Fretting Over Fracking

Friday, March 16, 2012

Page 11

SNIPPETS (Column)

Fretting Over Fracking

By MARC HAEFELE

You don’t hear much about the doings of the Delaware Basin Commission in Greater Los Angeles, for good reason. It’s headquartered in Trenton, N.J. and meets at various locations, some of them downright quaint, throughout the four-state (Delaware; New Jersey; New York and Pennsylvania) watershed of the Delaware River. Over its 51-year history it’s mostly dealt with droughts and floods and dams and canals. As well as the river’s water quality in general. Now it is confronted with something quite new.

It’s a federal panel, established by a federal compact, and nominally crewed by the governors of the four affected states. (In fact, they nearly always send delegates to hearings). The fifth member is usually a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flag-rank officer. DRBC agendas generally run as smoothly and predictably as the waters of that great river itself, flowing to the sea. But not lately. Late last year, the DRBC postponed a key vote, perhaps its most important in 20 years. It was about regulating the gas-mining process called fracking. The two Democratic governors, Jack A. Markell of Delaware and Mario Cuomo of New York, were against the process. Republican governors Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Christ Christie of New Jersey were for it. After all, natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel there is, and we need plenty more of it.

Probably frightened at leaving the swing vote to the brigadier general on the panel, the staff continued the item. The last time I looked, it still had not been voted on. Everyone at the DRBC appeared too scared to touch it. In Pennsylvania and upstate New York, this process of injecting large quantities of chemically-doped water into the ground is a widely used practice to extract trapped natural gas from under a rock layer. Some people are ecstatic at the prices they’ve been paid to allow it on their land.

Others are desolate at its alleged corrupting effects on ground water; some even say they can light their tap water on fire. The Delaware Valley opponents said they wanted more research on the subject. The proponents said, you are stalling, there has been enough research. Similarly in the Rocky Mountain and Northern Plains states, less developed and more frontier-minded than the Delaware Basin states some cheer the fracking windfall, others deplore the subsurface depredations.

And then there is fracking in California, where it seems to have been going on for a long time. But unlike in most of the other states, California fracking has reportedly taken place right in the middle of communities that sit on old hydrocarbon deposits. Like Culver City and Ventura, where its effects might be more evident than elsewhere. Yet, so important are our extractive industries that its possible hazards have been little discussed.

The Times yesterday did a good piece on the fracking local debate. So far, it reported, the industry lobby that has kept California the only major oil- state without a tax on oil extraction has been little challenged by the task of killing legislation intended to disclose what chemicals are used to frack. Let alone restrict the practice.

I wonder if we are really looking at fracking in the right perspective. For the sake of enhanced gas and oil production, are we risking pollution of Southern California’s already hazarded groundwater? This is the question that needs an answer. Energy we can and do get from elsewhere. But we’ve tapped all the outside water sources we can and are more dependent on local ground water than ever.

We don’t know the answers yet. But if it comes down to it, trading our scarce local water resources for mere mineral wealth is probably a bad bargain.

Noteworthy and Upcoming

Monday, March 19—Supreme Court of California: Chief Justice of California Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye to deliver her first “State of the Judiciary” address before a joint session of the California Legislature.

Time: 4 p.m.

Place: Assembly Chamber of the State Capitol, Sacramento California.

California, Channel the state public affairs cable network, will broadcast the address and carry a live webcast at www.calchannel.com

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Thursday, March 28—Coro Foundation: Coro’s Annual Crystal Eagle Awards Ceremony, with one of the awards going to Manatt, Phelps & Phillips partner and former Los Angeles City Charter Commission official George David Kieffer.

Time: 5:30 p.m. Registration, 7:30 p.m. Dinner.

Place: Omni Downtown Hotel, 251 E. Olive St, Los Angeles, California.