Fracking With Our Water

 

Leyana Dessauer, a 15-year-old freshman
at the school at 3100 E. Genesee St., plans to trek up to the water
tower in Thornden Park on Tuesday, Jan. 19, to call for a ban on the
practice. The young outdoor enthusiast has spent a good bit of her
spare time lately trying to encourage other young people and the rest
of the community to join what she believes is a needed campaign to
defend the local water supply. “I’ve never felt this way before,” said
Dessauer about the proposals for high-volume hydraulic fracturing and
horizontal drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale. 

Leyana Dessauer, joined by Reena Tretler-Wirth, on hydrofracking: “It’s easy to brush it off, but it’s such a huge issue and we need to speak out before it gets here.” MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

 

“Hydrofracking” is the name given to the
mining procedure known to geologists as hydraulic fracturing. By
pushing high volumes of water into beds of shale deep beneath the
surface, engineers fracture the substrate and harvest pockets of gas
otherwise immune to conventional drilling. Hydrofracking has been used
in more than half of the state’s 13,000 natural gas wells for years,
according to Yancey Roy, spokesman for the DEC. 

“Horizontal drilling is not completely
new either,” said Roy, and it is not to be confused with hydrofracking,
which Roy said, “involves digging a well down in one spot and then
drawing gas from deposits in adjacent pockets. Horizontal drilling is
not completely new. There are probably 40 or so wells in the state in
which horizontal drilling is practiced.”

What has caught the public eye is the
advent of high-volume hydraulic fracturing. “In a conventional well,”
explained Roy, “you would use 80,000 to 100,000 gallons of water, and
in high-volume hydraulic fracturing, estimates are that millions of
gallons would be used.”

That process, environmental advocates
say, risks irreparable harm to watersheds like Skaneateles Lake and
Otisco Lake, which provide the region with some of the cleanest water
in the nation. The harm comes from wastewater returns that may seep
into the lakes and the streams that feed it, as well as from the
above-ground infrastructure required to support the drilling. 

Stacy Smith, Dessauer’s mother and a
longtime environmental activist, argues that a number of communities in
Pennsylvania and out West have been, in her words, devastated by
hydrofracking. In Central New York, oil and gas companies have been
leasing rights to hundreds of plots of land from which to drill down
and extract gas. 

Proposals for similar drilling in the
watershed that provides New York City with its water met stiff
opposition last year, and Chesapeake Energy, the company planning the
drilling, backed off. Based in Oklahoma City, Okla., Chesapeake Energy
holds most of the leases in Central New York and intends to concentrate
its efforts in the Marcellus and Utica Shales, two potentially
lucrative deposits in upstate New York.

Dessauer said she just wants a chance to
speak her mind and alert her neighbors to what she sees as an avoidable
threat. For years she has divided her time between her mother’s home
near Barry Park and her father’s on a land trust in Truxton, south of
Cortland. 

“It’s immediate, it’s right here, and
it’s really scary,” she said about hydrofracking. “I really care about
this area, and if young people want to stay in New York—how can we if
there’s no drinking water?”

Like many of her classmates, Dessauer is a big Taylor Swift fan. She likes watching 30 Rock and Glee,
but has taken time away from both fun and study to alert others to what
she sees as an imminent danger. Last week she met with Nottingham
principal Debra Mastropaolo to tell her of her concerns. She hopes the
school might sponsor an assembly on the issue, and she plans to
approach individual social studies and science teachers to suggest that
they show documentaries in their classes.

“We will have information tables in the
next few weeks, and we’re planning a community forum in February,” said
Dessauer. “We will invite {County Executive} Joanie Mahoney, {Rep.} Dan
Maffei, {Syracuse Mayor} Stephanie Miner and {state Sen.} Dave Valesky.” 

Smith said the event at the water tower
is meant to give people the opportunity to express their feelings on
the issue. “Since it’s a weeknight we don’t expect a huge crowd, but we
want to send a message that New York state does not want
hyrdrofracking. We want it banned.” 

While some legislators are urging the
state to implement a moratorium, Dessauer would rather the procedure
were banned forever. “It’s inherently unsafe—blowing chemicals into the
earth that can seep into the water. It has such enormous dangers and
won’t be good at all for public health or the environment.”

She has solicited the cooperation of a
number of community groups, including the Onondaga Creek Conservation
Council, Syracuse Peace Council, Neighbors of Onondaga Nation and
Partnership for Onondaga Creek. They will gather in the park, which is
bordered by Ostrom Avenue, Clarendon and Beech streets at 5:30 p.m. The
half-hour gathering will include songs and sharing of feelings about
the issue.

Dessauer credits her parents with
developing her awareness of environmental issues from an early age. For
many years her mother has coordinated a springtime event known as
Children’s Earth Day in Thornden Park. “It’s easy to brush it off, but
hydrofracking is such a huge issue and we need to speak out before it
gets here,” said Dessauer. “In Pennsylvania and elsewhere it has had
horrible effects. Once I heard about it I knew I had to do more than
just worry. The state forest behind where my dad lives {Morgan Hill
State Forest} is in the process of being leased for drilling.”

What does she want people to do? “We
just want to ask people to form an educated opinion. We want people to
contact the government.” 

For more information on the rally,
contact Leyana Dessauer at 470-0078. The regional director of the DEC,
Kenneth Lynch, can be reached at 426-7403. The public comment period on
the proposed drilling ended Dec. 31.

For more details on the environmental effects of hydrofracking, visit the advocacy group Shale Shock on line at www.shaleshock.org. The DEC has published its most comprehensive review of the
environmental impact of hydrofracking under the tortured title of
“Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil,
Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program.” The subtitle is “Well
Permit Issuance for Horizontal Drilling And High-Volume Hydraulic
Fracturing to Develop the Marcellus Shale and Other Low-Permeability
Gas Reservoirs.” It is available online at www.dec.ny.gov. 

The Palace Theatre, 2384 James St., will be showing Hydrofracking, a film about this issue, on Thursday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. Call 463-9240 for ticket prices.