (blowout preventers) don’t always work, even when they’re used correctly. We know the oil companies still don’t have full response capabilities, even if they’ve given their top hat a new coat of paint. And we know that the recommendations of the bipartisan spill commission haven’t been put in place.

Yet Republicans in Congress and the oil companies are still pushing for more drilling with less safety. This is the sort of willful ignorance and speed-over-safety mentality that led to the BP spill in the first place.

Other chilling reports showing that the effects of the BP oil spill are far from gone, can be found by googling “bp continues working in the gulf”.

I’d like to leave readers with hope for a better future: please keep in mind that current sweeping changes in ecology and climate are not natural occurrences – they are entirely due to man’s intervention. And, we are consuming much more of planetary resources than are available. The good news here is that as we are creating the problems, we can change our behaviour and begin to fix the world. As Jaime Cloud reminded my family recently, there’s “just enough time.”

Walmart Exploits Us

People I know are “liking” Walmart on Facebook – eww. Friends, Walmart is truly the “evil empire” – there’s nothing about them to like. In the US, Walmart promotes consumerism, underpays workers, exploits women and children, intentionally destroys local economies. In China, it negotiated contracts for workers to earn half of the 34¢ an hour considered a living wage there.

More at http://wakeupwalmart.com and http://walmartwatch.org

Governor Nominates Anti-Highlands Candidates to Highlands Council

Today is your last chance to oppose anti-Highlands nominees being appointed to the Highlands Council (which is meant to protect the Highlands). Act today – Senate Judiciary Votes on Monday!

Governor Christie is using political appointments as a de facto repeal of the Highlands Act, since he could not get the Legislature to repeal the Act. The two candidates currently presented for approval by the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee are:

  • Sam Race, Mayor of White Township in Western Warren County and
  • Richard Vohden, newly elected Freeholder in Sussex County.

Both have been outspoken opponents of the Highlands Act and Highland’s DEP rules. Race has publicly encouraged Warren County Freeholders to sue the State to overturn the Act. During his freeholder campaign part of Vohden’s platform was that he is charter member of Highlands Conservation Association.

The Highlands Conservation Association is a misnomer: it does not seek to protect the New Jersey Highlands. It was established to overturn New Jersey State’s Highlands Act, which does protect the Highlands. The Highlands Act can be found at
http://www.highlands.state.nj.us/njhighlands/actmaps/act/.

New Jersey Highlands Coalition Director, Julia Somers, urges, “Do not allow the Governor to play politics with our water supply!”

You can help by calling the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Tell the aide who answers the phone, “I would like to ask the Senator to oppose the nominations of Sam Race and Richard Vohden to the New Jersey Highlands Council.” If asked to give your contact information please do so.

  • Senate Judiciary Committee Members:
  • Sen. Nicholas Scutari Chairman (D-22) 908-587-0404
  • Sen. John Girgenti Vice Chair (D-35) 973-427-1229
  • Sen. Kip Bateman (R-16) 908-526-3600
  • Sen. Jennifer Beck (R-12) 732-933-1591
  • Sen. Gerald Cardinale, (R-39) 201-567-2324
  • Sen. Nia Gill (D-34) 973-509-0388
  • Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-13) 732-671-3206
  • Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-20) 908-624-0880
  • Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-40) 973-237-1360
  • Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-36) 201-804-8118
  • Sen. Bob Smith (D-17) 732-752-0770
  • Sen. Brian Stack (D-33) 201-861-5091
  • Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-37) 201-928-0100

Somers adds, “Most offensive is the fact that Mr. Race is proposed to take Tracy Carluccio’s public spot on the Council, Freeholder Vohden is proposed to take Tim Dillingham’s public spot on the Council. First, both are elected officials taking public spots on the Council; second .. . the council would have not one enviromentalist on it.

Thanks for your interest and phone calls, people!