Hey Daily KOS: Thanks for Showing Me That Democrats Have as Little Respect for Freedom of Expression as Republicans--And Why the Green Party is The Way to Vote!!

Some essential backstory: Daily KOS markets itself as a "Daily weblog with political analysis on US current events from a liberal perspective."

I have a "diary" there, and have had for years. I let it lapse for long periods. But had recently revived it in the interest of gaining greater exposure to work I have been doing right here at The Wrench to expose the ecological liquidation and community destruction wrought by the natural gas industry, and to galvanize the moment to end this and all forms of extreme fossil fuel extraction. I reposted at Daily KOS the pieces I have originally posted here or at Raging Chicken ( Raging Chicken Press | Progressive, Activist Media since 2011). 

Note for now that nothing in the Daily KOS self-description says "Democrats Only!," or "No Greens (or Republicans or Libertarians or Constitutionalists or Whoever) allowed!"

Recently, I was asked to join the Pennsylvania Green Party Gubernatorial ticket with Paul Glover (Paul Glover: candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania) as the Lt. Governor candidate. I am very flattered and honored, and--after thinking about it for a while--accepted the invitation. Just prior to the offer, I was also flattered to be able to give a short presentation at the Pennsylvania Green Party Convention, 3.2.14. Here's the text of that presentation--If you'd like to see it with the photographs, please go here: Green Party Convention Presentation, 2.14 - a set on Flickr.

Of all the issues confronting Pennsylvanians—health care, education, jobs, etc.—among the most important of these are the devastating ecological and human rights toll the fossil fuel extraction industry has taken on the Commonwealth, her neighboring states, and the planet as a whole in the form of its potentially devastating contribution to climate change. Fracking must be banned.
There are many reasons why an articulate and uncompromising opposition to hydraulic fracturing, mountain top removal, tar sands extraction, other forms of unconventional gas drilling, the Keystone Pipeline, the construction of LNG export depots, is critical to the Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign.  

Here are just four:

1. The responsibility of the governor is to uphold the Pennsylvania Constitution, including Article 1, section 27: “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people."

2. The fossil fuel industry’s profit objectives are demonstrably inconsistent with the commitment to health care, education, and jobs.

A few examples:

a. Health care: given the hazardous health effects that follow from exposure to the carcinogens, biocides, and other toxins associated with the fracking process; given that a similar account can be given for exposure to toxins resultant from compressor station emissions; given the potential for explosions at every juncture of this process—frack pad, pipeline, truck accident, compressor; and lastly, given that these hazards make particularly vulnerable populations already marginalized by the state’s inadequate health care access, no case can be made in defense of the industry’s conversion of Pennsylvania into what amounts to an extraction factory for wealthy multinationals.

b. Education: in addition to the obvious hazards of locating extraction-associated facilities next to public schools, the effort of the Corbett administration to extort state universities into accepting extraction operations on their campuses is in obvious conflict with the missions of those public institutions, and inconsistent with the commitment to the health and welfare of their communities.  APSCUF—the Associated Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty union—opposes any such construction, and I had the privilege of drafting that resolution for all 14 campuses.

c. Jobs: as is made clear on the numbers, the shale boom has not generated lasting employment for Pennsylvanians. Instead, it has diminished the potential for future employment in industries connected to our once spectacular forests, rivers, and high value streams, exposed mostly non-unionized workers to toxic health hazards, and exported profits from frack pad to off-shore bank accounts of already obscenely wealthy CEOs. That a very few may become very wealthy via royalties or other associated enterprise at the expense of the very many is intolerable to a democratic union and a prescription for future disaster.

3. States are no more closed loop systems than are human bodies or frack pads. In a world increasingly confronted by the effects of global climate change, deforestation, desertification, and toxic pollution, governors and legislators must act responsibly not merely to their own constituents—much less to their campaign donors—but to the stability of the global ecology as a whole.  We can no longer afford to bury our heads in the sand about the impacts of an industry whose history so clearly shows that its mercenary drive to profit exceeds at every turn its commitment to human welfare or ecological stability.

4. States do not have the right to deploy their police forces to quash dissent—yet, our current administration not only acts legislatively to insure the smooth path to profit, but deploys its police resources against the people in an effort to suppress, fear-monger, manipulate, and intimidate those who expose this path as littered with toxins, political corruptions, and egregious forms of harm.

 Extreme forms of fossil fuel extraction must be banned not only because the citizens of the Commonwealth cannot afford the consequences, but because no regulation can adequately prevent the harm. As we at Shale Justice claim consistently: regulation is about nothing other than controlling temporarily the rate of harm—not the quantity, not the duration.  

