Today in Traverse City, and tomorrow in Gaylord, Ban Michigan Fracking is hosting guests Jessica Ernst, of Alberta, Canada, and Kevin Heatley, of Pennsylvania, in presentations about their experiences in places in the world that are heavily fracked and facing devastating consequences.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Presentations at 7:00 p.m.
Join us!
Ban Michigan Fracking’s aim is to ban fracking statewide. When we realized that the entire Lower Peninsula of Michigan is now targeted to be fracked, members of Ban Michigan Fracking and others formed a Ballot Question Committee, a political entity whose sole purpose is to collect signatures and put a ballot question on the November ballot: A proposed amendment to the state constitution to ban fracking.
The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan launched its campaign this week! (See CBFM press release 5.14.2012, below). The Committee needs to collect 322,609 valid signatures by July 9.
See: www.LetsBanFracking.org to find a coordinator or event near you, to sign a petition or circulate petitions.
The petition, which received approval from the Michigan Board of State Canvassers in April, can ONLY be signed in person, on hard copies provided by the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan. There are no downloadable copies, or xeroxes. Michigan registered voters only.
Please note that Ban Michigan Fracking’s online petition to oppose the frack reform bills is a completely different petition.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan
May 14, 2012
CONTACT:
LuAnne Kozma, Campaign Director, 231-944-8750luanne@letsbanfracking.org
Maryann Lesert, maryann@letsbanfracking.org
Ellis Boal, ellis@letsbanfracking.org
Citizen-led Ballot Initiative To Ban Fracking in Michigan Begins
CHARLEVOIX, MICH. – A citizen-led ballot initiative to amend the Michigan state constitution to ban horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, statewide began this week. The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, a ballot question committee, received approval of its petition from the Board of State Canvassers. The proposed amendment would also ban the storage of wastes from horizontal hydraulic fracturing, preventing Michigan from becoming a frack wasteland. Michigan has over 1,000 injection wells and over 12,000 conventional gas and oil wells that could be converted for that purpose. The campaign website is: http://letsbanfracking.org/.
Michigan is the only state in the nation where citizens are attempting to ban fracking by amendment to a state constitution. Vermont’s legislature passed a ban on fracking on May 4 and with the governor’s approval, became the first state to ban fracking.
The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan is required to submit 322,609 valid signatures from Michigan voters by July 9 to the Bureau of Elections, in order to place the proposed amendment on the ballot in November.
“Michigan’s constitution invites citizens to amend it,” said Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan’s campaign director LuAnne Kozma, of Novi, and a co-founder of the non-profit public interest group Ban Michigan Fracking. “We chose to form a ballot question committee and amend the constitution because we cannot count on our current elected officials to do the right thing. Proposed ‘frack reform’ bills in Lansing are only attempts to regulate and tolerate fracking and put studies in the hands of State regulators. New legislation (HB 5565) introduced last week, touted as a disclosure of frack chemicals bill, contains language that forbids physicians treating frack victims from disclosing the chemicals, even to patients. We knew we had to act to stop the toxic invasion about to devastate our state. We will not recognize Michigan in a few years, if we do not ban fracking,” said Kozma.
The citizen effort has the support of Vermont legislators Tony Klein and Peter Peltz who sponsored the Vermont ban bill. “It was clear in Vermont the dangers of fracking to our natural resources. In Vermont our natural resources are our number one priority, so it was not a difficult thing to prohibit fracking forever. It passed overwhelmingly,” said Klein. “We encourage all states, when they have the chance to do so, to ban this dangerous technique.”
New York ban groups also praised the amendment to ban fracking in Michigan. Maura Stephens, a cofounder of the Coalition to Protect New York and other grassroots groups, has been working on fracking issues for five years and will soon publish a book on the subject. “Only massive public resistance to fracking will stop the horrific industrialization of our beautiful states,” Stephens said. “This truly is a matter of life and death for your way of life.”
Earlier this month, a Michigan House of Representatives Natural Gas Subcommittee report recommended that the State lease all of its mineral rights, asserting Michigan’s “natural gas renaissance is upon us.”
The State auctioned off mineral rights in 23 Michigan counties on May 8 in Lansing, including the rights under Yankee Springs State Recreation Area (a state park) in Barry County and highly populated areas in Oakland County. Residents attempting to save their communities attended the auction, registered as bidders and tried, but failed, to purchase the mineral rights to the areas around Yankee Springs.
