Can Woodstock Throw a Monkey Wrench in the Fracking Machine?

Decisions made in Albany and in towns like Woodstock will likely deter­mine whether frack­ing goes full steam ahead every­where, or whether its momen­tum can be slowed or even stopped. New York, after all, has a rich his­tory of envi­ron­men­tal activism and demo­c­ra­tic move­ments, and anti-fracking activism has spread like wild­fire over the last cou­ple of years. New York is also home to abun­dant sup­plies of clean fresh­wa­ter, an essen­tial resource that is in cri­sis glob­ally and that could be endan­gered by the practice.

Fracking? Please Explain

On January 15, the Woodstock Town Board unan­i­mously passed a res­o­lu­tion to peti­tion New York State to intro­duce New York Public Law #1—which would impose stiff penal­ties for frack­ing and related activ­i­ties. Before tak­ing this step, the Woodstock Town Board took two oth­ers: ban­ning frack­ing within its bor­ders and out­law­ing the use of frack­waste fluid, some of which is known as “brine” (because of its heavy salt con­tent), on its roads. This mate­r­ial is used as a de-icing agent in the win­ter and for dust con­trol on dirt roads in the sum­mer. Despite the fact that brine from oil and gas wells (whether fracked or not) is laden with heavy met­als, toxic chem­i­cals, and radioac­tiv­ity, since 2008 the Department of Environmental Conservation has granted approval for it to be spread on roads in the west­ern part of the state.

New York Public Law #1 was con­ceived and drafted in May 2011 by the Sovereign People’s Action Network (SPAN) and FrackBusters NY—two cit­i­zen anti-fracking groups spear­headed by the late Richard Grossman, a legal his­to­rian, democ­racy activist, and founder of a move­ment to ban cor­po­rate per­son­hood and strip cor­po­ra­tions of their spe­cial legal privileges.

Fracking is used to extract “uncon­ven­tional” sources of nat­ural gas or oil, like those found in shale for­ma­tions. Unlike the large pools of gas that make up “con­ven­tional” sources, the gas in shale is typ­i­cally found in sep­a­rate tiny bub­bles through­out the rock for­ma­tion. In order to get it, drillers cre­ate a “per­me­able reser­voir” by shat­ter­ing the rock for­ma­tion that con­tains the gas.

This involves drilling a deep well straight down into the shale, then turn­ing the well at roughly 90 degrees so that it runs hor­i­zon­tally another 10,000 feet or so. The well is fracked when a mix­ture of water, chem­i­cals, and sand is pumped in at explo­sive pres­sure to force open cracks in the rock, enabling the gas to flow back up to the wellhead.

Since these wells travel under aquifers, lakes, rivers, and streams, much con­cern has been raised about the poten­tial to con­t­a­m­i­nate ground­wa­ter and other fresh­wa­ter sup­plies. Fracking also requires a mas­sive indus­trial oper­a­tion, which cre­ates sig­nif­i­cant air pol­lu­tion, noise, and truck traf­fic. Large amounts of var­i­ous toxic com­pounds, plus nitrous oxide, a key com­po­nent of ozone, spew from diesel gen­er­a­tors, drill rigs, trucks, con­den­sate tanks, and other equip­ment, as well as the flar­ing of wells.

In com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try where frack­ing has been under­way for more than a decade, the process has left a trail of poi­soned peo­ple, seri­ous water pol­lu­tion, includ­ing radioac­tive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water sup­plies, and poten­tial threats to the value of people’s homes and land in drilling areas. The gas indus­try has denied that its actions are respon­si­ble for these problems.

Meanwhile, seri­ous ques­tions have been raised about the integrity and eco­nomic via­bil­ity of the entire enter­prise. Officials within the United States Energy Information Administration, a divi­sion of the Energy Department, have sug­gested that esti­mates of gas reserves may have been pur­posely inflated, a con­cern graph­i­cally illus­trated in hun­dreds of indus­try emails and inter­nal doc­u­ments—some of them drip­ping with con­tempt.

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