Moreover, no matter what some argue are “best practices,” none keep the gas in the ground—the only strategy that will prevent the contribution of fossil fuel extraction to climate change. Pennsylvania’s governor must act not only in the interest of all Pennsylvanians—but for the future of Pennsylvania. What this means is that she or he must take seriously the adage that the local is the global—for this is no mere hyperbole; it is fact.  And as such, it is moral duty.

The presentation went nicely; some folks applauded, and I was invited to run as Lt. Governor with Paul Glover. A press release went out a bit later with the following:

Dr. Wendy Lynne Lee, prominent opponent of extreme fossil fuel extraction, has been selected as the Green Party's candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. Lee is professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania specializing in philosophy of language, philosophy of animal cognition, environmental and feminist theory. The author of "Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism," Lee also writes a regular blog called The Wrench http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/... and is a founding executive member of the Shale Justice Coalition http://shalejustice.org/.

Lee is a stalwart warrior in the resistance to the criminalizing of nonviolent dissent. "Sometimes in order to stand up for what is right, one must sit down with one's fellow citizens and lock arms," she said.

Green Party selects Lt. Governor candidate

Dr Wendy Lynne Lee, prominent opponent of extreme fossil fuel extraction, has been selected as the Green Party's candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. Lee is professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania specializing in philosophy of language, philosophy of animal cognition, environmental and feminist theory. The author of "Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism," Lee also writes a regular blog called The Wrench http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/, and is a founding executive member of the Shale Justice Coalition http://shalejustice.org/. Lee is a stalwart warrior in the resistance to the criminalizing of nonviolent dissent. "Sometimes in order to stand up for what is right, one must sit down with one's fellow citizens and lock arms," she said.

Lee joins the Green Party's gubernatorial candidate Paul Glover http://glover-gpofpa.nationbuilder.com/, a Philadelphia social entrepreneur, former professor of urban studies at Temple University, and author of six books on grassroots economies http://www.paulglover.org/books.html. "I'm pleased to campaign with such an effective advocate for clean water, which is the foundation of our communities, businesses and jobs."

Jay Sweeney, chair of the Green Party of Pennsylvania, “The Green Party of Pennsylvania is proud to offer voters the choice of two prominent thinkers who articulate a vision not only for the Commonwealth but for humanity.”

The Green Party of Pennsylvania is an independent political party that stands in opposition to the two corporate parties. The Green Party of Pennsylvania stands for grassroots democracy, social justice, sustainable economics, nonviolence, and ecology.

So, here's the part where it gets really interesting--and very telling with respect to whether there are any real substantive differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, or whether American voters can brook the possibility of any challenge to the two party system.

I suggest the answers here are "no," and "no." 

But my goodness, do we need third--and fourth, and fifth parties in this county that can actually challenge a hegemony that makes a bald-faced lie out of even the appearance of a democracy.

And I suggest that the "liberal" Daily KOS offers us transparent--if unwitting--insight into the utter bankruptcy of the two party system--a system that offers really nothing but a veneer of "two" all the while they merely move about the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic that is the planet.

I posted the press release and the convention presentation to Daily KOS. Within minutes I had backlash galore. Here's just a few of the more delicious samples--posted ver batim:




Nice touch--quoting MLK--but hardly "liberal," much less progressive--much less tolerant.

I responded:

The Hilcorp Frack-Gas Stampede to the Utica is Ready to Trample Right Over You: Forced Integration in Lawrence County, PA

Imagine getting this letter one day from Steve Fisackerly, Senior Landman, Hilcorp Energy Company, Houston, Texas:

Dear Landowner, 

As a Hilcorp Energy leaseholder we wanted to take this opportunity to inform you of some additional steps we are taking in our commitment to develop the Utica Shale formation in your area. Enclosed you will find Hillcorp's request to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board to establish two well spacing units, at least one of which would either include your land or be adjacent to the existing unit in which your land is located. This order would ensure that Hillcorp can fully and efficiently realize the potential of the Utica Shale formation for its leaseholders with the least amount of impact to the surface.

Now imagine doing a little research in the interest of translating this missive and coming upon Hilcorp's application to frack the Pulaski Accumulation--that sits directly under the house you inherited from your mom whose family has owned that property, say 20 acres, for, say, 100 years. Imagine you have loved that land, its forests, its pond, its critters. Imagine you grew up looking out onto the sunset from the back porch of that house, and that you've put both your money and your sweat equity into adding on an extra room, a shed for your tools, and a really cool wood swing set for your own kids.

