Ethics in Government: A Lost Cause? Conflicts of Interest vs. the Public Good.

Wednesday, May 17, 5:30pm - 7pm.

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site,
641 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. 

Free & Open to the Public.

Guest speakers:

• Hon. Penny M.Wolfgang, retired justice of the NewYork State Supreme Court. 
  

• Kevin Connor, co-founder and director of the Public Accountability Initiative. 

Join us for coffee, cookies, and what will surely be a lively discussion! Here are just a few of the issues to be considered:
• What is the role of ethics in government?
• What do conflicts of interest look like, and why are they unethical?
• How can elected officials be compelled to put the public good over their own self-interest? 

Parking is free in the lot behind the TR Site or in the 20th Century Club lot at 516 Franklin Street, between Allen and North Streets. Note: Franklin Street is one-way northbound. 

Special thanks to our co-sponsor- TR Inaugural Site

Presented by League of Women Voters of Buffalo/Niagara

FRACKING NEWS

Excerpts from articles in the news:
 
NY high court rejects Dryden fracking suit revival

New York’s highest court rejected an attempt to revive the fight against the Town of Dryden and its fracking ban.

In a precedent-setting decision last June, the Court of Appeals ruled 5-2 that communities have the right to use local land-use authority to prohibit oil and gas operations within their borders.

On Thursday, the court denied a motion by the trustee for bankrupt Norse Energy to re-argue its case against the Town of Dryden.

Read more here.


More New Yorkers Oppose Fracking: Poll

A new poll conducted by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental activist group, shows 56 percent of New Yorkers oppose fracking in the state. The survey of 802 New Yorkers was conducted by a third-party research firm in late September.

A similar survey by Quinnipiac University in mid-August found that only 48 percent of voters opposed fracking.

Anti-fracking activists have redoubled their efforts in recent weeks, following Gov. Cuomo on the campaign trail in an attempt to have him take a stance on fracking before the election, but the governor has kept a steadfast ambivalence on the subject.

Read more here.

 
Report: New York Governor’s Office Altered And Delayed Fracking Study

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration edited and delayed a fracking study commissioned by the state, according to a review by Capital New York.

The New York news outlet reported Monday that the Cuomo administration had altered a report on the natural gas extraction technique commonly referred to as fracking. The report was commissioned in 2011 and was “going to result in a number of politically inconvenient conclusions” for the governor. A comparison of the original draft of the report, which was put together by the U.S. Geological Survey, and the final version, showed that some of the original descriptions and mentions of fracking-related health and environmental risks were “played down or removed.”

Read more here.


Duke researchers explore potential dangers of fracking

With North Carolina's ban on fracking set to expire next year, Duke researchers are looking into the potential dangers of the technique.

“We sampled hundreds of homes with private drinking water wells, and found that people living near shale gas wells are more likely to have methane, ethane, and propane, the components of natural gas, in their water,” said Robert Jackson, formerly of the Nicholas School of the Environment and now a professor of environment and energy at Stanford University.

“I think there’s a perception amongst some people in Raleigh that they don’t want to hear about problems that might occur,” Jackson said. “I think the Mining and Energy Commission was designed to establish rules to help drilling come to North Carolina, not to decide whether or not drilling should come to North Carolina. That discussion never really happened.”

Read more here.


Residents Harmed by Fracking Demand EPA Administrator Drink their Tainted Water
Want EPA to Reopen Investigation of Drinking Water Contamination By Fracking

WASHINGTON - Affected community members from Dimock, Pennsylvania, along with advocacy organizations, rallied outside of EPA Headquarters to demand that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy either re-open investigations into fracking’s impact on people and the environment, or drink frack water from Pennsylvania that her agency has told residents is safe.

The action came after a year of gathering over 250,000 petitions, thousands of calls, and dozens of events asking McCarthy to meet with them, following the Los Angeles Times story that revealed the Obama Administration had shut down the EPA fracking investigation that found their drinking water contamination linked to drilling and fracking operations.

“My water is brown and smells so bad it will make you nauseous, yet EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy tells me and my neighbors that this poison is safe to drink,” said Ray Kemble, a resident from Dimock, PA who was part of the EPA’s fracking-related water investigation in 2012. “To make matters worse, Gina McCarthy is promoting more and more fracking across the country, meaning my story will be shared by millions of Americans. This has to stop.”

Read more here.


Frackers are dumping toxic waste into California’s groundwater

California can officially add one more disaster to its rapidly growing list of water woes: The EPA just found that at least nine fracking sites throughout the state have been dumping billions of gallons of contaminated wastewater into its protected aquifers.

Not only do many of these aquifers supply drinking water to residents throughout the Central Valley, they’re also reaching dangerously low levels due to overuse, as many farmers rely on aquifers for irrigation and have been overpumping groundwater supplies as the drought carries on.

According to a letter sent to the EPA by the California State Water Resources Board, roughly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into aquifers throughout central California. The EPA ordered the report following contamination concerns after 11 fracking wastewater injection wells were shut down in July by state officials.

Read more here.


Michigan landfill operator suspends receipt of low-level radioactive waste

A Van Buren Township hazardous-waste landfill operator, slated to receive up to 36 tons of low-level radioactive waste from a Pennsylvania fracking company, announced Monday that it will suspend receipt of such materials from all oil and gas operations pending a review by the state.

The announcements follow an Aug. 19 Free Press report on plans by a Pennsylvania oil and gas development company, Range Resources, to ship radioactive fracking waste to Wayne Disposal. The sludge was rejected by landfills in western Pennsylvania and its shipment to a landfill in West Virginia was halted by the state and voluntarily discontinued by the company, as West Virginia reforms its laws for handling such waste.

