Fracking still poses risk to New Yorkers – Zoom meeting March 20

To the Editor:

It was December of 2014. I was having lunch with friends. Suddenly one interrupted, aimed her phone at us and whispered “New York just banned fracking!” I had to restrain myself from jumping up, banging on a glass with my spoon and shouting the same. When you’ve fought 7 years to stop something that seriously harms people and the planet and you win, it’s cause for celebration.

However, since it was an executive order by then-Governor Cuomo that stopped the fracking, another executive order by another governor later could override it. So in 2021 a state law was passed to make the ban permanent.

Then why is the subject of fracking surfacing again? Because a company known as Southern Tier Solutions wants to use pressurized carbon dioxide to frack shale in order to extract gas, but the ban already in place only applies to fracking with water.

Shockingly, many landowners in Chemung, Tioga and Broome counties have already signed leases allowing drilling on their property. Surely they don’t know the dangers. One is that water in contact with pressurized CO2 becomes caustic and can destroy what it touches via chemical reactions. Another is that toxic air from pressurized CO2 leaking from improperly capped former wells or from pipelines during transportation acidifies our lungs. That happened in Satartia, Mississippi, in 2020 when a pipeline explosion caused immobilization of vehicles in the area from lack of oxygen and 45 people developing sudden, serious lung problems requiring hospitalization.

On Wednesday, March 20 at 7 pm.. the League of Women Voters of Tompkins County is sponsoring a zoom meeting on “Fracking with CO2: Examining the Plan for the Southern Tier.” For registration and zoom link go to lwvtompkins.org. Then call your New York State Senator requesting support for A8866/S8357 which would ban CO2 fracking in New York, as the NYS Assembly has just done. Finally, ask Governor Hochul (518-474-8390)  to do the same.

Susan Multer

Town of Ithaca