The entire Lower Peninsula now stands to be fracked. Devon Energy is looking at the A-1 carbonate layers in Gladwin County along with other areas in the middle of the state. Encana is drilling the Utica-Collingwood shale in state forests, with several operations in progress and more pending. Densely populated areas such as Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Jackson– communities historically not affected by oil/gas drilling within their borders–are now facing the threat.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, which issues frack permits and at the same time, depends on revenue from the production of gas and oil, continues to publicly confuse the facts, claiming that hydraulic fracturing has been done for over 60 years, while not always informing the public that horizontal hydraulic fracturing is a new, as of 2002, experimental process, often referred to as a marriage of technologies between hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
To volunteer to circulate or sign petitions, see: http://LetsBanFracking.org
The petition reads: A proposal to amend the Constitution by adding a new Section 28 to Article I to read as follows:
“To insure the health, safety, and general welfare of the people, no person, corporation, or other entity shall use horizontal hydraulic fracturing in the State. “Horizontal hydraulic fracturing” is defined as the technique of expanding or creating rock fractures leading from directional wellbores, by injecting substances including but not limited to water, fluids, chemicals, and proppants, under pressure, into or under the rock, for purposes of exploration, drilling, completion, or production of oil or natural gas. No person, corporation, or other entity shall accept, dispose of, store, or process, anywhere in the State, any flowback, residual fluids, or drill cuttings used or produced in horizontal hydraulic fracturing.”
Links:
Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan
Ban Michigan Fracking
Michigan House Bill 5565 (Physicians gag-order bill) http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(v5fzuf2quwfkkeb0ik05v145))/mileg.aspx?page=BillStatus&objectname=2012-HB-5565
Michigan Board of State Canvassers draft minutes to April 26, 2012 meeting
http://www.mi.gov/documents/sos/4-26-12_DRAFT_Minutes_383873_7.pdf
Michigan House of Representatives Natural Gas Subcommittee Report, April 2012
http://gophouse.com/
The Michigan DEQ and gas industry are in full spin mode, repeating the industry’s lies about horizontal fracking –the insidious, massive industrialization that is about to invade Michigan–that have been sold to people around the country. Unless we can stop it.
Setting the Record Straight
Dr. Chris Grobbel, a scientist who once worked for the DEQ and now in private consulting on contamination cases, gave a talk recently in the Irish Hills in which he debunks the entire DEQ fairy tale of their past “clean record.” See Grobbel’s power point presentation Environmental Risks of Michigan Oil and Natural Gas Development. (Used with permission)
And a new documentary film is in the works that looks promising: “Unearthed: The Fracking Facade.” You will recognize the Michigan DEQ storyline in it.
See the 24-minute trailer:
It has become clear in the last few weeks that Michigan’s entire Lower Peninsula is targeted for fracking with horizontal hydraulic fracturing. This Tuesday, May 8, the State of Michigan is auctioning off more mineral rights across the state in 23 counties for fracking.
Members of Ban Michigan Fracking created Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, a ballot question committee, to collect signatures on petitions to put a ban on fracking on the ballot in the November election.
WHAT YOU CAN DO THIS WEEK
May 7-8: Three Great Ways to Protest the May 8 Auction of State Lands for Oil & Gas Leasing
On May 8 the MI DNR will auction mineral rights for oil & gas leasing to 109,000 acres of state (public) land – including nearly all of the Yankee Springs Recreation Area (23,400 acres in Barry County) and portions of the Lake Orion Recreation Area in Oakland County. Land in 23 Counties is being offered.
May 7: Occupy the MI DNR Call-In Day – May 7 through May 8
Event Link:http://www.facebook.com/events/389401541103922/
May 7: Kalamazoo – Mineral Rights Protest March – 4:00pm
Event Link:http://www.facebook.com/events/362272633820503/
May 8: Lansing – Auction Protest & Rally for “Let’s Ban Fracking” MI Ballot Initiative
Event Link:http://www.facebook.com/events/118451664957895/?context=create
Location: Constitution Hall, 525 West Allegan, Lansing, MI
Time: Gather at 7:30am or after – Bring Ban Fracking / Save Public Land signs
Auction: Bidders Register at 8:00 am / Auction Begins at 9:00am
Parking: Garages at the building (Allegan and Pine) & Allegan and Capitol.
“Let’s Ban Fracking” Petitions for a Ballot Initiative to Ban Fracking in Michigan will be on site May 8.
Make sure you sign the just-launched petition.
MI DNR Bid Documents – Map and Parking Directions in this PDF:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dnr/Catalog_381830_7.pdf
MI DNR Auction Page – Check out the County Maps of Land Being Auctioned:
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10368_11800-169044–,00.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 29, 2012
Ban Michigan Fracking asks Michigan DEQ to treat frack wells as injection wells
A frack well by Devon in Gladwin County and warning sign at the gate about the risk of deadly Hydrogen Sulfide gas leaks. Photo by LuAnne Kozma.
