Last year, Tim DeChristopher, a student in Utah, bid $1.8 million he did not have in a federal oil lease auction. He won the leases. He stated he did it to protect the environment and to prevent further global warming, arguing that the danger from this drilling was too great and immediate to try to stop it any other way. This week the judge in the case, Dee Benson, disagreed, citing the lack of imminent danger. DeChristopher is now facing felony charges of making false statements and interfering with a (government) auction.
Coincidentally, several days earlier in New York City, the State of New York Department of Environmental Conservation held a public hearing on new regulations allowing natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale deposit in upstate New York.
The Marcellus, which supposedly holds enough gas to power the entire country for 20 years, also crosses the Catskill/Delaware River watershed, a major source of water for the City.
Stuyvesant Auditorium was packed, with the audience, many with placards, overwhelmingly against the drilling. Public input started with local politicians fulminating (this is what talented politicians do well). Their anger was directed at the hydraulic fracturing process used to release the gas during drilling; their fear is that there will be an accident and some of this probably poisonous fracking glop will end up in the New York City water supply, which is comes from the Catskills almost totally untreated. They can yell, but their anger was misdirected and so, ineffective.
There are any number of perfectly good reasons to be concerned over the leasing of land for oil or gas drilling, but to voice a complaint effectively, there are some common sense considerations:
1) Do your homework so you know what you are talking about. The problem with the city’s analysis is that it is infinitely more likely that gallons of the fracking fluid will mess up some rural site, ruining that land and maybe the water for local farmers (who don’t seem worried enough about this and should know better — it has happened before). Even in a worst case scenario, only the most miniscule amount of the fluids will make it into the watershed, and then be diluted by trillions of gallons of water before getting to the City. Ironically, the environmental groups that got up afterwards to give public comments made more sense. Their objections very sensibly focused on the horrendous mess of a plan the state government has offered in its haste to cash in on the Marcellus craze. Some of its allowances include drilling and using explosive technology within 1000 feet of century-old water tunnels. Anyone with a brain has to ask: Really? Is this for real? The plan is badly thought-out and needs to be re-done with more sensible regulations, protections, oversight and back-up plans. New Yorkers might be comforted by the knowledge that because of competent regulation and oversight, the City of Fort Worth has allowed shale oil drilling and hydrofracking in hundreds of wells within city limits for years without contamination of the city’s water — although there have been problems in the less regulated rural areas. In Mr. DeChristopher’s case, he should have understood the whole situation even a little, before reacting on emotional impulse. Any drilling takes years to bring to fruition and there are many other means, especially legal, to protest or halt the sale of the leases.
2) Focus on the real problem. The marginal information used by all the New York politicians must have come from some external press release because it was so universally parroted and so completely unrelated to the very real dangers that can occur from poor drilling regulation, oversight and drilling. These include the disposal of the “salty” waste water that comes with drilling and the subsequent extraction (much worse and in much greater volume that hydro-fracturing fluids), the preventable careless overuse of local water supplies to drill and frack (a million gallons per well – which can be recycled if the companies are pushed), and the lack of adequate oversight or emergency and clean-up plans. Surely Mr. DeChristopher is not (and was not) the only one extremely concerned about the wholesale land sale by the Bush administration, its lamentable environmental record, and excessively cozy arrangements with energy companies. Mr. DeChristopher might have worked to rally people of the West, who have vastly inadequate legal, regulatory, and environmental protections and sought legal challenges. Plenty of people in Western states are working on the same issue: he ahd a ready-made constituency.
3) Understand the entire picture. No matter how New Yorkers City demands a moratorium on leasing upstate, it will not protect the water supply in total, because Pennsylvania also shares the watershed and is unaffected by any New York regulations.
4) Be honest about why you’re doing it. Is it concern about the environment or a distrust and dislike of oil or gas companies? Is it water protection or is it you don’t want your bucolic country retreat less bucolic? In short, are you representing your own interest or a genuine public one? Nothing wrong with self interest — but any argument is strengthened if you are coming from a legitimate place, and self interest is quite often as legitimate as anything else. And honesty usually makes for a better solution.
4) The solution is public and legal, hire a specialist, and expect the fight will cost money and take time. Both Mr. DeChristopher and the City protesters are right to be concerned — the problem is that each acted in a way that would have been better for the other scenario — Mr. DeChristopher in a public fight using a legal or state challenge, the city people in offering to buy the most risky sites. Fortunately for the people in Western states, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has begun to smell a rat in how oil and gas leases were distributed under the last administration. At the end of last month, he resumed shale oil leasing in the West with dramatic curtailments of the previous leases.
Not all gas leasing can or should be stopped. Energy is essential for the country too and the overwhelming majority of gas wells have not been damaging to people or the environment in any meaningful way. (Leaving global warming out of the immediate equation.) But oversight is critical.
The best ways to challenge leasing for oil and gas is to get all the information, figure out the realistic costs and benefits and dangers, and weigh the best legal and economic options. Certainly the man who spoke up for the local people of upstate New York’s Sullivan County made sense. He had requested a state list of the previous accidents and problems from drilling, demanded that protections and environmental considerations be put in place first, and that New York State regulations be re-thought and re-written. He had a worthwhile point.
