We Are Seneca Lake: Josh Fox Speaks Out About Nat Gas Storage Under Seneca Lake

"[Josh] Fox  put together this short documentary, which premiered exclusively at the Daily Beast on Wednesday—a call to action from him and fracking activist Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist and author who has been at the forefront of the We Are Seneca Lake campaign."

Horizontal slickwater hydrofracking was banned in New York State in 2014.  However, the infrastructure needed to support the natural gas industry, i.e. pipelines, storage facilities, trains, compressor stations, etc., are equally as disturbing and dangerous.  We must not let up on the fight to protect the planet.

Sandra Steingraber Greets Large Crowd In Albany Yesterday

Sandra Steingraber addressed the gathering at the Hilton in Albany yesterday.  The occasion was a rally and celebration of the recent decision by Gov. Cuomo to ban fracking in New York State.  Here is the text of her speech:  click here.

High Volume Horizontal Hydrofracking: New York State Says No!

For a good read, check out this response from Chip Northrup:

http://www.nofrackingway.us/2014/12/20/what-the-frack-happens-now-in-new-york/

What's going to happen next in New York State?  Chip Northrup says, "Nothing!"  We will not have horizontal gas drilling in New York.  Game over for the frackers.  The sad part is that the drillers will just take their marbles and go somewhere else to destroy the landscape and put human beings and other living things in harm's way.  So we must all get busy and ban fracking wherever we live.  Many communities in NY have done this, and it has made it very difficult for frackers to operate. Click here to see an excellent map showing the actions against drilling in New York communities.

Fracking Debate at Cornell University Feb. 4

Published on Feb 5, 2014

With Tom Shepstone, Scott Kurkoski, John Conrad vs. Anthony Ingraffea, Sandra Steingraber, Walter Hang. Fracking II: Should We Lift the Ban ? Sponsored by the Cornell Forensics Society. Professor Sam Nelson moderating...

Sandra Steingraber at Protest Against Tar Sands

Sandra, Jeff and friends joining in one of 350.org's Draw the Line Day of Action on Keystone XL events (200+!) around the country - Trumansburg, NY, this morning.
http://350.org/draw-the-line
 

Tar Sands= No human or environmental benefits, just money for a few, devastation for the many

Dear Governor Hickenlooper: Stop Fracking Colorado

A new film premiering May 2014. Here is a teaser narrated by Sandra Steingraber, PhD.

Dr. Steingraber has a natural gift for explaining what actually happens underground during fracking.

Dear Governor Hickenlooper is a compilation of short films about why fracking must be stopped in the state of Colorado. Each film—documentary, horror movie or love story—will convey to the Governor a simple message: THIS IS MY COLORADO.

DGH is a massive collaboration of Colorado creatives—filmmakers, artists and musicians—that will help persuade the Governor that the state of Colorado shouldn’t be fracked with and that another, more sustainable economy is possible—right now. The film will be comprised of 3-7 minute vignettes, each one telling a different perspective on Colorado. Imagine a segment that shows a man who lives to fly fish on CO’s rivers cutting to one that graphically depicts how fracking is impacting Colorado’s rivers; followed by a young farmer happily working to make a living from his/her land; followed by science on how we are fracking our food supply by auctioning off public lands near farms; followed by an interview with a solar expert showing us what’s possible with renewable energy in CO today if we level the energy playing field.

DGH will help shape the energy and economy debate as it screens in theaters big and small across the state and is seen by audiences worldwide on the web via a short film series designed to go viral. The film will implore Governor Hickenlooper to be a hero—the governor that moves us to a renewable energy economy in the nick of time. Films will be housed along with an enlightening blog, articles, and infographics on DearGovernorHickenlooper.com.

 

WE ARE ALL COLORADANS!

Dr. Sandra Steingraber: To Drill Or Not To Drill

Published on Apr 16, 2013

Recorded Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at Grace Episcopal Church, Elmira, NY

Dr. Sandra Steingraber is a biologist, author, and Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Department of Environmental Studies at Ithaca College. Her research and writing focuses on environmental health and, for the past two years, has explored the health and environmental impacts of shale gas extraction. Steingraber has served as a science advisor for several state, federal, and international initiatives, including the California Breast Cancer Research Program, the National Action Plan on Breast Cancer, the President's Cancer Panel, and the Health and Environmental Alliance in the Europe Union. In 2011, Steingraber received a Heinz Award for lifetime achievement and donated the prize money to the anti-fracking movement in New York State, thus becoming a founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking. She is also a founding principal of Concerned Health Professionals of New York.

