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Concerned Citizens Ohio |
CCO is no longer a registered 501c3 organization
The members of CCO have gradually (throughout 2016 & 2017) become aware that fracking and its waste are not the only threats to our communities.
IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE LACK OF OUR DEMOCRATIC RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR COMMUNITY, CHECK OUT THE PORTAGE COMMUNITY RIGHTS GROUP WEB PAGE
Yes, we're still threatened with ground water pollution. The Class II Waste Injection wells have not gone away. Yes, we're still threatened with pipelines which leak, more "fracking," more waste injection wells, more earthquakes. But many of us have recognized that the system is not broken---it is working perfectly for the multi-national corporations and the 1/10 of the 1% (as well as the 1%). For more information about what we're doing, you can write to concernedcitizens@gmail.com
The members of CCO have gradually (throughout 2016 & 2017) become aware that fracking and its waste are not the only threats to our communities.
IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE LACK OF OUR DEMOCRATIC RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR COMMUNITY, CHECK OUT THE PORTAGE COMMUNITY RIGHTS GROUP WEB PAGE
Yes, we're still threatened with ground water pollution. The Class II Waste Injection wells have not gone away. Yes, we're still threatened with pipelines which leak, more "fracking," more waste injection wells, more earthquakes. But many of us have recognized that the system is not broken---it is working perfectly for the multi-national corporations and the 1/10 of the 1% (as well as the 1%). For more information about what we're doing, you can write to concernedcitizens@gmail.com
Portage County Class II Waste Injection Wells.
(Ohio Fracking Waste Transport & Disposal Network). (Posted on July 9, 2015; copied with limited map layers 10/21/15). (Mapped/provided) by The FracTracker Alliance on FracTracker.org (Link to dynamic map here.)
OH Class II Injection Wells – Waste Disposal and Industry Water Demand
Waste disposal is an issue that causes quite a bit of consternation even amongst those that are pro-fracking. The disposal of fracking waste into injection wells has exposed many “hidden geologic faults” across the US as a result of induced seismicity, and it has been linked recently with increases in earthquake activity in states like Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and Ohio. . . . a preponderance of the waste is coming from outside Ohio with out-of-state shale development accounting for ≈90% of the state’s hydraulic fracturing brine stream to-date. However, more recently the tables have turned with in-state waste increasing by 4,202 barrels per quarter per well. . .Read more.
Compendium of Research on Fracking
Horizontal drilling combined with high-volume hydraulic fracturing and clustered multi-well pads are recently combined technologies for extracting oil and natural gas from shale bedrock. As this unconventional extraction method (collectively known as “fracking”) has pushed into more densely populated areas of the United States, and as fracking operations have increased in frequency and intensity, a significant body of evidence has emerged to demonstrate that these activities are inherently dangerous to people and their communities. Risks include adverse impacts on water, air, agriculture, public health and safety, property values, climate stability and economic vitality. Note that this Compendium has over 300 citations from peer-reviewed articles, news reports of accidents, and industry sources. READ THE WHOLE DOCUMENT HERE.
The Solutions Project
"In June of 2011, a scientist, an actor, a banker and a filmmaker were sitting around a table talking about their opposition to extreme energy extraction. Their conversation sparked an important realization - it wasn’t enough for them to be against something. They needed to be part of the solution. That day, Mark Jacobson, Mark Ruffalo, Marco Krapels and Josh Fox created The Solutions Project. Our Mission: Use the powerful combination of science + business + culture to accelerate the transition to 100% clean, renewable energy." READ ABOUT 50 PLANS FOR 50 STATES.
CLICK HERE to hear what Professor Anthony Ingraffea has to say about The Solutions Project Plan for NYS versus the NYS Plan and the science behind each (about 35 min.). CLICK HERE to read what Professor Mark Jacobson (Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director, Atmosphere/Energy Program, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy and one of the key developers of the Solutions Project) has to say about The Solutions Project.
CLICK HERE to hear what Professor Anthony Ingraffea has to say about The Solutions Project Plan for NYS versus the NYS Plan and the science behind each (about 35 min.). CLICK HERE to read what Professor Mark Jacobson (Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director, Atmosphere/Energy Program, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy and one of the key developers of the Solutions Project) has to say about The Solutions Project.
