By Jack W. Wilbert

(Published in Finger Lakes Times as an Opinion Editorial on Friday, November 27, 2009)

In 1968 Paul Erhlich, the author of the The Population Bomb, asked "why do we continue to play Russian roulette with our natural resources? Forty years later, we need to ask the same question as a new game of Russian roulette is soon coming to the Finger Lakes region. The game is called Hydrafracture gas drilling in the Marcellus shale and it is filled with new risks to our resources of clean water, air and land along with potential riches for some landowners, gas companies and Wall Street shareholders. To add some additional intrigue to this game, the energy policy act of 2005 the government exempted hydrafrack gas drilling from the 1972 Safe Water Drinking Act. The hydrafracking game involves drilling a shaft a mile deep and hydraulically pushing millions of gallons of water along with a selection of toxic chemicals down the shaft to shatter the shale layer and release deposits of gas that then come to the surface. The risk increases as 40% of what goes down comes back up along with the gas plus toxic organic shale chemicals. 60% of the fracking chemicals stay down in the shale to combine with uranium, radon, chromium, cadmium, lead and arsenic over time.. The 40% of the sludge that returns to the surface must be held temporarily in containers and transported to a DEC compliant waste treatment plant for treatment prior to it being diluted and placed back into a primary waterway, so that new high risk gambling games of can be played further downstream. A temporary moratorium was placed on the hydrafracking process last Spring by NYS to allow the DEC time to review and update its generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) of 1992 .That new supplemental document was released on 9/30 with a 90 day period allowed for a public response prior to drilling in one of the prime clean watersheds in the country. This is truly an exciting game with lots of risks and hazards for future generations; but not to worry right now for as the dice are rolled and bets are taken against the future of our grandchildren, gas companies will still profit in the midst of a down trending economy.

The supplemental GEIS mandates that gas companies must disclose their list of hydrafracking chemicals to the DEC before drilling and also mandates that the DEC is present at each drill site before drilling. Very sadly the new GEIS misses the most important point of all. There is no long term accumulative risk evaluation of the chemical impact on human health and the environment over the next 25, 50, and 100 years. It is not a surprise that the DEC missed this key point because according to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, industrial chemical companies are allowed to introduce new chemicals without obligation to study the health effects of these new chemicals on humans or the environment. New chemicals are assumed innocent until proven guilty and the EPA is not even allowed to conduct independent safety tests. Government has protected the industry over our children's' health for the past several decades because toxicity impact data has not been required prior to the introduction of a new chemical product. Therefore, we are now surrounded by 62,000 chemicals that were grandfathered in to stay in commerce at the time of passing the 1976 TSCA. As a result we are surrounded by a collection of dioxins, PCB's, DDT, asbestos, TCE's, 2,4-D's and phthalates. Over the years increases have been observed in human autism, diabetes, immune disorders, infertility, pituitary gland dysfunction, cancer and brain tumors that mostly effect the young and new born. We now face the new high risk hydrafracking gas drilling game in our clean Finger Lakes watershed using hundreds of new toxic chemicals that have not been tested for accumulative long term impact on human health and environment.

Eighteen years ago my family moved to the Finger Lakes for the beauty of living in a natural rural area surrounded by a clean natural resource of watershed lakes. The supplemental GEIS does not assure me of that picture continuing into the future and it should be returned to the DEC for a true long range health impact study. It is not responsible of government, the DEC or the EPA to push into the soil toxic fracking chemicals that are known carcinogens that can effect liver, cardiovascular, brain, kidney and endocrine systems . It is also not responsible to leave 60 % of the fracking fluids down in the ground to combine in an unknown way with the radioactive organic chemicals that have rested there for 300 million years nor is it being responsible to future generations to pull up 40% of the fracking fluids to store,dilute and then release them downstream. It is also not responsible to allow chemical companies to introduce new untested chemical products because we live on a finite planet and these untested chemicals will find a way into our air, water and soil and will ultimately effect our health. It is time to stop gambling with our natural resources and go directly into solving our long term renewable energy needs!