To: Joe Martens, Commissioner, NYS DEC
I watched Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address last night online while most people were sleeping. For the first time in years, I felt inspired by the Governor's address. Plus, I had only six areas of contention with what he said, or didn't say.
It's hypocritical for the Governor to go bold on green in New York but to allow for a process as environmentally fraught with the potential for disaster as is fracking to be allowed to continue. All throughout the nation, micro-earthquakes (under a magnitude of 3.0) are being reported in places where they never had been recorded -- places where fracking has been initiated.
The potential for contaminating our drinking water, as well as the very ground upon which we live, is far too great. Haven't we learned our lessons from previous environmental disasters? Aren't there enough superfund sites already in existence?
We must band together, as Governor Cuomo stated last night, as New Yorkers, to enact a complete and total ban on fracking activities in our great State of New York, and work toward a federal and global ban of this potentially deadly activity. If we are going to be a Green State then we should go in at at 100%, not some half-assed attempt that allows companies to keep secret from the public the chemicals they are pumping into our ground under the guide of maintaining "trade secrets."
If a corporation is going to inject chemicals into the ground that have even a *remote* chance of seeping into our water supply or expanding into areas where we live, work, or obtain our food, then the public should have a right to know exactly what those chemicals are *and* have a means by which they can object to such corporation's environmentally-UNfriendly actions. A 500-foot perimeter ban around our reservoirs and acquifiers simply is not enough. Anyone who has owned an ant farm knows just what little it would take for this perimeter to be breached from its outside and have potentially deadly chemicals seeping into our water supplies.
The entirety of provisions contained within the proposed DEC regulations are unfathomable and unconscionable to me. We should protect and preserve the land we are borrowing from Mother Earth, not exploit it to the point where we will be forced to one day in the encroaching future leave this planet as a wasteland. Fracking should not be allowed in our great state, period. The so-called protections the DEC proposes to enact regulating any fracking activities are simply insufficient. For instance, where are there provisions for monitoring seepage? Must we find that our water is bad when we get a rash after showering, or discover that our kitchen tap water is flammable?
I urge the DEC to abandon any and all plans for fracking within the boundaries of our state, as the risks are far too great. The rewards will end up in the hands of the corporations, and we, the people, will be the ones paying the price.
Sincerely,
Peter C. Frank
Yonkers, New York
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