Decisions related to fracking should be considered with the safety and well-being of Elmira and surrounding area residents in mind. We encourage you to attend this key presentation to hear leading experts discuss the economic, health, environment, and socio-cultural effects that the gas industry has on communities. Those who attend will have an opportunity to address questions and concerns directly to the presenters. The forum offers a rare opportunity for Elmira and area residents, elected officials, and spiritual leaders to become more informed so that they can better answer the question for themselves: To frack or not to frack.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber: Albany News Conference on Fracking New York

Dr. Sandra Steingraber speaks at a news conference in Albany, New York, on January 11, 2013. She describes the process by which NY residents responded in writing to the impending possibility that Governor Cuomo will allow permitting of gas wells in New York State. The governor's decision may come as soon as February- just a few weeks away.

Cancer Survivor Addresses Health Effects of Fracking

From The Ithaca Times  Aneta Glover   December 5, 2012

Dr. Steingraber said at an Ovid meeting:

"I am a cancer survivor myself. I was diagnosed at the age of 20 because someone put dry cleaning fluid out back of a machine shop 80 years before and contaminated my town's drinking water. I have been in and out of the hospital for 33 years. I have an exam scheduled for two weeks from now because of an abnormality they saw last time. You don't know how high my medical bills are. But, if you want to talk about costs, not just about kids having to drink contaminated water, kids with cancer at a young age - if you just want to do an analysis … every person with cancer costs tens of thousands of dollars, every child with asthma, every pre-term birth, heart attack, stroke, etc., we have never done those costs to price these out. Right now we don't know the numbers, so we couldn't possibly know what all the costs to fracking would be.”


Read the article here.

Note:  Ovid^® is a global information solutions provider that helps researchers, librarians, clinicians, and other healthcare professionals find important medical information so that they can make critical decisions to improve patient care, enhance ongoing research, and fuel new discoveries.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber's Testimony At Public Hearing on Fracking In New York State

Written Testimony for the Public Hearing on DEC’s High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Regulations

by Raising Elijah by Sandra Steingraber on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 6:42pm ·

New York State Assembly
January 10, 2013

Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D.
Distinguished Scholar in Residence
Department of Environmental Studies
Ithaca College
Ithaca, New York 14850

My name is Sandra Steingraber. I am Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Department of Environmental Studies at Ithaca College. My Ph.D. is in biology, and I have spent the last twenty years researching and writing in the field of environmental health. I have served as a science advisor at both the state and national level, working with the state of California on its research program to investigate the causes of breast cancer and with both the National Action Plan on Breast Cancer under the Clinton Administration and President’s Cancer Panel under George W. Bush.

I’m here to speak today as a founding member of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. This is a group of scientists, physicians, and nurses that came together last fall, in a spirit of shared alarm, when we learned that the DEC’s study of the health effects of fracking—which we had long asked for—was not going to be conducted using any normative protocols nor in an open manner, which is also normative for public health inquiries.

A normative protocol for a health study that attempts to forecast the public health risks of a polluting activity that has not yet been approved is called a comprehensive Health Impact Assessment. It was designed by our nation’s Centers for Disease Control and is endorsed by the World Health Organization. An HIA has, as one of its fundamental elements, democracy. It is scoped and carried out in a transparent manner and with the participation of the public at every stage. This participation takes the form of public hearings and periods of public commentary. It does so out of the recognition that when the public is being asked to endure possible risks to its health from a polluting industry, the public has the right to witness and participate in the study that will help determine the decision-making as to whether to permit or prohibit this industry.

In addition, when the lay public contributes its own local and historical knowledge to an environmental health study, the study design is better for it. Public participation makes for better science.

What is going on right now with the so-called health study underway at DEC and DOH is the very opposite of that public spiritedness. The DEC has, under the cover of secrecy, scoped and carried out a health review of some kind that no member of New York’s scientific community has seen. This review is itself being reviewed by DOH chief, Dr. Shah, and a team of three distinguished public health experts from out of state. We do not know what this team has been asked to review, but we do know that two of the three of them have signed contracts with non-disclosure agreements.

And we do know, from the introduction to the newly released regulations for hydraulic fracturing released by the DEC on November 29, that the decision whether or not to frack New York hangs on the results of these outside reviewers.

Thus does the health of 19.5 million New Yorkers depend on the results of a secret review of a secret review.

And thus, Concerned Health Professionals of New York came together. Not knowing what data the reviewers have been asked to comment on, we hastily created a website on which we uploaded all of the important reports and peer-review studies that we know of—from investigations of well casing failures to radioactivity in production brine (which is to be spread on our roadways). We also uploaded our many unanswered letters to DEC Commissioner Martens, DOC Commissioner Shah, and Governor Cuomo.

