Halliburton has designed a technology called horizontal hydraulic fracturing. It uses 3-9 million gallons of fresh water per well, depleting our most precious resource: water, and increasing the cost of it to the public. Injected into these wells is a toxic mix of 245 chemicals shown by epidemiologists to cause rare cancers, infertility, brain damage, autism, and other neurological disorders.

Millions of gallons of fluid waste and radioactive tailings must be disposed of from each well, overtaxing waste treatment facilities not designed to handle this highly toxic detritus.

Energy companies have already started to use this process to drill in deep shale deposits in Colorado and New Mexico with devastating results to communities. They are now poised to do the same in the Marcellus Shale, primarily in New York,Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. This will affect the aquifers, rivers, lakes, streams, and watersheds in the Delaware River basin and the Susquehanna River Basin, contaminating water not only in rural communities but in cities such as New York, Trenton, and Philadelphia.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is preparing to begin permitting for drilling by June, 2009. It is imperative that the public becomes informed and take action.

Testimony given to the Committee on Environmental Protection, Council of New York City on September 10, 2008, which you can find on-line, will give you an idea of what we are facing.
The Oil & Gas Accountability Project (OGAP)is another good resource, as is propublica: http://www.propublica.org/site/author/Abrahm_Lustgarten/

A petition to the Delaware River Basin Commission is available to sign on-line at:
http://www.damascuscitizens.org/petitionUD/

The “good guys” are helping shift the political climate but they’re also working for massive subsidies to support their interests — on top of the benefits they would rightly gain from being leaders in a clean energy economy.

Aren’t you forgetting about the good guys? GE for smart grid, thisisreality.org, boon pickens, etc.

Although their contribution to the dollars spent on relevant television ads may not be as large as that of the conspiracy-theory-esq “corrupt…corporate right”, their (albeit good) intent to “manipulate American energy policy reform” must be brought to the forefront as well – especially if they have contradictory viewpoints of what constitutes the change we need in energy policy.