To the editor:
Governor Cuomo and the Department of Environmental Conservation will only protect the NYC and Syracuse watersheds banning them from hydrofracking, while upstate aquifers will soon be open season for gas companies. While campaigning for office Gov. Cuomo said, "All watersheds are sacrosanct." Perhaps what he meant was, "Only NYC and Syracuse watersheds are sacred"!
James Northrup, former gas industry insider, said that fracking is the equivalent of a dirty bomb going off underground and that the chemicals used in fracking would not be allowed to poison enemies in warfare, according to the Geneva Convention. Yet gas companies can pump them into the ground, risking groundwater contamination, while our own government refuses to stop them.
For the first time, Americans are asked to have industrial waste sites in our own front or back yards or at least in someone’s yard we know. Gas companies want to drill 60,000 wells in just seven counties. The problem is that many of the toxic chemicals they pump down each well pick up heavy metals and radioactive minerals from deep in the earth, regurgitating back to the surface millions of gallons of toxic brew, called flowback.
Why should we sit back and let gas corporations sabotage the Finger Lakes’ economic engine: tourism, wineries and farming. We’ll never forget the two distinquished men who bravely said they’d throw themselves in front of a toxic flowback truck before they would allow a gas company to ruin our town of Pulteney by pumping nearly a billion gallons of Pennsylvania flowback under our town. Well, our town won! See our website at www.AllFrackedUp.com.
We deserve truly clean green sustainable energy like biocrops — not corn ethanol — which would help rebuild our rural areas and strengthen the family farm along with solar, wind and hydro energy. Pull the plug on gas/oil subsidies!
Jeff and Jodi Andrysick
Gallagher Road, Pulteney