Charlevoix–On April 27, 2012, Ban Michigan Fracking, together with Deanna Hughes and Heather Schiele, filed a request for a declaratory ruling with Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) director Dan Wyant, asking the agency to treat frack wells statewide as injection wells, and to suspend issuing frack permits while it decides the petition.
The petition notes the gas industry agrees a frack well is an injection well, so the DEQ should too.
A ruling would mean applicants for frack wells would have to provide data, among other things, about the chemical analysis of the types of fluids to be injected. The data would have to be provided at the time of the application so nearby landowners can do efficient baseline water testing before drilling commences.
Hughes and Schiele live in Sherman Township, Gladwin County, where Devon Energy is about to start horizontal fracking in the A-1 Carbonate layer, a bit shallower than Utica-Collingwood.
Landowners and residents nearby to other frack wells are welcome to join the request.
Copies of this and additional case documents are on the website of Ban Michigan Fracking, http://banmichiganfracking.org .
# # #
Documents:
Encana's existing well in Pere Marquette State Forest in Excelsior Township, Kalkaska County, where more horizontal frack wells are planned. Photo by LuAnne Kozma.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) announced on April 8 that EnCana and Gas USA (a Canadian company) had applied for six new wells on state-owned forest land in Kalkaska and Cheboygan Counties. A seventh well was applied for a week later. All seven target the Utica-Collingwood shale formations, though they are described as oil wells not gas wells. Two in Kalkaska County — on the line between Oliver and Excelsior Townships — are over three miles deep, and separated on the surface by 50 feet. Devon, another major energy company, filed applications for permits to drill in the Utica-Collingwood shale in Richfield Township in Roscommon County on state land.
Application number/well name for Devon’s new applications:
A note on the announcement indicates the two deep ones would be the second and third wells in a DEQ-granted 1280-acre spacing exemption. DEQ application forms do not require that oil-gas applicants disclose whether they intend to frack.
As part of the completion process, frack well operators in Michigan typically inject 5 million gallons of water, chemicals, and sand down the hole. However the DEQ does not consider frack wells as “injection wells.” It grants permits to frackers without requiring them to follow injection well rules — such as disclosure of the maximum rate, specific gravity, and pressures of the injection, chemical analysis of the injectate, and information showing the job will not initiate fractures through overlying strata. It has granted permits where proposed wells failed Michigan’s water withdrawal assessment tool even though waivers given after DNR site visits specify no facts or reasoning.
Fracking Michigan’s State Forests
Horizontal fracking in Michigan’s pristine state forests is bad news. Even on private land, the industry-funded DEQ cannot be trusted to assure the health, safety, and welfare of our citizens. We need to stop the Encana and Devon wells right now — not merely postpone them in a moratorium.
Why We Need to Ban Fracking
See why Ban Michigan Fracking is opposed to the “frack reform” legislation that would rely on a moratorium tied to a DEQ-run frack panel and a gas industry-funded frack study.
The Truth and Consequences of Fracking
Encana’s contamination of Alberta, Canada and fracking’s devastating effects on forest are the topics of Ban Michigan Fracking’s forums on May 18 in Traverse City and May 19 in Gaylord.
Come hear experts Jessica Ernst and Kevin Heatley speak of their efforts battling Encana in Alberta, and dealing with forest fragmentation and ruination in Pennsylvania.
The events are co-sponsored by Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination (www.caccmi.org).
Excelsior frack well in Michigan's Pere Marquette State Forest in Kalkaska County. Photo by Maryann Lesert.
By Maryann Lesert
An informational meeting on Oil & Gas Leasing hosted by the MSU Extension Office and the Michigan Farm Bureau on Monday, March 26 at the Alpine Township offices was billed as an “Oil and Gas Leasing and Michigan Oil and Gas Industry Educational Meeting.” According to MSU’s website, the meeting would cover: “the Department of Environmental Quality’s role in regulating the Michigan oil and gas industry, understanding oil and gas leases, and legal issues associated with oil and gas leases.” Although the agenda also listed “questions and answers,” neither the meetings’ organizers nor most of the residents present seemed willing to allow time for questions about hydraulic fracturing and its potential environmental impacts. In fact, when I asked DEQ geologist Mike Shelton about recent environmental studies and government reports, MSU Extension Educator Curtis Talley Jr., leading the leasing portion of the program, closed the Q & A with several hands still in the air, saying “There will be no more questions.”