What the Anti-Fracking Movement Brings to the Climate Movement
". . . . Those who oppose natural gas extraction via fracking first came together because we didn’t want to be poisoned. In New York state, we sought to halt fracking before it started because of what we saw across the border in the gaslands of Pennsylvania: families with nose bleeds and rashes. Sick pets. Horses and livestock with mysterious ailments. Devastated landscapes.
Most of all, we came together to protect our drinking water, and, now that the science is beginning catch up to the speed at which fracking is rolling across the nation, an ever-expanding collection of empirical data shows that our concerns were well founded.
It turns out that the same unfixable engineering problem that sets the table for contaminating our water also contaminates the atmosphere with climate-killing methane.
The problem is that fracked wells are fragile wells. Too often, they leak. The brutal actions of fracking itself, which uses a slurry of highly pressurized water, chemicals and sandas a club to shatter the shale in order to free the oil or gas—can sometimes deform or crack the cement gasket around the wellbore. That’s how fracked wells can lose their integrity. That’s how they leak. And once they start leaking, you can’t turn them off." READ MORE ABOUT THE CONNECTION WITH THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT.
Most of all, we came together to protect our drinking water, and, now that the science is beginning catch up to the speed at which fracking is rolling across the nation, an ever-expanding collection of empirical data shows that our concerns were well founded.
It turns out that the same unfixable engineering problem that sets the table for contaminating our water also contaminates the atmosphere with climate-killing methane.
The problem is that fracked wells are fragile wells. Too often, they leak. The brutal actions of fracking itself, which uses a slurry of highly pressurized water, chemicals and sandas a club to shatter the shale in order to free the oil or gas—can sometimes deform or crack the cement gasket around the wellbore. That’s how fracked wells can lose their integrity. That’s how they leak. And once they start leaking, you can’t turn them off." READ MORE ABOUT THE CONNECTION WITH THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT.
The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate. It's time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future. . . . .Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. By 2020 – as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline – more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources. . . .Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. Read more here.
Why should Ohio worry about waste injection wells? Two alarming stories:
FIRST: "Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. . . . .the legislature, lobbied by the fracking industry, undid the governor's bid to have the testing of the waste done by the state's Department of Health — the agency acknowledged by many to possess the most expertise with radioactive material. The testing is now the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, the agency that oversees the permitting and inspection of oil and gas drilling sites, but that has no track record for dealing with radioactive waste." Read More.
SECOND: In Donna Young’s 19 years as a midwife, she’s made house calls to hundreds of mothers in Utah’s Uintah Basin, and never delivered a stillbirth—until last May. She was startled. “Everything seemed to be normal, everything seemed to be good. [But] when the baby was born, she never even tried to take her first breath. It wasn’t a struggle or anything, it just wasn’t there.” When Young attended the child’s memorial at a cemetery in the town of Vernal a few days later, a woman pointed out a few other fresh graves. The headstones were engraved with baby feet, or just one date—markers for infants who either were stillbirths or were born and died the same day. Read more.
FIRST: "Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. . . . .the legislature, lobbied by the fracking industry, undid the governor's bid to have the testing of the waste done by the state's Department of Health — the agency acknowledged by many to possess the most expertise with radioactive material. The testing is now the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, the agency that oversees the permitting and inspection of oil and gas drilling sites, but that has no track record for dealing with radioactive waste." Read More.
SECOND: In Donna Young’s 19 years as a midwife, she’s made house calls to hundreds of mothers in Utah’s Uintah Basin, and never delivered a stillbirth—until last May. She was startled. “Everything seemed to be normal, everything seemed to be good. [But] when the baby was born, she never even tried to take her first breath. It wasn’t a struggle or anything, it just wasn’t there.” When Young attended the child’s memorial at a cemetery in the town of Vernal a few days later, a woman pointed out a few other fresh graves. The headstones were engraved with baby feet, or just one date—markers for infants who either were stillbirths or were born and died the same day. Read more.
Check out Earth Justice's Fraccidents Map. FRACKING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented oil and gas drilling rush—brought on by a controversial technology called hydraulic fracturing, or FRACKING. Along with this fracking-enabled rush have come troubling reports of poisoned drinking water, polluted air, mysterious animal deaths, industrial disasters and explosions. We call them FRACCIDENTS. For an interactive map where the drilling has been heaviest, you can see what we can expect in Ohio once the industry starts drilling seriously, click here.
Municipal & Rural Water Systems. Where does your water come from? Whether you live in a city or rural area, your water comes from ground or surface water. You can help your city develop a water monitoring program. Check out Garrettsville's Water Monitoring Program checklist.
