John Cronin

Chesapeake Pauses Fracking in Watershed

There are arcane battles aplenty in the environmental world, where the average citizen can only hope that one expert is more believable than another.  Hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale in the New York City watershed also pits clean water against the national hunger for new sources of energy. 

The practice of "fracking" -- fracturing deep rock with pressure and chemicals, including benzene, in order to capture natural gas -- has gained national prominence as environmentalists ramp up the call for more regulation by state and federal governments, and more transparency by the industry about the practices and chemicals it uses.  Fracking has been implicated in a range of environmental impacts, including groundwater and well contamination and the poisoning of cattle, due to improper or uncontrollable use of chemicals. 

But one industry trade organization, Energy In Depth, has devoted web pages to proving that fracking has always been effectively regulated on a state by state basis, and to fighting federal regulation.  The industry won an exemption under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, and decries additional attempts to hinder exploration and production through regulation.  See this shale blog.

Here in New York, Chesapeake Energy has just withdrawn its proposal to "frack" the Marcellus Shale, a stretch of rock that underlays the New York City Watershed in Sullivan County and runs to Tenessee, after stinging rebukes from environmental organizations that the health and integrity of the watershed would be threatened.  Riverkeeper, which has been tracking and reporting on the issue since 2004, hailed the victory as an indication that even Chesapeake Energy has determined the proposal is environmentally unsound.  In an editorial two weeks ago, The New York Times had called for a ban on fracking in the city's watershed.

But has Chesapeake Energy withdrawn? 

The Improving Hudson?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

I was recently contacted by a reporter writing a story about "How the Hudson has improved." 

"What is your premise?" I asked.

"That the Hudson was once called an open sewer and now it is an environmental success story."

I know well the terms "open sewer" and "environmental success story" when applied to the Hudson River.  I spent years helping to make them popular.  Many years.  So many years that by 2009 those phrases have become worn and dated.   The Hudson may no longer be an open sewer,  but neither is it the river most of us thought it would be. 

I have been involved in Hudson River issues since I was 23.  I am 59.  In good conscience I can no longer boast of the river's comeback to a 30 year-old, or a 20 year-old, or my 14 year-old son.  After all, what has happened in their lifetime?

There is no evidence of which I am aware that the Hudson has improved in the last decade.  Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the river is in decline, despite official and unofficial attempts to manage its restoration and protection.  Major fish species, such as American shad, Atlantic sturgeon, and smelt, have been in trouble for over a decade.  Twenty years ago, they were not.  The Hudson's once proud commercial fishery is just about over.  There is more human population and therefore more pollutants being discharged into the river, directly and indirectly.  Invasive species are more prevalent. 

Clean Water 101

In 1972, Congress Promised Clean Water In Our Lifetime

Who Declares a Water Crisis?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

It was said often, at a recent conference on New York State Water Resources, held at Pace University, that  comprehensive protection and management of New York's waters would finally come when a crisis forced the issue.  The daylong event was sponsored by Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies, Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, and the Center for Environmental Legal Studies at Pace Law School.

During the last afternoon panel, an audience member asked, "Who is in charge of declaring a crisis?"  No one had a satisfactory answer.  And when the question was turned on the audience -- "Who here is willing to declare a crisis?" -- there was a scant show of hands, even after a full day of talks about grim predictions and policy shortfalls in health, supply, infrastructure, ecological management and environmental protection. 

The path to a crisis is a  greater mystery than a crisis that has already been proclaimed.  Hindsight is like that.  Drought, decaying infrastructure, declining fish populations, and shortages in future water supply are slow-motion crises.  Their eventual, official recognition, usually comes in the form of a declaration of emergency or, worse, a court order.  It is spurred by some formula of public opinion, media attention, dire circumstances and government findings -- a long process that nonetheless leaves policymakers playing a panicky game of catch-up.

But the conference proceedings begged a question familiar to all those who deal in national security and preparedness -- aren't we already in a crisis if we are unprepared for an impending emergency?  The OED tells us that a crisis is "a time of intense difficulty or danger."  The word finds its origins in the Greek keinein, which means to separate or decide, and which  is also the source of the word "critic," or kritikos -- able to make judgments.  Noah's crisis, for example, came when he was charged with building an ark and gathering his passengers  . . .  before the flood arrived. 