The tone of the March 26 Alpine Township meeting was decidedly different than another recent meeting that took place across the state. On March 8, responding to public pressure, State Representatives Mike Shirkey (R-Clark Lake) and Earl Poleski (R-Jackson) hosted a public comment session in Brooklyn where residents of southeast Michigan’s Jackson and Lenawee counties have moved beyond the leasing stage and are now experiencing the full rush of trucks, drill rigs, gas flares, and processing facilities that go along with gas and oil drilling. The 600 residents of the rolling hills and wetlands of Brooklyn’s Irish Hills who attended the meeting voiced a myriad of environmental concerns. Many were clearly worried about West Bay Exploration’s request for permits for two deep injection wells in the area, where contaminated waste water (“brine” as the industry likes to call it) would be injected into deep wells drilled below ground and surface waters. At the Brooklyn meeting, water use and contamination were on a lot of people’s minds.
"Tank farm" in the Irish Hills near Brooklyn, Michigan, 2012. Photo by LuAnne Kozma.
I arrived at the Alpine Township hall a bit late but still in the early stages of DEQ geologist Mike Shelton’s presentation on hydraulic fracturing. Unlike what residents of the Irish Hills experienced, with West Bay Exploration (the Traverse City firm drilling under Brooklyn’s water shed and lakes) insisting that “We don’t frack,” Shelton’s Alpine presentation made it clear that the landmen (industry term) visiting landowners in this area were seeking mineral rights leases meant for deep horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
Shelton used slides to depict the process, showing well construction beginning with a vertical drilling, typically 5,000-10,000 feet deep to get to the shale rock layer. He then explained how advances in drilling allow contractors to turn and drill horizontally for another mile or so in one or more directions. He noted that large volumes of water, chemicals, and sand are pumped deep into these wells at high pressure, sometimes up to 11,000-psi, causing the shale rock to crack open or fracture in several places. The gas in the rock then flows out of the shale and into the well as a liquid. Water and chemicals shot into the well also come back up as what the industry calls “brine” or “flowback” or “produced water.” This waste water must then be disposed of in deep injection wells because it contains chemicals, and DEQ regulations say that this “water” can’t be disposed of above ground.
A few audience members asked questions about how gas and oil contractors decide where to place a well on the property, and what types of wells might be constructed. Shelton showed a slide of the tall drill rig that comes in for a month or more when the well is being actively fracked. He also showed an aerial slide of a typical processing facility with an open fresh water pit and a second pit where drill cuttings and mud are dumped and dried out for later burial or disposal. But he didn’t mention that these muds contain toxins brought to the surface by fracking. Instead, he called attention to the amount of equipment and trucks that can be on site during the process, which is common at informational meetings. Presenters often address truck traffic, aesthetics, and road construction openly with the public.
Raisin River wetland in the Irish Hills. Photo by Maryann Lesert.
The geologist’s comments downplayed chemical concentrations and toxicity. He emphasized that “out of the large volumes of water used” which he admitted could be millions of gallons per well, “out of all the fluid, about 98 to 99 % of it is water and there’s only a small percentage of chemicals.” He described chemicals used as “things like detergents, everyday chemicals, but also things you wouldn’t want in your drinking water.” He spoke of regulations that require contractors to have “MSDS [Material Safety Data] sheets on site,” but neglected to say that for undisclosed chemicals – additives that frackers are allowed to keep secret – there are no safety sheets on site.
At one point the DEQ geologist said, “There is no history of contamination or spills in Michigan.” But according to another DEQ official’s statements during the March 8 meeting in Brooklyn and a follow-up article by Detroit Free Press environmental reporter Tina Lam, this claim of zero contamination is not true. One of the most recent accidents made public occurred on Dec. 24 of 2011 when hydrogen sulfide (industry term = sour gas) leaked for 4-6 hours from a Crawford County injection well, sending a cloud of the toxic gas fuming all the way to Canada. [Ban Michigan Fracking also reported on it in December 2011].
One woman at the Alpine meeting asked, “Who makes sure the wells are properly capped?” referencing the process of closing a well or safely sealing a well head. “That’s where a lot of these problems have come from. Do you make sure they do this right?”
“Do I?” Shelton responded.
Natural gas flared off on an oil well site in the Irish Hills. Photo by LuAnne Kozma.
“Yes,” she said. “Do you or does someone from the DEQ go out there and supervise? How often are you out there?”
Shelton admitted that no, neither he nor other DEQ representatives have time to “sit at the well sites.” Contractors are required to cap each well according to regulations, he said, while admitting that “accidents happen” and “there have been some problems.”
Another woman followed with, “You said that the wells are safe,” referring back to Shelton’s claim of no contamination in Michigan. “But then you just said that well caps have cracked.”
And to that Shelton said, “Now don’t twist my words.”
When a question or two came up about water use, he mentioned that contractors drill a water well on site, drawing water from the landowner’s property, but downplayed concerns about water levels, saying that the DEQ requires contractors to report water usage. Report, yes, but not limit. In May of 2011, in a document the DEQ likes to tout as strengthening water regulations, the Office of Oil, Gas, and Minerals exempted the oil and gas industry from the 100,000 gallons-per-day withdrawal limit that Great Lakes water activists had worked toward for years.