If you live in the country, read how How to Take Care of Your Water Well. Read about Concerned Citizens Ohio's Neighbors Helping Neighbors water monitoring program.
If you live in the country, read how How to Take Care of Your Water Well. Read about Concerned Citizens Ohio's Neighbors Helping Neighbors water monitoring program.
There is already a natural gas depot for exporting American natural gas. There are 26 more applications on the table to be approved. If these are indeed approved, then big oil will move forward and sign LONG TERM CONTRACTS to guarantee American natural gas to foreign countries. This industry will have to make good on these contracts. That will mean more drilling at any cost, and at the expense of Americans. That will mean tens of thousands of more wells. Hundreds of billions of gallons of fresh drinking water polluted. And the attempted disposal of hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic waste water. Read here.
SOLAR SHINGLES MADE FROM COMMON METALS OFFER CHEAPER ENERGY OPTION
U.S. scientists say that emerging photovoltaic technologies will enable the production of solar shingles made from abundantly available elementsrather than rare-earth metals, an innovation that would make solar energy cheaper and more sustainable. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers described advances in solar cells made with abundant metals, such as copper and zinc. While the market already offers solar shingles that convert the sun’s energy into electricity, producers typically must use elements that are scarce and expensive, such as indium and gallium. High-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But two experts look at the consequences of blocking projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Read More. READ THE e360 REPORT
U.S. scientists say that emerging photovoltaic technologies will enable the production of solar shingles made from abundantly available elementsrather than rare-earth metals, an innovation that would make solar energy cheaper and more sustainable. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers described advances in solar cells made with abundant metals, such as copper and zinc. While the market already offers solar shingles that convert the sun’s energy into electricity, producers typically must use elements that are scarce and expensive, such as indium and gallium. High-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But two experts look at the consequences of blocking projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Read More. READ THE e360 REPORT
Durango TX Pipeline Explosion (6.7.10)
FRIDAY, JAN 31, 2014 08:00 AM EST
The scariest thing about fracking is the risk nobody is talking about: A dense, poorly regulated network of pipelines [emphasis added] carries explosive gas hundreds of miles away drilling sites. . . . According to former Mobil Oil executive Lou Allstadt, the greatest danger of fracking is the methane it adds to the atmosphere through leaks from wells, pipelines, and other associated infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found leakage rates of 2.3% to 17% of annual production at gas and oil fields in California, Colorado, and Utah. Moreover, no technology can guarantee long-term safety decades into the future when it comes to well casings (there are hundreds of thousands of frack wells in the U.S. to date) or in the millions of miles of pipelines that crisscross this country. . . . Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit watchdog organization, says that, on average, there is “a significant incident — somewhere — about every other day. And someone ends up in the hospital or dead about every nine or ten days.” This begs the question: are pipelines carrying shale gas different in their explosive potential than other pipelines?
“There isn’t any database that allows you to get at that,” says Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and consultant of 40 years’ experience. “If it’s a steel pipeline and it has enough gas in it under enough pressure, it can leak or rupture.” Read More.
The scariest thing about fracking is the risk nobody is talking about: A dense, poorly regulated network of pipelines [emphasis added] carries explosive gas hundreds of miles away drilling sites. . . . According to former Mobil Oil executive Lou Allstadt, the greatest danger of fracking is the methane it adds to the atmosphere through leaks from wells, pipelines, and other associated infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found leakage rates of 2.3% to 17% of annual production at gas and oil fields in California, Colorado, and Utah. Moreover, no technology can guarantee long-term safety decades into the future when it comes to well casings (there are hundreds of thousands of frack wells in the U.S. to date) or in the millions of miles of pipelines that crisscross this country. . . . Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit watchdog organization, says that, on average, there is “a significant incident — somewhere — about every other day. And someone ends up in the hospital or dead about every nine or ten days.” This begs the question: are pipelines carrying shale gas different in their explosive potential than other pipelines?
“There isn’t any database that allows you to get at that,” says Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and consultant of 40 years’ experience. “If it’s a steel pipeline and it has enough gas in it under enough pressure, it can leak or rupture.” Read More.
Industry Awakens to Threat of Climate Change
Coral Davenport
New York Times January 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change. Read Whole Article. Click here for larger image and more information about the evidence for climate change.
Coral Davenport
New York Times January 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change. Read Whole Article. Click here for larger image and more information about the evidence for climate change.
