Our message is clear, our water should be

Personal and Property Values in the Countryside and in the Fracking Zones

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

There is an important point here which is easily overlooked.  The value of property (or friends or anything you like) is not the same as a corporation values it. What a jury of peers does is to value property according to community values – the value as the neighbors understand it, not how the aggressor sees it!

What the Elys and the Huberts have done is a great thing for all of us – they refused the minimal value offered by the corporation to their neighbors and took the risk of going to court.  This showed publically how the neighborhood valued their property, its singular and personal value. (Reference is to the Dimock jury award of $4.2 million described by FrackCheckWV.net yesterday.)

You think my wife isn’t worth more to me than she would be worth on the open market?  She is 79, grey and somewhat bent, but we get along.  I don’t want to adapt to another, and I’d like to keep her around.  It’s the same with my farm – I’ve been here for 52 years, I know about it’s past back to the ones who got the land grants, I know what it can do, and I remember a lifetime of what has gone on here.  I have heirs who are interested in working it.  Of course it is worth more to me than to a stranger.

What if someone comes along and takes it for his profit.  (Rest assured, he makes his effort for profit, not for the public good, otherwise it would be cheaper for the public by the amount of his profit.)  Corporations are notorious for their single value, one of the huge ways they are not “persons.”  Remember Rex Tillson and the water tower?  Rex is CEO of Exxon and when they put up a water tower in his sight, he joined the suit to have it removed.  See here.

Almost all personal property is worth more because people don’t use it just for profit.   If the compensation is the single value of  ”market worth,”  people get cheated.

There is an element of class warfare in fracking.  Few people who aspire to become rich by investment are genuinely democratic (small d, of course).  Probably even less who jump into the hassle of making big incomes.  Their values and ours don’t match.   Laura Legere of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette records this revealing claim about the Eley-Hubert lawyer: ” Cabot’s attorney Jeremy Mercer described it as a calculated effort “to throw skunks into the jury box.”

Class warfare indeed.  Who would be interested in anything but making money?  Should enjoying life, appreciating the people around you and preserving the good world around us be considered worthwhile values?

Should we preserve and protect the rights that go with our private property, and say together “no eminent domain for corporate gain.”

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WV Marcellus Drilling Operation

Fracking fluids contain many toxic chemicals – and that’s not the worst of it

From an Article by Lynne Peeples Environment and Public Health Reporter, The Huffington Post, January 6, 2015

Arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde, lead and mercury are among more than 200 toxins found in fracking fluids and wastewater that may pose serious risks to reproductive and developmental health, according to a paper published on Wednesday (January 6, 2016).

And that list may just be just the tip of the iceberg, said Nicole Deziel, an environmental health expert at the Yale School of Public Health and senior author of the new study.

Many more chemicals known to be used in fracking could pose similar risks, yet remain unstudied, Deziel said. Other substances involved in oil and natural gas production remain undisclosed by fracking companies.

In their study, Deziel and her team investigated more than 1,000 chemicals used in and created by the controversial drilling process, which shoots a mix of pressurized water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to unlock hydrocarbon reserves. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency used the same list in its assessment of the available science, which found no evidence that fracking has led to widespread, systemic contamination of drinking water.

For most of the chemicals, insufficient information thwarted the researchers’ efforts to determine potential toxicity.

“That’s not really surprising,” said Deziel. “There are thousands of chemicals in commerce that people are routinely exposed to and for which we have limited data.” (Hence, the major push to overhaul the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which environmentalists argue doesn’t give the EPA enough authority to study and regulate chemicals.)

Of the 240 chemicals for which the Yale team did have adequate data, they found that 157 were associated with some kind of reproductive or developmental problem, such as adverse birth outcomes, derailed brain development or infertility.

And, of course, these health concerns come in addition to worries over air pollution, noise, greenhouse gas emissions and even earthquakes, which have also been linked to fracking.

The fracking industry was quick to note that the study doesn’t prove a link to any such health risks.

“The real question is whether people are actually being exposed to those chemicals at concentrations that would be harmful. There is nothing in this study that suggests that is occurring,” Steve Everley, senior adviser for Energy in Depth, the oil and gas industry’s education and public outreach arm, told HuffPost in an email.

It’s a point that Deziel acknowledged, while again lamenting the significant gaps in understanding the science of fracking and its potential consequences. Some previous research does, however, suggest that even tiny doses of chemicals released during phases of oil and natural gas production could pose serious health risks – especially to developing fetuses, babies and young children.

Andrea Gore, an expert in hormone disruption at The University of Texas at Austin, co-authored a scientific statement in September that underscored that point. Combine these chemicals — just as fracking fluid and wastewater naturally does — and the risks may become more unpredictable and worrisome, according to the statement from the Endocrine Society, a professional medical organization.

Gore praised the new paper. “This was a good first step to identify some chemicals that give cause for concern, and to draw attention to the lack of knowledge about hundreds of chemicals getting into the environment, and from there, into our water sources,” said Gore, who was not involved in the study.

Zacariah Hildenbrand, a researcher with Inform Environmental, an environmental consulting group, co-authored a separate paper published this week that he said builds on findings from his group and others that fracking chemicals can make their way into the water. While simply living close to a gas or oil well doesn’t mean a person faces contamination, living in an area with a high density of wells could indeed raise that risk, he said.

“We found a number of things that shouldn’t be in the water,” said Hildrenbrand.

“This research needs to be done. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important issues in terms of climate science,” Hildrenbrand added. “We’re looking at shale energy as a kind of bridge towards more renewable sources, so it’s best for us to understand what the risks are.”

See also the short video in the Huff Post article here.

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W.Va. shale fields fertile ground for nuisance lawsuits