Hello all,
On the afternoon of Monday December 14th, Senator Antoine M Thompson, Chair of the NY State Senate Environmental Conservation Committee meet with residents of Dimock who have been directly impacted by Cabot’s drilling practices. Most were small landowners/homeowners.
Ron and Jean Carter were the generous hosts. Although it was a little cozy, their dining room table provided an intimate setting for a conversational exchange, with a gas well pad not even 200 ft away and clearly visible out the front window as a constant visual reminder. The number of participants was small, but provided an opportunity for each person there to be heard at some length. Besides the Carters, they included Julie and Craig Sautner, Pat Farnelli, and Victoria Switzer, names seen in the press before. Norma Fiorentino was planning to come, but a family illness led her to cancel. A major landowner also was present. The Senator brought four staff members.
After the Senator introduced himself, the group launched into their personal experiences, leading the Senator through the following topics:
1- Landman selling tactics/duplicity: “standard” contracts; never explaining the downside; saying they were only exploring, the chance of actually finding anything was minimal; that they had to sign because their neighbors already did, and they would just drill under the land and take their gas anyway.
2- Faulty well casing: Almost everyone had bad water. The Sautners’ provided a sample taken from their home plumbing just last week. Two Cabot employees I took it to last week said it seemed to be drilling mud; a Senate staffer said it looked like watery peanut butter. Some residents were included in the PADEP/Cabot consent decree requiring Cabot to provide water, but Pat Fanelli, with a family of 5 children, is still without safe water because “tests” by a Cabot subcontractor and by PADEP showed her water to be “safe”, even though she and her children get sick with severe stomach cramps when they “forget to not drink the water out of the tap”. She has to buy her own water. Gas migration was discussed in this context since Cabot does not have to provide water if someone’s water well is 1,000 ft from the well pad, even if the water has gone bad. All talked about the fear that many more in the community live with regarding the safety of their own water. Besides the explosion of Norma Fiorentiono’s water well, The Carter’s well has also been blowing the top off of the vent, and has exploded 3 times in the last week.
3- Waste water: Pat Fanelli pointed out that while maybe most people are familiar with the industry’s need to consume fresh water, she felt as big a problem is that there are no facilities right now to process the produced water. So, what do you do with it? Pat wasted no time with an answer: they hose down dirt roads in the summer with it, saying they “need to control the dust”. Or they take the trucks up to the tops of hills, open the valves and run off while the water runs downhill to streams. She then pulled out a bottle of water that she said she collected when Cabot workers were not looking: the Senator’s aide commented that it looked like soy sauce (at this point I am beginning to wonder if the Senator is starving his staff members).
4- Failure of regulatory officials to police the industry: Clear answers from Cabot officials or the DEP about water test results can take months, and information about damage done to property from spills is not always forthcoming. A major landowner spoke of attending a meeting with Cabot that Victoria Switzer had arranged for members of the community and finding out about spills on his land the following day through the press, even though the spills had occurred the day before the meeting and that Cabot was aware of the spills during the meeting but failed to inform him. Victoria spoke about her efforts to work the system for nearly two years: contacting Cabot, the DEP, EPA, elected officials, the press, and always getting the blind eye, the runaround: “No one wants to rock the rig!!!” is her famous retort. It was not that those who were present who had signed onto the civil complaint were litigious, it was simply that they had nowhere else to turn.
5- Misinformation: a number of points made here, but as an example, Pat Fanelli pointed out that industry says that the well pad is returned to its prior condition within a couple months, but the pad out the window – which is also next to her home – has been in an industrial state for two years, and although the well is fracked, completed and productive, trucks are still there and workers have told her they will be there indefinitely.
6- The Senator was concerned about the population of Dimock: 1398. This turned out to be a segue into a concern that the water supply of rural populations, not just municipalities, be protected.
The Senator clearly took it all in with rapt attention and seemed to see opportunities for legislative approaches judging by his exchanges with his aide. After an hour had passed, he jumped in with a moving digression about Love Canal – which occurred some 35 years ago in his district in Niagara Falls – as the birthplace of the modern environmental justice movement. As if switching from politician to activist, he described how residents there met around a dining room table “just like this one” and talked about their fears and frustrations, the obstacles they faced, how the struggle made them feel crazy, how outsiders treated them like they were crazy. He described how their struggle ultimately made an historic impact on legislation at the national level. He reminded everyone in the room about the formidable power of the industry they faced, that their struggle would require the same stick-to-it-ness as the one in Love Canal did, but that they have more power than they realize, and enumerated specific actions that if taken would increase their collective power, enabling them to have the same opportunity to impact the national debate on this issue the way that the people of Love Canal once did. He pointed out that the country needed them.
And he urged Victoria Switzer to run for elected office.
Finally, the Senator asked “So can you tell me what is it that you want me to do for you?” Ron Carter was ready with the succinct rejoinder: “We want the nation to know that what is happening to us can happen to them if they don’t watch out. Right now we feel no one is listening to us.” Senator Thompson promised to try to help them make that happen.
The Senator closed the meeting by thanking everyone in the room for taking the time to help him get informed. He hoped that if natural gas drilling does come to New York State, he will be able to do his part to ensure that its citizens health and the well-being of the environment will be strongly protected. Everyone was impressed with the Senator’s commitment shown both in the time he took to drive to their community – something local and statewide PA officials seem yet to do – and in the heartfelt and inspirational manner with which he communicated.
The meeting lasted for about 1:45 and was scheduled to start at 2:00PM but was delayed over one hour due to another meeting running over that the Senator had with Chesapeake Energy at their well pad in Towanda PA that morning. At the conclusion of the morning meeting, Chesapeake officials wished him a safe drive back.
“Oh I am not going back to Buffalo just yet” said Senator Thompson.
The Chesapeake official asks “?”
“Dimock”.
He said he could almost hear the sound of their jaws collectively crashing onto the ground.
I think it is fair to say that it was an energizing exchange for all.
And Jean Carter’s pastries made it extra sweet.
Regards,
Michael Lebron
NYSESS
Sign the petition to ban drilling in New York State
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/NY-Statewide-Ban-On-Natural-Gas-Drilling
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http://www.toxicstargeting.com/MarcellusShale/coalition_letter/sign
Visit the Sustainable Otsego website for a white paper on toxic gas drilling:
http://sustainableotsego.org/