“But where does that water come from?” the woman who asked about well capping said. “Doesn’t that have an effect on wells or aquifers?”
An Excelsior well site in Kalkaska County. Photo by Maryann Lesert.
Curtis Talley, MSU Extension Educator who had been standing aside, stepped to the front to say “One or two more questions.”
So I asked: “Are we going to get a chance to discuss some of the environmental concerns and exemptions? Because there are three main questions I have. You’ve talked about chemicals used in fracking, but you haven’t mentioned (and here I held up a printed copy of the report) our own US government report called ‘Chemicals Used in Hydraulic Fracturing’ which lists 29 known toxins, carcinogens, and neurologically damaging chemicals.” “And as far as regulations go, can we talk about how the US Congress, in a 2005 energy bill, made the oil and gas industry exempt from the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and all sorts of environmental regulations?” [See chart on these exemptions from NY Times]
“And three, there are other states that are a year or two ahead of us in the fracking process, like Pennsylvania and New York, and a Duke University study from the Marcellus Shale shows that methane can migrate up from these wells and into drinking water. Can you discuss how methane gets into nearby water and wells?”
Several loud male voices shouted over my last few words: “This is Michigan!” “Sit down!” and “Next Question!”
Shelton attempted to answer my questions. There had been studies that showed some concern, he said, but warned that we have to be careful with studies from other areas, because Michigan is different. But before he could formulate responses to gas and oil industry exemptions, or known toxins present in fracking fluids, Curtis Talley closed the question and answer period, saying, “We can answer questions, but not questions about anyone’s agenda.”
An Irish Hills wooded wetland. Photo by Maryann Lesert.
Shelton, from the Kalamazoo DEQ office, walked to the back of the room to discuss these questions privately with me as Talley took the floor. I expressed concern that his presentation came across as pro-leasing, and we discussed studies and risks at length. What about toxins and carcinogens that are buried in on-site pits? Or metals and salts and radioactive elements that come up in the “brine” that the industry likes to call “water”? What about Duke University’s finding that drinking water wells near fracking sites have 17 times higher concentrations of methane than samples more distant? But the public, of course, was not privy to our one-on-one discussion of broad-scale environmental concerns. And as soon as Shelton and I separated, three men from the audience accompanied the young geologist into the township’s backroom kitchen, where they remained behind its closed door for twenty minutes.
The rest of the meeting flowed smoothly, with Talley presenting a landowner’s right to lease mineral rights as a “blessing” (his word, not mine). “It’s a blessing to own mineral rights and to have this opportunity,” he said.
Delivered in a comparative context – making note of how some landowners do not own the mineral rights for their property and therefore may not have the opportunity to accept or reject mining operations -
the comment might have been informative and neutral. But the “blessing” as presented was monetary: “Let’s get this straight,” Talley said. “A lot of money is at stake here.”
Drill rig going up in the Irish Hills, March 2012. Photo by Maryann Lesert.
He mentioned, two or three times during his presentation, that whether or not to sign a lease is up to the landowner, noting that “it isn’t fair to the gas and oil companies” to sign a lease when a landowner isn’t supportive of drilling. His “Psychology of Leasing” slide encouraged landowners to be firm in negotiating with experienced landmen. Be “price makers, not price takers.” He used a slide from a Colorado site that had barely discernible well pipes rising like tall grasses against a broad landscape and said, “There are 33 wells on this site.” I pictured the huge drill rigs I’d seen going up in the Irish Hills just a few weeks before, and the processing sites with tanks upon tanks and flaring fires.
When he got to an area of landowner rights that had been particularly contentious at the Brooklyn meeting, he described Michigan’s compulsory pooling law as “not that bad.”
During the March 8 meeting, Hal Fitch, DEQ Assistant Supervisor of Wells, whose office approves oil and gas drilling permits, explained Michigan’s compulsory pooling law like so: A well site requires 40 acres. If landowners who own 38 of the acres sign a lease, but a landowner owning the remaining 2 acres refuses to sign a lease, the state (DEQ) can put the landowner into a “pool” for the purposes of drilling on the site.
At the Irish Hills meeting, one man repeatedly asked Fitch for clarification: “If I choose not to sign the land lease or whatever, you can force me into it, and not only are you going to pay me slight royalty, half of what my lot is worth, but force me to pay for the development of the well that I don’t want on my land?”
And Fitch responded: ”Nobody is forced to pay anything. . . I guess we could just leave you out of the production, in which case, the well’s going to be drilled anyway, but you’re just not going to get your share of the production of it.”
