The price of precaution

There's a fundamental idea in ecology called the precautionary principle.  Put simply, the precautionary principle says that it's always easier and cheaper to prevent environmental damage than it is to clean up the mess afterwards.

Note that this is not saying we can predict and prevent every disaster.  Mother Nature has a mean curve ball.  But there are all too many instances of the powers-that-be hearing, acknowledging, and then ignoring the advice of the scientists and other experts, with devastating results.

Let's look at a quick example before I tell you what this post is really about.

The Everglades were once a sawgrass, cypress, mangrove, and palmetto wetland encompassing most of the southern tip of Florida.  Through this wetland flowed a 100 kilometer wide sheet of water slowly making its way to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.  The wetland acted as a natural filter, and the water entering the sea was remarkably pure and sediment-free.  The area was home to hundreds of native species, some found nowhere else on Earth, and hundreds more used it as a stopover point on migration.

The Everglades [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The problem is, you can't raise cattle, grow oranges, or build houses in a wetland.  So in the first few decades of the 20th century, the Everglades were "improved" -- that is, turned into a patchwork of swamp with 2250 kilometers of canals, levees, and spillways designed to drain land for settlement.  The 160 kilometer long Kissimmee River was “straightened” by the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control; it’s now 84 kilometers long and has drained the wetlands north of Lake Okeechobee, which farmers turned into cow pastures.

In 1947, ecologists saw what was happening, and lobbied for protection.  In that year the founding of Everglades National Park attempted to conserve part of it, but you can't draw an arbitrary line around a piece of land and assume that what happens outside the line won't matter.  Continued development progressively cut off the water flow to the wetland, and in the following years between 75% and 90% of the park’s wildlife (depending on how you count the toll) disappeared.

Fast forward to 1990, when finally the Florida state government took notice -- prompted not by the recognition that Everglades National Park is one of the most damaged national parks in the United States, but because without the wetland, farmers and landowners were beginning to see problems.  The Everglades acted as a water catchment, and its reduced size caused a loss of fresh groundwater.  Not only did this compromise agriculture, it led to saline intrusion into wells, and the opening up of limestone sinkholes -- some big enough to swallow houses.  The sediment and fertilizer runoff that was once filtered by the marsh was now being ejected into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, killing fish, fouling coral reefs, and clouding the water.

The result was that in the late 1990s the government of Florida reluctantly agreed to the world’s largest ecological restoration project, to be carried out between 2000 and 2038.  It plans to restore the Kissimmee River to its original course, buying up farmland and creating new wetlands for both wildlife habitat and to filter agricultural runoff, and to create 18 large reservoirs to supply drinking water and slow down freshwater diversion.

At a cost to taxpayers of $7.8 billion.  To, if I haven't hammered in this point strongly enough, undo everything that we've done in the past eighty years, and return things back to where they would have been if we hadn't screwed them up royally in the first place.

This all comes up because two days ago, Crestwood Midstream, the company that is planning to expand natural gas storage in salt caverns underneath Seneca Lake, received a last-minute two year extension from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on their rights to use the site.  It had been hoped that FERC would come to their senses and deny the permit, but whether money talked or the officials at FERC simply shrugged and said, "Well, nothing bad has happened yet," they chose to allow the Texas-based company to continue in this reckless and irresponsible practice.

Seneca Lake [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Just how reckless and irresponsible are we talking about, here?  All it should take is one statistic to convince you: salt cavern storage accounts for only 7% of the total underground storage of natural gas in the United States, but was responsible for 100% of the catastrophic accidents from natural gas storage that resulted in loss of life.  

A major accident here in the form of a cavern breach wouldn't just endanger the workers at Crestwood Midstream's facility in the Town of Reading; it would result in the salinization of the south end of Seneca Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the Northeast, and the source of drinking water and water for irrigation for tens of thousands.  It would imperil the Finger Lakes wine industry, one of the biggest sources of revenue and tourism in the area.

Worst still, it would be damn near impossible to clean up.  You think the bill for wrecking the Everglades was high?  That's nothing compared to what it would take to rectify a salt cavern collapse and the resulting explosion.  If it was remediable at all.

And how likely is this?  Is this simply a panicked overreaction?  Another fact might clarify: a mere fifty years ago, a 400,000 ton chunk of the roof of one of the very salt caverns Crestwood is proposing to use caved in.

Imagine what the result would have been had the cavern been filled with natural gas.

Put simply, the precautionary principle isn't alarmism.  Oddly enough, we have no problem with the idea with respect to our homes, health, and lives; why it's so hard for people to swallow with respect to the planet we live on is incomprehensible to me.

And for a government regulatory commission like FERC to give Crestwood carte blanche to proceed with this potentially devastating plan is the height of irresponsibility.

Ethical lawbreaking

One of the topics we discuss in my Critical Thinking class is when taking a stand on an ethical issue trumps law.

Civil disobedience, in other words, crossing the line into potential arrest and prosecution.