Then you read this:

The Pulaski Accumulation is an underground reservoir underlying approximately 3,276 acres containing a common accumulation of natural gas in the Utica-Point Pleasant formation, approximately 7400 feet below the surface and 3800 feet below the Onandaga horizon, located in the Northwest corner of Lawrence County and the Southwest corner of mercer County in Pulaski Township...The Utica-Point Pleasant formation lacks sufficient permeability to be drained using a conventional vertical well [therefore, can only be drained via slick water, hydraulic, horizontal fracturing--fracking], [and the recoverable gas] could not be drained from a single well-pad.

Photograph by Wendy Lynne Lee

Now, let's say you've seen a bunch of those flag-waving good American ads for energy security, and for "cheap, abundant natural gas," and it occurs to you that that's all well and good so long as you have a say in the leasing of your family land, it won't be destroyed, that your property values won't be compromised, and that the gas is for domestic markets. You didn't build that swing-set just because you had some extra 2x4s laying around--you want to leave the land to your kids just like your mom left it to you--or better.

Then a neighbor you run into at the grocery hands you something he printed out, and he says it's a good idea to read it. You stick it under your arm, but you've got a sort of sinking feeling about all this, and you read it as soon as you get back to your car:

Bob Svetlak has lived on his family's Lawrence County homestead since 1949, and none of it's for sale — not his house, not his trees and certainly not his gas rights. But he may not have a choice about the gas. Hilcorp Energy Co. has taken legal steps to access natural gas beneath the 14.6 acres Svetlak owns near the Ohio border without his consent, arguing a law more than five decades old gives it the right to combine his land with others into a drilling unit. If Hilcorp succeeds, it would be the first time in Pennsylvania's shale boom that a driller used the tactic, and it could lead to more widespread use. “I didn't buy this land to sell it,” said Svetlak, 73, of Pulaski. “I bought it for peace and property, like a lot of people in this country. I live here for the tranquility.”  (http://triblive.com/business/headlines/4828098-74/hilcorp-pooling-gas#ixzz2wAF2epye)

"That's Bob," you mumble out loud. "He lives right down the road!" What law?" 

The article continues:

Hilcorp is using a legal maneuver known as forced pooling, in which neighboring plots of land are combined into a single unit for drilling. In geologic formations deeper than the Marcellus shale, the 1961 law allows drillers to combine gas rights into pools, even if property owners oppose. [Also see: http://law.psu.edu/_file/aglaw/SummaryOfOilAndGasConservationLaw.pdf 

Photograph by Wendy Lynne Lee

Now you're just pissed, and you're figuring out what that letter means, and you realize it might as well have been addressed to "Dear Sucker." Who the hell decided that Hilcorp could make decisions about what happens on your land? And what 50 year old law gets Hillcorp the right to frack it? It seems to you like all your neighbors are probably just like Bob, and that if you get together, maybe pool your resources to hire a lawyer, you can probably beat this thing. But then you read a little further, and you discover that you're a "small parcel" landowner standing in the way of the big boys, like "Martin “Bruce” Clingan, 71, owner of the 200-acre Clingan's Tanglewood Public Golf Course....whose home is on the Pulaski golf course property," and who says "it's unfair for a few small-parcel owners to block him from getting the most from his property." "You've got to be just shitting me," you say out loud, a little louder now, while your milk gets warm. "Who the hell is this Hilcorps?"

You head home, and read the letter again, but you realize that this is what it really says:

Dear Land-Owning Sucker:

We at Hilcorp are relentless in the pursuit of profit. Hence we have decided that in order to make this gambit on fracking the Utica worth the millions we are going to have to put into it, we have to get every square inch of land we can under our drill bit. And that means yours. 

Thanks, 

Steve Fisackerly, Senior Landman, Hilcorp Energy Company

What adds insult to injury is that Hilcorp has the audacity to ask you to come to a hearing date--3.25-6, 2014--and "voice your support for the Well Spacing Application." In other words, Hilcorp not only wants you to acquiesce quietly to what may be the permanent destruction of your property and tanking of your property values, but they want you to cheerlead for them!

Let's consider an analogy: imagine you are a person with two kidneys--as you likely are--and I tell you that sometime in the past I somehow managed to get title to one of those kidneys through the state. I now decide I need that kidney--not because I don't have two perfectly functional ones, but just because I want more kidneys for my kidney collection that I know I can sell to China for a gazillion dollars. I discover a 50 year old law that says that even though it might do you serious bodily harm, I have title to your kidney. In fact, I have title to that kidney even if its the only one you've got. And, I'd like you to come to a hearing where lots of other folks are being made to give up a kidney, and I'd like you to tell them how excited you are to give up yours. Call it your approval of the KidneyCorp Spacing Application.