And I’d like to add here as an aside: My 11-year-old son receives answers to his letters to the Governor. I never have. We share the same mailing address.

Concerned Health Professionals of New York also took the unusual step of creating an eight-minute video message to the three outside panelists in which we—doctors, nurses, and scientists—describe our long-standing, unaddressed concerns about fracking in New York State. We uploaded this as an embedded video. And then we emailed each of the reviewers to let them know that we had created this website repository of data for them, out of our concern that the document that they are reviewing—whatever it is—does not address itself to all the animating issues.

Can I just say how crazy this feels to us? These three outside experts are our colleagues. Two of the three are personal friends of mine. We have spoken together on panels and at conferences. They share data with me. I cite their research in my writings. And now a gag order prevents them from speaking to me about data that I as a New York scientist am not allowed to see.

The leak last week to the press of what looks to be an old draft of this health review turns our alarm into full-blown cynicism. This eight-page document contains no data. It is a series of assertions that seems to say that the health effects of fracking are unknown and unknowable by any future research. Therefore, regulations can mitigate them. Therefore, fracking is safe.

This is not sound scientific reasoning. The premises on which its logic rests cannot be evaluated because there are no citations or footnotes or references. Emerging evidence in the scientific literature flies in the face of its conclusions.

The DEC and DOH needs to be asked, “What is this document? Who wrote it? For what purpose? What are your sources?”

I’m aware that this Assembly has invited the DEC Commissioner to his hearing to explain himself—an invitation that he refused. To justify the no-show, DEC spokesperson Emily DeSantis issued a statement pointing to the previous hearings attended by Commissioner Martens.

Concerned Health Professionals of New York condemns this statement. The refusal of the DEC to appear at this hearing and answer questions about the health review has not only broken Governor Cuomo’s promise of transparency, it has broken public trust itself.

Although New York citizens have been entirely cut out of the decision-making process on fracking, the public continues to have profound interest in participating in the inquiry and the decision-making process of fracking.

I know this because I designed a website to help people create comments on the revised draft regulations over the holidays. It’s called Thirty Days of Fracking Regs, and it takes an Advent calendar approach to public commentary. Each day, for the last 30 days, I have posted on this website one regulation, which I then translate into plainspoken English. I then provide some science relevant to that regulation. Because there is no final SGEIS to serve as the scientific basis for the regs, I did that research myself. I then invited the public to create a handcrafted comment about that regulation.

Tomorrow, I will be hand delivering all the comments that my readers and I created together. There are more than 20,000 of them. All are original and unique. As a metric of public commitment and concern, I would like to point out that 500 of them were written on Christmas Day. On New Year’s Day, more than 1000 comments came in. In addition, college students home on break devoted their free time to crafting comments as part of a group project called Homework Against Fracking.

These and other initiatives that have guided citizens through the comment-writing process means that we will hand-deliver to the DEC more than 200,000 comments tomorrow, January 11, which is the final day of comment delivery. We require a U-Haul to do so. And I understand that such a truck has already been rented.

I am asking you now to help ensure that each one of these comments is logged by the DEC, read, and considered.

Finally: outside of Governor Cuomo’s State of the State address yesterday, more than 1,500 people protested against fracking. That event included a recitation of the Pledge to Resist Fracking in New York. The Pledge is a solemn commitment to engage in actions of non-violent protest and demonstration up to and including civil disobedience should the Governor greenlight fracking for New York under the undemocratic, fatally flawed decision-making process now underway. Prior to yesterday, more than 6,000 people had already signed this solemn pledge. I am one of them.

I dearly hope that we do not have to activate this pledge, that the signatures of thousands of New York citizens alone will have the power to move the Governor to the exit door. But the very existence of the Pledge to Resist Fracking in New York is clear sign not only of loss of faith in the DEC but of loss of faith in government itself.

Americans Who Tell the Truth: Sandra Steingraber

"We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score."

Let the music begin!

Sandra Steingraber Speaks in Support of Susan Walker

Biologist Sandra Steingraber speaks at a press conference outside Chemung County Jail (Elmira, NY) where one of the "Seneca Three", Susan Walker, is being held for blocking the gate at Inergy's Seneca Lake gas storage facility project on September 6th of this year. Walker refused to pay a fine and was therefore incarcerated. She will remain in jail for 2 weeks.

Dr.Sandra Steingraber narrates this slide show which tells the story of high-volume, slickwater, horizontal hydrofracking, a method of extracting tiny bubbles of natural gas from tight shale, in this case, the Marcellus Shale. In her quiet, sweet voice she describes what is happening under the ground, under our feet, and how this process is destroying our planet. Don't let her quiet voice deceive you. She is telling a devastating story that everyone should hear. This is a crisis of monumental proportions.