Talley illustrated his “not so bad” pooling judgment with a brief story. “In fact, at the last meeting, we had an owner who was pooled stand up and say compulsory pooling worked out really well.”
An Irish Hills wetland next to a drilling rig, March 2012. Photo by Maryann Lesert.
A third presenter, Trent C. Hilding, Esq., answered questions about the legalities of negotiating leases. He advised audience members to make sure that their leases included a ‘no processing facilities’ stipulation. When an older man who had come over to thank me for bringing up environmental questions asked whether a landowner could add language to a lease to make the company responsible for environmental contamination and cleanup, Hilding answered yes, landowners could add contamination terms.
I wanted to question whether such terms could be enforced with the gas and oil industry exempted from practically every environmental regulation we have at federal and state levels, but the meeting was adjourned before I got the chance.
For one man in the audience, sixty-plus minutes of leasing talk were not enough to cool the hostility over my environmentally motivated questions. As people filed out of the room, the man strode quickly up to me and stood way too close for the average American’s space bubble, saying loudly: “How many acres do you have to lease?”
I responded, “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”
“How many acres do you have to lease?” he said, more loudly.
“I’m still not sure what that has to do with anything,” I said.
His anger was jarring, though not jarring enough to offset the comments of the one older man who had made it a point to approach me and say, “Thank you for bringing up those important questions.”
For that man, and for others who expect the Department of Environmental Quality to put the long-term health of our ecosystems and communities before short-term profits, I left the meeting wondering, will the public get the information it needs to understand what fracking really looks and smells and sounds like? How can the public assess fracking’s risks when it comes to contaminating our communities – potentially forever?
On the materials table, residents were offered paper copies of a sample lease agreement and Talley’s power point presentation, but there was no information on environmental impacts. The only take-away on fracking was a four-color brochure put out by the Michigan Oil and Gas Producers Education Foundation whose mission it is to make materials available “for use by members of the petroleum, energy and allied industries.”
What about the people in Alpine Township and around the state of Michigan who are not land owners? How will the larger public come to understand that the landmen are coming? That the landmen are, in fact, already here?
As Talley said at the close of his presentation: “It’s [leasing is] all about controlling the land and controlling land for a long time.”
Maryann Lesert is an author and Associate Professor of English at Grand Rapids Community College, researching fracking for an environmental writing project. She belongs to Ban Michigan Fracking, (www.banmichiganfracking.org) an educational organization working toward local and statewide bans on hydraulic fracturing. This article originally appeared on the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy website on March 31, 2012.
Everyone fighting to protect our lives, the environment, our states, and our planet from the suicidal, poisionous invasion of fracking is celebrating the two wins in New York state last week declaring the Dryden and Middlefield fracking ban local ordinances legal. In two separate court opinions, judges found that the people in local communities have the power to stand up to multinational gas corporations.
Maura Stephens, of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and a co-founder of Coalition to Protect New York, writes in Yes! Magazine about the grassroots groups in Dryden and Middlefield and how they organized to pass local ban ordinances:
Fracking Bans that Can Stand
In New York, judges are standing up for communities’ rights to say no to corporate drilling.posted Feb 29, 2012
Photo by Not An Alternative.
In New York State, some 82 towns and counties have passed ordinances outlawing fracking, a natural gas drilling method known for causing severe water pollution. Another 35 have ordinances in the works. But until last week, no one knew quite what would happen when those ordinances were—inevitably—challenged by drilling companies.
Now, in a resounding win for activists, two different state Supreme Court justices have upheld fracking bans in two different New York towns.
[Read the rest of the article]
[Read a longer version of the article here]
The Dryden decision can be found here.
The Middlefield decision can be found here: Middlefield-decison
More articles about the court decisions in New York:
In Michigan
No Michigan community has passed a local ban ordinance (local law). Detroit, Ferndale and Wayne County have passed resolutions declaring support for a statewide ban and a national ban on fracking, but did not actually ban the fracking industry within its borders.
Ban Michigan Fracking is working with communities on real fracking ban ordinances and is working on a statewide ban.
Contact us about working on a local ban in your community by writing us at info at banmichiganfracking dot org
See also:
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition
Andrew Meyer, “Get the frack out of town:” Preemption Challenges to Local Fracking Bans in New York, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, Field Reports 2012.
Ban Michigan Fracking, together with Central Michigan University’s Student Environmental Alliance and MSU Greenpeace members, protested outside the Michigan Oil and Gas Association’s (MOGA’s) annual meeting in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, on February 16 while industry insiders met about fracking Michigan.