 Now perhaps you think this analogy is a bit much. After all, it's just your land that's up for the big drill, not your body. But I'll bet that's not how Bob sees it, and the minute you do a ten minute search into, say, Hilcorp in Ohio, Louisiana, or Alaska or Colorado, you realize that what they're really asking for isn't just your kidney--it's your soul--and they don't give a rat's ass about how they get it, so long as they do, and as quickly as possible, even if it's over the corpse of your family land. In fact, according to Stuart H. Smith, if Hilcorp makes a big mess of your land, they want legislatures to make sure to pass laws that make them entirely immune to liability: 

"Hilcorp, the largest oil producer in Louisiana, purchased the Erath Field from Texaco in 1995 at the dramatically discounted price of $1.5 million. One of the reasons Hilcorp was able to acquire the southern Louisiana oilfield on the cheap is that Erath came saddled with a significant environmental liability. That is, liability in the form of contamination, including asbestos and radioactive waste (primarily radium-226) from past production processes.

Since the 1995 purchase, Hilcorp has made more than $100 million operating in the Erath Field. Not a bad return on investment, even by bloated oil industry standards. But now, much to Hilcorp’s indignation, there are landowner lawsuits pending that threaten to cut into the company’s record-breaking profits. But Hilcorp and its fat-cat CEO Jeffery Hildebrand have no one to blame but themselves.

As part of the 1995 deal, Hilcorp assumed Texaco’s legal obligation to clean up the toxic material left on private property. That legal obligation is clearly stated in the 1995 Purchase and Sale Agreement that formalized the transaction. Further­more, Hilcorp promised to indemnify Texaco for any damages caused by historical operations in the field. In other words, Hilcorp —like many other oil producers that purchased discounted fields —assumed all liability for all contamination at the site."

Samuel James Broussard

"These are contract cases, pure and simple. Hilcorp is violating the terms of its contract requiring a complete cleanup of the existing contamination in the Erath Field.
Despite the absence of any sort of legal leg to stand on, Hilcorp — and dozens of other smaller oil companies across Louisiana — have orchestrated an aggressive campaign to deny landowners their day in court. The industry is putting heavy pressure on the Republican-controlled state legislature to pass a bill that would strip landowners of their legal right to sue oil companies (like Hilcorp) for damages to their private property." (http://www.louisianaweekly.com/letter-to-the-editor-contractual-obligations-and-toxic-waste/).

And if you think the oil and gas industry doesn't own every bit as much of Pennsylvania's governors and legislature, you just haven't been paying attention. 

Let's take one more look at the KidneyCorp analogy:

Kidney (Hil) Corp: If another surgeon makes a big mess of the rest of your body while they're extracting your kidney, and they leave that mess behind, and I buy out their surgical practice, and I agree that cleaning up their mess was part of the bill of sale, well, I didn't mean that, and I am going to make sure to buy whatever legislators I need to to make sure I don't pay a dime, and that you can't sue me.

You: That doesn't seem at all fair. After all, you agreed to take on the liability of the surgeon who left my body in this state of damage. In fact, it can't be restored, but you ought at least be liable for remediation.

Kidney (Hil) Corp: We damn sorry. Got-ta git a'go'in--we hear the Utica a'calling (said aloud in your best Texas accent).

Still not convinced that HillCorp stands for "conscienceless profiteering"? 

• Ohio, 3.10.14: "Ohio authorities shut down a hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, natural gas operation in Mahoning County on Monday after two earthquakes were felt in the area, near the Pennsylvania border...The quakes registered magnitudes of 3.0 and 2.6, the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center...The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) halted operations of Texas-based Hilcorp Energy — which conducts fracking in the area — while experts from the department analyze data from the earthquakes" ((http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/10/ohio-earthquakeslinkedtofracking.html).
  
• Louisiana, 11.15.12: "The Hilcorp Energy Company of Houston has been fined $26,100 by the Environmental Protection Agency for Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure violations under the Clean Water Act. A March 28, 2012, inspection of the South Pass Block 24 offshore oil production facility in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, found the company failed to address secondary containment for spilled gasoline and collection of oil discharges. The spill prevention and countermeasure plan did not provide a spare pump or method of activation for surface and underground valves at the facility, and the company had not developed or implemented a response plan to address a major oil discharge" (11/15/2012: Hilcorp Energy Company Fined for Violating the Clean Water Act).

