A sobering look at gas drilling

 

By Amanda Cregan, Intelligencer, April 2, 2009

With natural gas drilling knocking on Nockamixon's door, a local environmental group spoke about some of the consequences.

We have everything to lose, said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

As gas drilling looms in Nockamixon's future, Carluccio laid out sobering reports of how natural gas drilling companies continue to ravage natural resources and wreak havoc in communities across the country at a presentation Wednesday night at the Lower Delaware River Wild and Scenic Management Committee's quarterly meeting.

Poisoned water wells, crumbling roads, toxic streams and rivers, 24 hour construction, miles of gas pipelines, polluted air and higher cancer rates are just some of what residents might expect if drillers take over in Upper Bucks, said Carluccio.

"The issue, from cradle to grave, is this an environmentally responsible fuel? We have to realistically and honestly look at what the real costs are," she told nearly 25 members and residents at Nockamixon's municipal building.

The costs add up for 15 million people from New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey who depend on the Delaware River each day for water - including Philadelphia and its suburbs.

"A lot of people depend on the Delaware River. Of course, this is not the concern of the natural gas folks," said Carluccio, who noted that just one natural gas well site requires 1,400 trucks, each holding 6,000 gallon water tanks, to supply and dispose of water involved in extracting gas trapped thousands of feet below the ground in tight shale formations across Pennsylvania and the East Coast.

"This amount of water brings up the issue of where are you going to get this water?"

Carluccio and wild and scenic members are pushing legislators to buckle down on regulation in a time when most federal and state lawmakers are easing restrictions and hailing the natural gas boom as a ticket out of recession and foreign oil dependence.

"Despite the fact that natural gas is a force we'll probably not be able to stop (in Nockamixon). Something we've learned throughout the last months is that we can do something to regulate it," said Carluccio, who says wild and scenic organizers are hoping the Delaware River Basin Commission, which regulates water withdrawal and pollution standards in the Delaware, won't cave under pressure.

She emphasized that natural gas harvested from the massive Marcellus Shale formation, which promises to supply enough energy for the entire nation for generations, won't necessarily stay within our borders.

"There is a very slick campaign about energy independence going on, but there is no law that you have to use this natural gas here," she said.

A Norwegian company recently bought the rights to 30 percent of the natural gas yielded from the Chesapeake Bay area, she said. The company plans to sell the gas to eastern European nations struggling to get enough fuel from Russia.

Although Upper Bucks does not lie within the Marcellus Shale, gas companies are battling with Nockamixon Township supervisors in court in hopes of beginning exploratory drilling.

Hundreds of homeowners in Nockamixon have already signed leases.

Carluccio warned that communities could be destroyed under the slogan of energy independence, and that gas companies are solely after large profits at the expense of natural resources.

"This is clear and simple exportation of a natural resource for someone's bottom line."

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