About 50 of us participated peacefully outside the meeting hotel parking lot with banners, signs, and chants as gas industry people arrived. It was a busy street corner. We raised awareness locally as cars and passersby gave us friendly honks and thumbs ups in solidarity. Except for one rather unfriendly man in a nice car and formally dressed, driving in to the evening MOGA banquet, who gave the group the finger, and several other conference-goers who, as they drove in, shook their heads in disgust.
Video of the protest:
Our inside source, one of our members, Ellis Boal, attended part of the MOGA meeting. He reports that Chris Tucker, spokesperson for the gas industry-funded front group Energy in Depth, greeted the worried group of frackers, saying “I’m from Washington DC and I’m here to help.”
Tucker is known for his work spinning the frack industry’s polluting record and its use of “counterinsurgency” tactics such as psy-ops and “astroturf energy citizens” when dealing with the community. Referring to our presence outside, speakers acknowledged to the MOGA crowd that opponents have been successful in getting their message out.
At times sarcastic and angry, Tucker complained that the word “frack,” (which arose in the industry itself), begins with an “f”, ends with a “ck” and sounds “percussive.” He wondered aloud “if the Collingwood [shale] would take off,” in Michigan, but expressed confidence that the New York DSGEIS study (Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement) would end favorably for the industry there. (See NY grassroots ban groups’ report, Cuomo’s Fracking Advisory Panel Fatally Biased, on why that would be).
Another industry PR spokesperson, Deb Muchmore, of Marketing Resource Group, told the group that MOGA worked hard to come up with their education foundation’s fracking handout. She instructed members to show “empathy” when giving it out to opponents and people new to the issue.
Note: CMU has an online exhibit about the history of the oil and gas industry in Michigan, paid for and as told by. . . the oil and gas industry.
Publicity about the protest:
Not So Fast, Natural Gas: MI Students Protest Fracking Conference WeArePowershift, 2/16/2012
Students Protest ‘Fracking’ Thursday in Mt Pleasant, CMU Life, 2/16/2012
Later that evening, in Grand Rapids, Ban Michigan Fracking showed up at a screening of the film Gasland, being shown by the Sierra Club, recently discredited for taking $26 million from the fracking industry, to promote their frack reform bills.
During a question and answer period after the film, Ban Michigan Fracking shared with the 100 attendees why we are for a ban, our petition, and our opposition to the Michigan frack reform bills that tout “safe fracking.” (See our post from Feb 6, 2012, below).
Photos by LuAnne Kozma.
By now, no one should believe the Sierra Club —or its allied partners — on the subject of fracking.
Several days ago national Sierra Club’s executive director Michael Brune finally revealed in Time magazine that the organization — one of the biggest and most well known “environmental” groups — took $26 million from gas company Chesapeake Energy’s Aubrey McClendon. The windfall was to be used for Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign — which includes heavy promotion of the gas industry. [PDF: Exclusive-how SC took money]
Without any shame, nor a mention of this heinous transgression to its members, the Sierra Club Michigan chapter over the weekend sent out an e-mail alert. In it the group aggressively pushes a package of Michigan legislation that it helped write, called the frack “reform” bills. A study of fracking that’s proposed in one of the bills, would be funded by the gas industry.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Sierra Club has not reformed.
Ban Michigan Fracking formed in 2011 in direct response to a co-opting of the ban movement by Sierra Club, Clean Water Action and others who are pushing to make fracking “safe.” Anybody who has studied fracking over the last couple years knows that it cannot be done safely. The only way to protect Michigan water, air, land and people’s health is an all-out ban on fracking. We vehemently oppose the bills and Sierra Club’s continued “safe fracking” efforts and have an online petition to defeat them. We are also working directly for a ban, learning from the successes in other communities and states.
Making a deal with the devil — framing fracking the gas industry way
While still on the gas industry dole, Sierra Club’s Brune, chairman (and former executive director) Carl Pope, and attorney David Bookbinder participated in the Critical Path Energy Summit, [or see PDF's for Critical Path Energy Summit | Aspen Science Center and Critical Path nat gas summit bios] held in Aspen, Colorado on May 6-7, 2010, along with staff and leaders of Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund. But that wasn’t just a meeting of the “Big Greens” — Chesapeake’s Aubrey McClendon and many others in the gas industry were in attendance, too.
These strange bedfellows “recognized that there is tremendous value in working together to fast track increased demand for natural gas in the power and transportation sectors.” They further agreed that “the current social discord in the shale gas fields needs a new approach to change the frame. Even with significant expenditures for advertising and public relations, the industry has not been successful in changing public opinion.”
Maybe that’s because people are starting to see beyond the propaganda about gas as a “clean, green, domestic bridge fuel to a sustainable energy future” and recognize that they themselves are being offered up as sacrificial lambs so that industry and a few top investors can get even richer.