I ask this question because two days ago, I was arrested for being part of a blockade of Crestwood Midstream's natural gas and (proposed) liquefied petroleum gas storage facility alongside Seneca Lake.  As I have described in previous posts, the facility uses geologically unstable salt caverns for this storage, risking catastrophic failure that would result in environmental devastation of the region and almost certainly loss of life.  The plan is, to put it simply, reckless and dangerous, driven by the profit motive of an out-of-state corporation that could simply up stakes and move back to Texas if the unthinkable happens.

We, on the other hand, live here and would have to deal with the consequences.

Yours truly being loaded into the police van after arrest [image courtesy of photographer Carol Bloomgarden]

The fact that Crestwood's plan is wildly irresponsible is not just fanciful or alarmist.  Dr. Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, had the following cautionary words:

The stakes are high.  Industry and government march blithely ahead, ignoring the growing risks of extreme energy development: deep offshore oil and gas, Arctic oil and gas, tar sands, shale gas… and the risky storage of methane and propane proposed for the salt caverns below us here.  We hit 400 ppm carbon dioxide this winter, for the first time in the past few million years; and another greenhouse gas -- methane -- is also at its highest level in the last several million years.  We are near the point of no return, where a much warmer Earth will be with us for the next several thousand years.

Schneising et al. showed in 2011 that the methane in the atmosphere is largely from shale gas and shale oil drilling.  The methane signature they found from this human activity is so large that it was visible from data obtained from satellites.  And methane has a hundred-fold higher impact on global temperature than carbon dioxide does -- making this enterprise even more foolhardy. 

So the impact of what Crestwood is doing here goes far beyond the local damage that a catastrophic mishap would cause.  Simply put, the fossil fuels need to stay in the ground.

And it's not as if there aren't solutions, solutions that could be put in place now if there was the will and the farsightedness to do so.  Howarth writes:

We already have the ability to make the switch to electric vehicles, and electric heat pumps for heating and cooling.  Their efficiencies are far greater than gasoline and diesel driven vehicles, or furnaces and water heaters than run on natural gas or fuel oil.  This would result in a 30% reduction in total use of energy, just from this transformation.  And that electricity should come from renewable sources.  Crestwood is placing our lives and our homes at risk, and moving us closer to global ecological disaster, because of a determination to keep using an energy source that should have been phased out decades ago. 

Switching to energy primarily from wind and from solar has a lower cost today than using fossil fuels, if the health costs of fossil fuels are considered.  In NY, there are 4,000 deaths each year from air pollution caused by fossil fuels, at a cost of $33 billion per year.

Making entire state free of fossil fuels costs $570 Billion. The cost savings from reduced illness and death from fossil fuels over the next fifteen years is enough to pay for the entire cost of the transition to renewables.

The "natural gas is about jobs" argument is equally specious.  Crestwood's projection of the number of jobs created for locals is outweighed fivefold by the jobs available in renewable energy in our region.  Joe Sliker, president of Renovus Solar Energy, said:

The solar industry complements the existing, thriving, and growing winery and tourism industries.  Solar is cleaner, safer, and a more prosperous path forth for families and even for all of the Crestwood employees. 

So, I'm here today for all of the good men and women who risk their lives every single day for their jobs.  I'm here for the welders, the pipe fitters, the electricians, the truckers, and all of the hard working people who go to work every day to provide for their families.  I'm here for those people who lay their lives on the line every morning when they wake up, for those people whose hands bleed while they work, and for the families that love and worry about them. 

I'm here to offer them a choice.  I'm here to tell them that we don't have to support a dangerous facility and risk our lives and the lives of our loved ones in order to have good paying jobs. 

I'm here to offer all of those people a better job.  Today.  Right now.  Our Renovus HR manager is here with a stack of applications.  Come talk to us. 

Solar is rapidly expanding and Renovus is a thriving regional business. In contrast to the eight to ten permanent jobs promised by the gas storage facility, Renovus has added over 50 new permanent jobs just in the past year.

Add it all up.  Crestwood Midstream, and other companies like them, put the lives and livelihood of ordinary people at risk for one reason; to boost their profits and pay their stockholders.  The alternatives are real and affordable and viable.  What is being proposed amounts to reckless endangerment, yet our local and state governments refuse to step in and stop it.

So it was time for me to act.

I know that my arrest, by itself, will have little effect.  I'll appear at court, and likely face a fine, and that will be that.  But the symbolism of people who are willing to risk prosecution for a worthy cause has a far greater reach than that; it is the actions of individuals that make the difference.  And that means all of us who know enough to care about what is happening.  As the amazing Australian singer/songwriter Judy Small put it in her song about social activism, "One Voice in the Crowd," "In the end it's all the same; the buck stops where you are."  (Listen to the whole song at the link below.)

So it's not about the futility of a few people standing up to the actions of a huge corporation.  It's about doing the right thing, and as Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai put it, "Keeping our feeling of empowerment ahead of our feeling of despair."  It's about being willing to put yourself at risk, because the alternative is to accept blindly a far worse risk, one whose consequences may still be felt a thousand years from now.

We all need to act, and the time is now.

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To support what is happening here, please "like" the We Are Seneca Lake Facebook page, write your congressperson and/or Governor Andrew Cuomo (here's his contact information), and share this post around.  This message needs to move, and quickly.