Summary: Author Sandra Steingraber, who is at the forefront of efforts to halt fracking across the Marcellus Shale deposits, reads excerpts from her essay about the fiftieth anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, accompanied by a full portfolio of fracking photos by Nina Berman.

A few comments from viewers: 1 Marc Mullinax on Aug 24, 2012 Last two minutes, with the author’s questions, are very powerful. They should be the same questions we pose to ourselves 2 Ellen Newton Duell on Aug 24, 2012 I am passionately devoted to preventing fracking and use of injection wells for fracking wastewater. Thank you for this excellent article. And deep gratitude to Rachel Carson. 3 joan meierotto on Aug 24, 2012 Very well done. Thank you Sandra and Rachel. 5 Angela Monti Fox, The Mothers Project on Aug 24, 2012 Thanks you Sandra for this wonderful piece that will help us all in providing another voice for this hydrofracking tragedy. An excellent teaching tool to help inform those who are still without real knowledge and truth. Angela Monti Fox 6 John Trallo on Aug 25, 2012 I mourn for my home state, Pennsylvania, the largest continuous stretch of forest land in North America, and for the future generations who will never know the asthetic beauty, pure water, clean air, and way of life that was once Pennsylvania. 7 cyril robinson on Aug 25, 2012 fracking is the pollution that Rachel Carson fought against and the way to remember her is to carry on her fight. We must think of her as ever-present urging us on as a figure likeJoan of Arc with her standard flying as she marches in front of this sacred environmental army. 8 Pauline Matt on Aug 25, 2012 Oh my, Nothing to say…just a deep hurtful cry.

Just a deep hurtful cry....

Orion Magazine: The Fracking of Rachel Carson

The latest issue of Orion Magazine is an excellent one. I highly recommend Sandra Steingraber's article, "The Fracking of Rachel Carson."  You will see poignant photographs and be treated to Dr. Steingraber's compelling style of expression.  She always draws me in from the first sentence.

To go to her article, click here.

Rachel Louise Carson
1907-1964

Sandra Steingraber: Carcinogens In Water or Air Leads To Cancer

Published on Jun 25, 2012 by LivingDownstreamFilm "I'm only a population of one. I would not be able to say with certainty that the cause of my disease was any one chemical. We can't say that, biologically. What we can say is that, when you have carcinogens in the drinking water supply, or in an air supply, or in a food web, somebody's going to get cancer." —Sandra Steingraber

Sandra Steingraber Speaks In Vestal, NY

Published on Jun 7, 2012 by veraduerga

Taped 6-6-12. At Calvary United Methodist Church, Vestal, NY.. Living Downstream from Fracking and the impacts from all the toxins from the gas extraction process on our environment and health.

Albany, NY, Anti-Fracking Rally May 15th

Published on May 16, 2012 by veraduerga
Taped 5-15-12. Great Speakers and Music. Fourteen PA. people came and Mark Ruffalo there. Speakers are Onondaga Nation Turtle Clan Mother, Sandra Steingraber- Biologist, Sen. Avella and his SB 4220 for a ban, Julia Walsh, Food and Water Watch, Wes Gillingham of Catskill Mountainkeeper, Ben and Elaine Perkus, Mark Ruffalo, Victoria Switzer of Dimock, Pa., Craig and Julie Sautner of Dimock, Pa., The Mohawk Ahkwesasne Women Singers.

Hot Off the Press: The No Frack Almanac Spring Issue!

Hot off the press from Susquehanna County, PA, and environs! Don't miss the Spring 2012 issue just out! Click here for great journalism.

Three Questions About Fracking

Five Stories and a Trailer Park:  Gerri Kane, Carol French, Carolyn Knapp, Bill Pabst, and Matthew and Tammy Manning have experienced problems related to gas drilling.  Read more...

The Fracker Family Closet

Betrayal: Article by Sandra Steingraber

Ten Ways Frackwater Can Get Into Everyone's Water

And much more........................http://nofrackalmanac.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/nfa-issue-3-to-press2.pdf

Amazing Fact: Under current SEC rules, gas companies can sweeten their balance sheets by claiming reserves that have never been independently proven to exist!

A Poem for the Marcellus

Steingraber's latest book: A must read!

From Sandra Steingraber, a new poem for the Marcellus Shale:

Click here.

A very powerful poem.  Take a moment to read it.

Sandra Steingraber of Ithaca, NY, shares her poetic language and combines it with her vast knowledge of shale science.  It is a stunning combination.