Nauseatingly, the collaborators gushed further: “The assembled NGO, government and Industry leaders agreed that the only way to unleash the economic, social and environmental benefits of natural gas was to work much more closely together.”
The “current frame” they said, was that gas is a secretive industry, has enormous environmental impacts, puts poisons/chemicals in the ground and water, and “uses up all the water in the world.” The “new frame,” they explained, would turn the old frame “on its head” and establish a new level of trust through words and deed with “NGOs and industry standing shoulder-to-shoulder” and that “earning community trust HAS TO BE LED BY THE NGOs!” [emphasis theirs].
And what is the “new frame?” For one thing, the Critical Path Energy Summit partners had to “proactively develop Best Management Practices” working with regulators to develop optimal regulations, and move toward transparency, for example “revealing the composition of frack water, incident reports, etc.” One way they would do this is to “hire a trusted local interlocutor.” Revealing the composition of frack fluid would be “a HUGE PR victory,” they emphasized.
The con is still on
Sierra Club’s Michael Brune tries to greenwash the organization’s current position as though the corporately-compromised nonprofit has actually reformed since refusing $30 million more dollars from McClendon in 2011. [PDF: Coming Clean - The Blog of Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune Blog - Sierra Club]
However, national Sierra Club is still promoting the bottom-line goal of the Critical Path Energy Summit: Get the public to accept a type of “safe” or “green” fracking that is just regulated by “best management practices.”
Throughout 2011 and to the present, the Sierra Club in Michigan, together with Clean Water Action, continues to push for “safe fracking,” “best management practices” and gas industry-funded study of fracking.
In a Power Point presentation dated January 2011, the club states its goals are to make Michigan “require public disclosure of chemicals,” “require companies to use BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES,” [emphasis is Sierra Club’s] increase performance bonds, (another Critical Path talking point), and “reassess rules and regulations after EPA releases results of the study due out in 2012.”
By May 2011, Michigan Sierra Club and Clean Water Action teamed up to issue a press release that declared “Michigan Should Delay Before Drilling: Make Natural Gas Fracking Safe for Michigan’s Waters.” They reiterated key talking points from their industry collaboration at Critical Path, such as requiring public disclosure of chemicals, participation in the permitting process, putting into place “proper safeguards,” “proper water quality management practices onsite,” “best possible storm water control measures,” and “all solid waste from drilling . . . properly disposed of in appropriate regulated waste disposal facilities.”
Also in spring 2011, the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action and West Michigan Environmental Action Council hosted showings of the film Gasland at which they reassured audiences that Michigan will be different and avoid the horrors that fracking has wrought in other states, while calling for slightly better regulations. The three-person panels included Clean Water Action’s regulations attorney, Susan Harley, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s supervisor of wells, Hal Fitch, and a university geologist. (Recall the Critical Path’s call to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and use trusted local interlocutors.)
By November 2011, Michigan Sierra Club and Clean Water Action had helped write and introduce “frack reform” bills — one for a moratorium tied to another bill detailing a frack study to be funded by the gas industry, and a frack panel that would have a similar mandate as New York Governor Cuomo’s frack panel: to come up with regulations and “conditions on permits.” At a press conference for the bills at a frack well site in Antrim County, someone holding a sign for a ban on fracking was told by a Clean Water Action staffer to take it down to not muddle the message.
The Sierra Club’s newsletter for fall 2011 tries to mobilize members to do something about the “dangerous practice of fracking” by telling lawmakers that “you’re concerned about these problems with current laws and regulations” and then reiterates the key points of no public participation, disclosing chemicals, and using too much water. In December 2011, Michigan Sierra Club staffer Mike Berkowitz was quoted in a news article about the bills: “Right now, we believe the research points toward that it can be done safely, it just needs to be heavily regulated.”
With Sierra Club’s revelation about their blood-money from McClendon, it is reasonable to speculate that the same temptations would have faced the others, including Clean Water Action, Natural Resources Defense Council, Michigan League of Conservation Voters, Michigan Environmental Council, and West Michigan Environmental Action Council, all of whom defend fracking “if it is well regulated.”
If you care about this issue, it should be clear by now that the leaders in the movement to ban fracking are the grassroots groups that have been thwarted, undermined and undercut by pro-“safe fracking” Big Greens.
Ban Michigan Fracking takes no corporate donations. We have no lobbyists in Lansing. We have no ties with the gas industry nor with the Critical Path participants or their allies, interlocutors, or the DEQ. We stand to gain nothing by telling truth and calling it as we see it. We stand to lose everything should fracking go forward. We the grassroots must stand together to fight the industry and those in bed with it — whether they’re crooked politicians or crooked NGOs.
