To the Editor:
(Canastota, NY – Feb. 2013) Oneida County recently banned [hydraulic fracturing] waste water on county roads; protecting residents from the harmful health effects of improper disposal. Radioactive fracking waste poses an immediate public health threat since it is already produced by vertical gas wells in New York and is permitted for de-icing and dust control on roads. The Board of Legislators should be thanked.
Shale gas drilling technologies involve the use of hundreds of toxic chemicals and large quantities of fresh water to extract the gas from deep underground. Much of this highly toxic mixture returns to the surface with the gas along with other contaminants. The pollutants in fracking wastewaster include heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, brine and high levels radioactive materials. Radium is linked to bone, liver and breast cancers.
If all local governments do not enact protective laws, our children and those who follow will have to live with the consequences – aquifers, streams, and rivers contaminated by long-lived, cancer-causing radioactive elements. It’s elected officials responsibility to step in to protect their citizens from dangerous exposures.
This far-sighted legislation will help safeguard Oneida County’s irreplaceable water resources. Similar legislation has passed in Westchester, Ulster and Tompkins County. Why aren’t Madison County elected officials doing their duty? Is it because they don’t want any roadblocks to the gas industry coming in, no brine spreading ban, no road use plan, no pre and post testing of drinking water?
True protection can only happen when this extreme energy extraction method is banned. To protect what matters most, our children‘s health and futures, please pick up the phone and call Governor Cuomo, 1-866-584-6799, and ask that hydrofracking be banned in all New York.
Cheryl Cary, Canastota