{"id":1243,"date":"2013-03-22T19:29:15","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T19:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gastruth.org\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2013-03-22T19:29:49","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T19:29:49","slug":"release-new-fracking-standards-not-supported-by-environmental-organizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/?p=1243","title":{"rendered":"Release: New Fracking Standards Not Supported by Environmental Organizations"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Immediate Release<\/strong><\/p>\n

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March 22, 2013<\/p>\n

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Contacts: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Karen Feridun, Berks Gas Truth, 610-678-7726<\/p>\n

Tracy Carluccio, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, 215-692-2329<\/p>\n

Jay Sweeney, Green Party of Pennsylvania, 570-587-3603<\/p>\n

Melissa Troutman, Mountain Watershed Association, 724-455-4200<\/p>\n

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New Fracking Standards Not Supported by Environmental Organizations<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kutztown, PA \u2013<\/em> Environmental organizations across Pennsylvania are objecting to a misleading announcement coming from the oil and gas industry that says they have \u201cmade peace\u201d with environmentalists by agreeing to voluntary fracking standards. According to the announcement made, the oil and gas industry believes the new standards \u201ccould ease or avert some of the ferocious battles over fracking that have been waged in statehouses and city halls.\u201d They\u2019re wrong. In fact, the anti-fracking movement is large and getting larger as evidence mounts that fracking cannot be done safely, contributes to climate change, endangers the human and animal health and safety, tears apart communities, and pollutes our air and water.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe cynical intentions of the drillers are stated clearly in the announcement. They say they want to \u2018hasten the expansion of fracking\u2019. They say they want to \u2018bypass the often turbulent legislative process altogether\u2019. They say they want to make \u2018drilling more acceptable to states and communities that fear the environmental consequences\u2019.\u00a0 Making drilling more acceptable and making drilling safer is not the same thing. These statements reveal the industry\u2019s self-serving attitude known all too well to those whose lives have been impacted by drilling,\u201d said Karen Feridun, Founder of Berks Gas Truth.<\/p>\n

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The voluntary standards are listed on the oxymoronically-named website sustainableshale.org. The so-called \u201ctough new standards\u201d don\u2019t appear to be substantially different from the corresponding regulations the industry has been blatantly disregarding for years. In addition, they fail to address many issues including radioactivity, methane migration, drill cuttings, community disruption, forest fragmentation, LNG, and compressor stations, to name but a few.<\/p>\n

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“The overwhelming harm of gas development on communities being drilled and our natural environment demands real action, not limp attempts at “management” that just rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking ship. First, we need a nationwide moratorium on drilling, then we need to let science and health professionals fully examine and expose the truth about the inherently polluting fracking process, while we work as a nation to replace these deadly resource extraction industries with energy efficiency and clean, truly sustainable energy sources,” said Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director, Delaware Riverkeeper Network.<\/p>\n

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“The only way for the fracking industry to self-regulate itself in a fashion that protects the people of Pennsylvania is to kindly end its operations in Pennsylvania and exit our state,” said Sam Bernhardt, Pennsylvania Organizer at Food & Water Watch. “Pennsylvania needs a ban on fracking, and it needs it now.”<\/p>\n

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This may be the most cynical aspect of all – a newly-created Center for Sustainable Shale Development would be comprised of a 12-member board tasked with overseeing the voluntary standards program. \u201cThe center\u2019s proposed 2013 budget is $800,000, with the two sides expected to contribute equal amounts,\u201d says the program\u2019s interim leader. It would appear that the obscenely wealthy oil and gas companies are only putting up half of the money and that the rest would come from those who would otherwise be funding efforts to fight on behalf of the environment and communities.<\/p>\n

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\u201cExperience has shown that large, industry-oriented environmental groups do not necessarily\u00a0 represent the interests of grassroots, community-based organizations,\u201d said Melissa Troutman, Outreach Coordinator of Mountain Watershed Association. \u201cIf you read the book Managing Activism:\u00a0 PR Advice for Neutralizing Democracy<\/em>, author Denise Deegan advises that this sort of \u2018dialogue\u2019 is industry\u2019s most effective method for managing activists. In our experience, this is true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The anti-fracking movement extends far beyond the environmental community to include religious groups, sportsmen\u2019s associations, health organizations, social justice organizations, renewable energy organizations, political groups, farming associations, and others. The groups the industry worked with on this project are not generally considered to be among the hundreds of groups in the movement in Pennsylvania, as they have maintained an industry-friendly stance on drilling.<\/p>\n

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Jay Sweeney, Chair of the Green Party of Pennsylvania said, \u201cI was flabbergasted to read the article saying the oil & gas industry had made peace with environmentalists. I read the article looking to find out exactly what environmentalists had been consulted and found none. The Green Party of Pennsylvania stands by our position that fracking must be banned!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis brilliant propaganda on the part of the gas industry and national groups that are not so much environmental organizations as they are greenwashing collaborators only serves to underscore the collective fear they have of how organized, how effective, how nimble, and how truly threatening the grassroots coalition against fracking has become to the interests of the corporate profit agenda of the fossil fuel barons,\u201d said Julie Edgar, Organizer of Lehigh Valley Gas Truth. \u201cWe stand united– we will not be co-opted– we will not be mollified by what amounts to no more than a crock of radioactive fracking sludge.\u201d<\/p>\n

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####<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Immediate Release   March 22, 2013   Contacts: Karen Feridun, Berks Gas Truth, 610-678-7726 Tracy Carluccio, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, 215-692-2329 Jay Sweeney, Green Party<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-release","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastruth.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}