A message from Paul Hetzler, a current employee and union representative at the Department for Environmental Conservation (DEC) in the State of New York has sounded alarm bells over the under-staffed agency’s ability to monitor the industry and to deal with any emergencies if the plan goes ahead. He said that allowing the controversial Marcellus shale drilling and fracking in New York will lead to contamination of the state’s aquifers and poison its drinking water.
Plans to remove a statewide ban on fracking advanced by New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the DEC have sparked a wave of opposition from environmental, health and activist groups. The New York state DEC released its recommendations in July, saying that proposals to remove the ban “struck the right balance between protecting our environment, watersheds and drinking water and promoting economic development.”
In his December 13 letter to the Watertown Daily Times, Hetzler, a former technician responsible for investigating and managing groundwater contamination at the DEC, said: “I’m familiar with the fate and transport of contaminants in fractured media, and let me be clear: hydraulic fracturing as it’s practiced today will contaminate our aquifers. If you were looking for a way to poison the drinking water supply, here in the north-east you couldn’t find a more chillingly effective and thorough method of doing so than with hydraulic fracturing.”
The publication of Hetzler’s letter last month coincided with a report from the US Environmental Protection Agency, which linked fracking with water pollution for the first time. Hetzler calles the proposals for hydraulic fracturing in New York state “insane”, adding: “I’m not saying anywhere you drill will cause a huge catastrophe. There might be a location where geological conditions are favorable, where contaminants don’t travel. But the Marcellus shale is not a homogeneous layer. You can’t predict what is going to happen.”
Point Your RSS Reader to FrackCheckWV.net/feed/
