Banning methane mining.

• Author: Jereski, Robert

In late 2009, environmental justice activists in New York State began to build a very large grassroots movement and an impressive coalition of over 70 groups calling for a ban on a particularly destructive method of methane mining called horizontal hydrofracking or 'Tracking." Fracking is a water- and energy-intensive form of drilling for "natural gas" (a euphemism for methane by an industry which has tried to sell the public on "clean burning natural gas") and is used to force nearly impermeable geological formations like tight sands and shales to yield methane gas trapped in tiny pores. Developed by Halliburton and used extensively throughout the country west of the Appalachian Trail, fracking was unknown to all except for the most ardent environmentalists in New York. The movement for a ban on horizontal hydrofracking in New York State is one of the largest (if not the largest) campaigns in that state responding to the threat of this relatively new fossil fuel extraction method.

In 2008, a shale formation stretching from New York State through Pennsylvania, part of Ohio, all the way to Tennessee began to be mentioned outside of circles of gas industry speculators. New Yorkers began to hear more about "natural gas" in general as the mainstream media began promoting the importance of gas and as multibillionaire energy investor, T. Boone Pickens, began promoting the use of methane gas. As the new Congress began secretly shaping legislation ostensibly to address the threat of catastrophic climate change, the media became a vehicle for various hydrocarbon industries (coal, gas, oil) to posture, schmooze and tout their particular form of fossil fuel to the public and hopefully receive a fat piece of what were to become the pork-laden "climate" bills of Representatives Waxman and Markey and Senators Kerry, Lieberman, Graham and Boxer. The Marcellus Shale, where exploratory wells had been drilled in 2004, saw a rapid expansion of new drilling operations from that point on, as the media described the multi-state deposit of gas locked in shale rocks as an exciting new "play."

But horizontal hydraulic fracturing had already been underway for a few years across the country--in the Barnett shale in Texas, the Fayetteville and Haynesville shales in Louisiana, and tight sands and shale in Wyoming, Illinois, Colorado and elsewhere. And stories in local papers, published on the internet, and word of mouth revealed how communities in those states had faced massive water withdrawals, contaminated waterways and wells, toxic spills, ozone levels requiring people to stay indoors, destroyed roadways, large-scale wilderness destruction, and, over the last few years, the emergence of illnesses, including rare brain cancers.

As more New Yorkers began to learn about the experience of Americans in the South, the Great Plains, and the Rockies, many came to the realization that the mining process Halliburton had developed, which was being presented as a means of obtaining "clean energy," economic revitalization, and addressing climate change, was in fact completely unsustainable and had to be stopped. Those New Yorkers became activists fighting a media-savvy, well-connected fossil fuel industry for their lives, their...