Sandra Steingraber: "I feel like we're old friends."

Dr. Sandra Steingraber speaks at Albany Rally January 23rd

 

Albany rally speech, 1/23/12 “Fracking Abolition” - Sandra Steingraber

by Raising Elijah by Sandra Steingraber on Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Hi, everybody. After three years of fighting fracking together, I feel like we’re old friends.

You know my story:

How I grew up in a heavily industrialized river valley in Illinois just downwind and downstream from the state’s biggest pollutors—dirty coal, ethanol distilleries, aluminum smelters.

How my hometown drinking water wells were contaminated.

How I developed bladder cancer at the age of twenty.

How, years later, as a biologist, I learned that I was just one data point in a cluster of cancers in the zipcode that I call home.

You know that when I became a mother—the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me—I moved my children to upstate New York to get away from all that, only to find myself in the crosshairs of the world’s largest and most polluting industry, with 40 percent of the land in my county already leased for the carcinogen-depended process of fracking.

And, as if that were not enough irony for English professors, hear this: The riverside bluffs of Illinois are now going to be strip-mined for frack sand. So the remains of the beloved landscapes of my childhood can be carted off and —absent our intervention—shoved into the fractured landscape of my children’s childhood.

Beautiful grains of Illinois River sand forced into fissures of shale, forced to prop open the shattered bedrock of New York so that all manner of explosive vapors and carcinogenic materials—arsenic, radium, uranium, benzene—can come flying out like bats out of Pandora’s box.

Exposing the people I grew up with in Illinois to carcinogenic silica dust. Exposing my children here to smog and radon.

Today, friends, let’s speak plainly.

Fracking is wrong.

Fracking is unmitigatable. Sooner or later, steel and concrete disintegrates. Sooner or later, gas wells open portals of contamination between drinking water aquifers and the toxic materials held in the bedrock below. Doing fracking “right” simply means building time bombs with longer fuses.

There are no places in New York and no children in New York that we are willing to sacrifice to the fracking gods.

So. Withdraw the sGEIS fig leaf and start the hell over.

Over the past three years, we have spoken many clear and beautiful words, in testimonies, in speeches, at hearings, on the banks of the Delaware River, and as far as I can see, there is just one word left to say. I offer it to you as a torch to carry with you into all your meetings today.

It’s the answer to the riddle, “What do Harriet Tubman and the Bulgarian Parliament have in common?”

And the answer is: ABOLITION

Harriet Tubman. Citizen of Auburn, New York. The most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad.

Harriet Tubman did not advocate for state of the art slavery or for promulgating 1500 pages of regulations about slavery or for allowing a few showcase plantations in the Southern Tier to demonstrate how slavery could be done right.

Harriet Tubman settled for nothing less than a total ban, on the grounds that slave labor—however useful to the economy—is a homicidal abomination.

Last week, Bulgaria announced a total ban on fracking. The ban covers the whole nation and it is permanent and unlimited. Permits to frack, held by Chevron, have been revoked. Bulgaria has abolished fracking. The Bulgarians are fracking abolitionists.

How did they do that?

The Bulgarians marched in the streets of twelve cities. The Bulgarians blew whistles and banged on drums and played fight songs on bagpipes. The Bulgarians employed giant, winged stilt-walkers, edgy street theater, and very cool public service announcements.

And when their parliament said, “Okay, fine, here’s a temporary moratorium, the Bulgarian people said, “Not good enough! We’ll settle for nothing short of abolition,” and they marched in the streets again until their parliament voted 166 to 6 for permanent ban.

So, New York, are we meeker than the Bulgarians?

Are we more frightened?

Are we more resigned to a toxic future?

Here is a loaf of bread from a bakery in my own village of Trumansburg, New York.

You’ve seen me hold this bread before. You’ve seen me carry it into the state assembly chambers and submit it as testimony. You’ve heard me say that the flour that makes up this bread is ground at a local mill and that the heirloom wheat that makes up this flour is grown in local fields. And that the flour in this bread makes up the bodies of my children.

Well, today, we’ve brought more than a hundred loaves of this bread, a symbol of the bounty of New York, and we’re going to bring them to our governor, with the message, “Break bread! Not shale!” To tell you about this plan, I would now like to introduce to you the baker of this bread, my hero, Stefan Senders, of the Wide Awake Bakery.

Wide Awake Bakery, 4361 Buck Hill Road, S., Trumansburg, New York 14886
The millers, Greg Mol and Neil Johnston, and the farmers,
Erick Smith and Thor Oeschner, make up Farmer Ground Flour of Trumansburg.

BREAK BREAD, NOT SHALE!