Ohio and West Virginia, two states with more intensive fracking activity than Michigan, have changed regulations on how to store, treat, process and dispose of radioactive oil and gas drilling wastes. Pennsylvania also doesn’t allow the materials in its landfills. Each of the states leaves it to oil and gas developers to find a disposal site. As Ohio tightened its regulations, state officials listed the Wayne Disposal site in Van Buren Township as an option for Ohio drillers.

Read more here.

[Click image to enlarge]

Hydrofracking Updates

Yes, a Drilling Moratorium.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013 by: Times Union Editorial Board. 

Our opinion: The Legislature should pass a moratorium on fracking while multiple studies are under way.

Whether you feel that natural gas fracking is the economic salvation of New York or an environmental disaster waiting to happen, there is one indisputable fact about it: The science is not in. Not by a long shot. And that’s why a moratorium in New York makes sense.

State leaders who have vowed to let science guide their decision on whether to allow high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing could show they mean what they say by declaring that the idea is off the table at least until some serious study is done.

While the industry’s persistent public relations campaign has portrayed fracking as clean and safe, we simply don’t know if that’s true. At least five studies are under way or being considered on fracking as scientists and health researchers seek answers.

Read more at TimesUnion.com

Note: The New York Assembly has already voted to ban fracking for two more years.
The moratorium would last until May 15, 2015. In the meantime, the Assembly bill calls for the State University of New York to conduct an independent, comprehensive health review (A5424A-2013).

A similar bill to ban fracking for two more years was introduced by the Independent Democratic Conference in the Senate (S4236A-2013).
However, the GOP is against the moratorium and they prefer to wait instead for Governor Cuomo’s health commissioner to complete an ongoing review. Read more here.
 
UPDATE 4.9.2013 --  Letter: Governor Cuomo, insist on a drilling moratorium
To the editor of the Times Union -- Published Friday, April 5, 2013

On behalf of a bipartisan group of more than 635 local elected officials from all 62 counties across New York, we agree with the Times Union's editorial in support of a moratorium on fracking. Wisely, the Times Union cited a growing majority of New Yorkers who question the safety of fracking: "Safe? Prove it. We can wait."

We can — and must — hold off. Elected Officials to Protect New York, whose signatories represent more than 13.5 million New Yorkers, has long been calling for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to maintain the moratorium on fracking. An informed decision cannot be made until analyses have evaluated the health, economic and cumulative environmental impacts on local communities.

The facts and science are not in. New concerns arise weekly.  Read more here.

TAKE ACTION: Call Governor Cuomo at  518-474-8390 and let him know your opinion about hydrofracking in NY State.

3rd NY Town Wins in Court over Fracking Ban

By The Associated Press on March 19, 2013

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A third upstate New York town has won a court challenge to its ban on natural gas drilling as two previous cases are about to be argued before a state appeals court.

Gas drilling company Lenape Resources, based in western New York, had sued the Livingston County town of Avon and the state Department of Environmental Conservation over the town's moratorium on drilling, saying the action threatened to put it out of business after it had operated in the town for decades. Lenape's owner, John Holko, also sought $50 million in damages. He named the Department of Environmental Conservation because he said the agency had a duty to stop towns from enacting local bans.

On March 15, Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Wiggins in Livingston County ruled against Lenape on all counts. He cited Court of Appeals precedents as well as decisions in favor of local bans in the Upstate towns of Dryden and Middlefield.

Read more at The Post-Standard's Syracuse.com

Note: The basis for NY Supreme Court rulings upholding the gas-drilling bans in the Towns of Dryden and Middlefield was covered in my earlier post here (February 27, 2012) .

Sierra Club Blasts 'Sustainable Shale' Center's Partnership Between Industry And Environmental Groups

AP  |  By KEVIN BEGOS Posted: 03/21/2013

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Sierra Club and some other environmental groups are harshly criticizing a new partnership that aims to create tough new standards for fracking.

The criticism Thursday came a day after two of the nation's biggest oil and gas companies made peace with some national and regional environmental groups, agreeing to go through an independent review of their shale oil and gas drilling operations in the Northeast.

If Shell Oil, Chevron Appalachia and other companies are found to be abiding by a list of stringent measures to protect the air and water from pollution, they will receive the blessing of the new Pittsburgh-based Center for Sustainable Shale Development, created by environmentalists and the energy industry.

But some are questioning whether a partnership between environmentalists and the oil and gas industry should exist at all.

Read more at the Huffington Post

NOTE 1: "Sustainable shale" is an oxymoron, like "clean coal."  How about "sustainable wind" or "sustainable sunlight"... that works!
NOTE 2: Even Pro-frackers don't like this industry-enviro "partnership." See MarcellusDrilling.com

Collapse of Salt Mine serves as Cautionary Tale on Fracking

By Margaret Wooster
Special to The Buffalo News - 03/17/2013

This cautionary tale is relevant to one of the most important decisions confronting New York State in our time: whether to permit the construction of tens of thousands of new high-volume hydrofracking gas wells across the southern half of our state.

Read more at BuffaloNews.com

EPA Announces Expert Panel to Review Fracking Study

WASHINGTON | Mon Mar 25, 2013

(Reuters) - The U.S. environmental regulator has selected experts in fields ranging from well-drilling to toxicology to review a highly anticipated report on the natural gas and oil extraction method commonly known as fracking.

The Environmental Protection Agency's science advisory board on Monday named 31 experts from universities, scientific labs and companies to review the agency's landmark hydraulic fracturing study that is expected to be delivered in 2014.

The study, first requested by Congress in 2010, may prove pivotal in the government's regulation of fracking that has unlocked generations' worth of oil and gas supplies.

Read more here.

Click here to view a list of Members of the Hydraulic Fracturing Research Advisory Panel

To view the Executive Summary of the Progress Report on the EPA hydraulic fracturing study (December 2012), click here.