Clean Water Act: The President, through the Secretary of State, Shall Take Action . . .

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Photo by Sara Holz, Peace Corps

Section 101 of the Clean Water Act contains the statute's far-reaching, but failed, goals, including the elimination of the discharge of pollutants domestically, and America's foreign policy on water.  A text version of the section follows:

The Water It Takes 2: Alternative Energy

A Very Inconvenient Truth

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Producing energy without causing negative impacts to water has been a thorny environmental issue for decades.  In the 1970s, fish killed by the cooling water intakes of power plants, and heated water from the plants' discharge pipes were icons of American environmental degradation. 

The effects of cooling water use by conventional and nuclear plants are not due to the consumption of water but the cycling of water through the plants and its heated return to the originating water body.  But the impacts of this very large water flow though a power plant's machinery can be devastating.  In a paper for the Harvard Environmental Law Review in 1992, Karl Rabago made a conservative estimate that the number of fish that die in these "once-through" cooling systems nationally is a half-trillion per year, based on government and industry data.

Recent stories on the growing controversy over the proposed use of water by alternative energy developers, reminds us that the laws of physics and thermodynamics don't take a rest just because harnessing the sun is a good idea. 

The Water It Takes . . .

 

Image: IBM Smarter Planet

New York Times Takes On "Clean Water"

Poor Enforcement, Declining Water Quality

Toxic Waters, an excellent piece of investigative journalism by The New York Times, presents the paper's report on the condition of the nation's waters.   The findings were disturbing but not surprising: lax enforcement,  a decline in water quality, toxic threats, and an outmoded law -- though the Times stopped short of detailing the latter.

The failed status of the Clean Water Act itself is under-reported.  The law has not achieved one of its major policy goals, and has failed to spur the era of innovation, and research and development, its authors anticipated and upon which the law's success depends.  The failure to innovate has perpetuated outmoded and primitive treatment technologies that are costly to operate and maintain -- no small enticement for some dischargers to risk violating the law. 

The map above is a link to the New York Times map of states and their un-enforced Clean Water Act violations.  That map page also links to the Times' series, including interactive media that allow you to learn more about dischargers  in your area.  

Also, see my other posts about the Clean Water Act that immediately precede this one. 

Clean Water Update

On Thursday, September 25, John told a standing room crowd at Skidmore College, “The Clean Water Act has failed us, the nation, and the world."   He called on participants at a water policy conference sponsored by Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies and held at Pace School of Law on Wednesday, September 24, "To leap ahead of the federal Clean Water Act and establish independent clean water goals for New York State that will spur innovation and create a water pollution elimination industry that will serve the planet."

See Imagine No Pollution below.  And full news release here. 

Imagine No Pollution

The Future, and the Failed Clean Water Act

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

The Clean Water Act has failed.  It is time for a new law.

There is a mistaken, popular belief that the central purpose of the 1972 Clean Water Act is to bring to justice the bad guys who are polluting the nation’s waters.

The Clean Water Act was written to create a global market place based on American innovation that would end pollution in our lifetime, and “restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.” 

But a list of the Clean Water Act's failed policies reads like an indictment of the law itself.

The first policy goal on the first page of the Clean Water Act is the elimination of the discharge of pollutants by 1985.

The law also sets a goal of making the nation’s waters fit for sports and recreation, and for fish and wildlife by July 1983.

It calls for management plans to end pollution from runoff, protect watersheds, and enhance water resources, in keeping with the 1983 and 1985 goals.

It requires the cessation of toxic discharges in toxic amounts.

It establishes a sweeping domestic and foreign policy on water designed to protect life and health here and abroad.

Indeed, the enormity of the Clean Water Act’s failure can be measured in lives.  The law directs the Secretary of State to assist other nations in eradicating their water problems to “at least the same extent as the United States does under its laws.”  But since the Clean Water Act was enacted, an estimated 70 - 100 million people, mostly children in the developing world, have died from diseases related to water pollution.  The Pacific Institute estimates that between 36 million and 70 million will die by 2020.