Fracking our way to disaster

Yesterday there was yet another article about an accident at a hydrofracking site.  In this one, an Ohio fracking well sprung a leak, causing a methane cloud that forced 25 families out of their homes for days.  The crew was "unable to stop" the leak, sources with the natural gas company said, followed with the cheery message, "the well is not on fire, but the gas could be explosive."

Merry Christmas, y'all.  I hope you remembered to bring your presents with you before you fled from your houses, so you can celebrate Christmas in whatever shelter you end up in.

[image courtesy of photographer Joshua Doubek and the Wikimedia Commons]

Of course, this isn't an isolated incident.  It's been a bad year for Ohio, in fact.  In May, a fracking well leak spilled 1,600 of oil drilling lubricant into a river.  The following month, a second explosion and spill leaked a stew of toxic chemicals into yet another river, killing an estimated 70,000 fish -- and the company that owned the well refused to release information on which chemicals were involved, calling it a "trade secret."  Then in October, a methane leak drove 400 people from their homes.

It's not limited to Ohio, of course.  Earlier this year, a blowout at a fracking site in North Dakota caused a gusher spraying over ten thousand gallons a day of a mixed slurry of oil and chemical-laced wastewater.  It took almost a week to stop the leak.  In 2013 an accident at a well in Colorado leaked benzene, a known carcinogen, into a stream in Colorado.  More "trade secret" chemicals were dumped into a popular trout-fishing stream when thousands of gallons of highly saline fracking fluid erupted during a well explosion in Pennsylvania in 2011.

Add to that the fact that fracking is a huge draw on water resources, and you have to wonder how it can still be legal in drought-stricken states like Texas and California.  At least here in my home state of New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo sided with the good guys and announced a statewide ban on fracking yesterday, citing health effects as his reason.

Health, and the environment, and, you know, clean drinking water for human consumption and agricultural use.  It's a mystery to me how anyone can still support this crazy idea, given its track record.

But they do.  Fracking still has its champions.  Karen Moreau, executive director of the New York State Petroleum Council, was irate over Governor Cuomo's decision.  "Our citizens in the Southern Tier have had to watch their neighbors and friends across the border in Pennsylvania thriving economically," she said. "It’s like they were a kid in a candy store window, looking through the window, and not able to touch that opportunity."

Not exactly an accurate analogy, Ms. Moreau.  Given that there have been twenty major fracking accidents in Pennsylvania alone, it's more like people looking through a window at a neighbor's house burning down, and weeping because they can't do anything to stop it -- while simultaneously being thankful that their own house isn't on fire.

Some of our legislators are siding with Ms. Moreau and the gas companies, however.  Representative Tom Reed, who represents my local district, said of Cuomo's decision:

I am extremely disappointed in today’s announcement from Governor Cuomo which bans hydraulic fracturing.  This move effectively blocks the development of natural gas and oil resources in New York State.  This is devastating news for the Southern Tier economy and its residents who are struggling every day.  This decision makes it even more difficult to replace the good jobs that have already left due to New York’s unfriendly business climate.  Once again Albany shows that it wants to enact an extreme liberal agenda rather than care about individual property rights and job opportunities.  I care about Southern Tier residents and will fight for them every day.  Simply put this extreme liberal agenda is not right and not fair for our future.

Because, you know, only extreme liberals like to be able to turn on their faucets without risking an explosion.  (Reed's comment caused one of my friends to respond, "Suck it, corporate puppet," which I quote here mainly because I wish I'd thought of it first.)

The fight isn't over in New York State, of course.  Just around the corner from my village we're still struggling to stop the Crestwood Expansion, a plan to double storage of natural gas and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) in salt caverns underneath Seneca Lake, which supplies drinking and agricultural water to tens of thousands of people.  You'd think there'd be enough evidence already that this is a horrible idea, wouldn't you?  To wit:

• A methane seep from a gas storage salt cavern in Hutchinson, Kansas that caused explosions and "geysers of salt water" seven miles away.
• A collapse of a gas-filled salt cavern in Livingston County, New York in 1994 that cased methane to leak into basements and permanently fouled a drinking water aquifer.
• A 400,000 ton roof collapse that occurred in an empty salt cavern, which coincidentally is one of the ones underneath Seneca Lake that Crestwood wants to use in their expansion project.

All of which makes you wonder when we will stop placing expediency and short-term profits above concern for human health and safety.

It's not too late, and it's to be hoped that the drubbing the gas companies got at Governor Cuomo's hands yesterday will start a domino effect.  Locally, you can join or donate to Gas Free Seneca, or join the Crestwood Blockade.  (To find out more, check out the "We Are Seneca Lake" page on Facebook.)  If you're in a state or a province of Canada that allows hydrofracking, put pressure on your legislators to join in a ban.  This has progressed far beyond "Not In My Back Yard;" this kind of technology shouldn't be in anyone's back yard.  And if that means we have to cut back on natural gas production, or maybe even (gasp!) start investing in renewables, then so be it.

Take a stand.  We have allowed corporate interests and "trade secrets" to imperil our water supplies for long enough.  It's time for it to stop.