Former DEC Staffer: Fracking "Insane", Will Poison Our Water

Paul Hetzler, a former technician at the New York State Department of Environmental Protection, the agency responsible for regulating hydrofracking for natural gas, warned last month in a letter to the Watertown Daily Times that fracking, if permitted, would contaminate the state's aquifers and poison its drinking water.

Hetzler's letter came as a current DEC employee and union representative warned that the under-staffed agency lacks the capacity to monitor the gas drilling industry or cope with the kind of industrial accidents that could result if Gov. Cuomo's fracking plan goes forward.

The DEC, under pressure from Cuomo, released its draft recommendations in July, vowing to strike a balance between protecting the environment and promoting economic development.

But opponents of Cuomo's plan, which would permit the drilling of thousands of new wells across the state, have taken the DEC to task for ignoring the public health risks posed by fracking and for failing to adequately protect the state's water supplies.

Hetzler, who investigated and managed groundwater contamination, said unequivocally:

"...[H]ydraulic fracturing as it's practiced today will contaminate our aquifers....If you were looking for a way to poison the drinking water supply...you couldn't find a more chillingly effective and thorough method of doing so than...hydraulic fracturing."

Hetzler's letter coincided with a report from the US Environmental Protection Agency last month linking fracking with water pollution for the first time.

Hetzler calls the plan to frack New York state "insane", saying that drilling will result in catastrophic environmental impacts. The Marcellus Shale, Hetzler said, is not a homogenous layer.  There is no way to predict where contaminants might travel underground.

Recent earthquakes in Ohio are widely presumed to have been caused by the wastewater disposal wells drilled near fracking operations there.

Hugh MacMillan, of clean water advocate Food and Water Watch, called the Cuomo plan to open New York State to fracking short-sighted, given that the long-term risks it poses to the state's water resources cannot be mitigated -- once you frack, you can't go back.

The millions of gallons of fracking wastewater that will remain underground indefinitely, MacMillan said, will be subject to geological forces over decades that could cause unpredictable migration patterns.

Shale gas isn't valuable enough to justify these risks, he said.

The article from Alternet.

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