• Colorado, 11.20.11: Hillcorp drills a well a small field away from an entire subdivision of homes in Commerce City where land between the subdivision and the well had been ear-marked for an elementary school. Concerned about the possibility that this could be the fate of other communities in Colorado, the Colorado Springs Citizens for Community Rights "has sued the city of Colorado Springs in an effort to move forward a petition to amend the City Charter to ban oil and gas drilling in the city (Colorado Springs group sues to allow vote on fracking ban - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23214709/colorado-springs-group-sues-allow-vote-fracking-ban#ixzz2wAntzj3d).

But the most egregious case comes perhaps from the beautiful state of Alaska:

Hilcorp pays $115,000 penalty for drilling violations | State News | ADN.com

Hilcorp has paid a $115,500 civil penalty for the latest in a string of enforcement actions drilling regulators have taken against the company during its brief time as an oil and gas operator in Alaska.The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission says Hilcorp has drawn more than a dozen enforcement actions.The most recent case centers on an oil development well known as Soldotna Creek Unit 44-33. The Soldotna Creek unit is associated with the Hilcorp-operated Swanson River field.Hilcorp failed to notify the AOGCC of changes to an approved permit to drill. And the company failed to test blowout prevention equipment after it was used to control the well, the commission said.The agency suggested the company's vigor since arriving in Alaska had been a problem."The aggressiveness with which Hilcorp is moving forward with operations appears to be contributing to regulatory compliance issues," said an April 10 decision and order from the commission. "Since Hilcorp commenced rig work in Alaska in April 2012, AOGCC Inspectors have observed rig crews unable to perform required BOPE component tests, rig crews not trained in use of well control equipment, and rigs with missing required equipment. Hilcorp's compliance history from April through December 2012 -- including this enforcement action -- shows 13 separate enforcement actions of varying severity since April 2012."The order continued: "Many of these actions were due to a failure to understand regulatory requirements. Strong evidence indicates that Hilcorp has not adequately prepared its personnel for operations in compliance with AOGCC regulatory requirements. Left unaddressed and uncorrected these and similar violations will be repeated." (http://www.petroleumnews.com/pdfarch/984194629.pdf). 

But as recently as May, 2013 Hillcorp continued its "foray" into Alaska "by picking up 19 new leases in the declining Cook Inlet" despite increasing concern raised by fishermen about the decreasing salmon stock due to "the loss and degradation of freshwater habitat," and specifically citing HillCorp:

"In August, Cook Inletkeeper contends, Fish and Game illegally issued permits allowing Hilcorp Alaska to mine boulders and fill a salmon stream in the Redoubt Bay critical habitat area in order to resume oil storage at Drift River" (Group raises new concerns about threats to Cook Inlet salmon habitat | Alaska Dispatch)

So, why should folks in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania believe that Hilcorp's modus operandi will be any less aggressive fracking the Utica-- under your land against your will--but with the blessing of the law? What kind of law is it that allows this kind of mercenary theft and ecological liquidation? 

Let's return to the facts. According to Marcellus Drilling News "The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection balked at invoking the old law to force the landowner and instead tossed this hot potato to the Environmental Hearing Board (Ironic: PA Enviro Court Forcing DEP to Rule on Forced Pooling | Marcellus Drilling News). That's code for "Predictably, DEP too cowardly to tell Hillcorp no." But the Environmental Hearing Board claims--and likely rightly--that it does not have this sort of jurisdiction. 

Photograph by Wendy Lynne Lee

So back the decision goes to DEP, and with it a hearing on 3.25-6, 2014--with virtually no public notice--and the potential to set a precedent for the state that, as an effective antidote to the upset stomach drillers got over Act 13's ignominious demise, could make Pennsylvania not merely the Saudi Arabia of natural gas--but the wild wild west. 

And if you're thinking that sounds romantic or exciting, think again, cuz' the only thing that will be left is a poisoned desert otherwise known as a superfund site. 

Now, time to get on your boots--the ones with the spurs--and saddle up for that hearing: March 25 and to be continued at 8 a.m. March 26 in the Penn State Extension conference room in the Lawrence County courthouse. It will be open to the public (Firm seeks to force drilling on landowners » Local News » The Herald, Sharon, Pa.).

For some other sources, please see:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/03/10/ODNR-shuts-down-fracking-operation-following-earthquakes.html

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/10/ohio-earthquakeslinkedtofracking.html

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/54E975706D206FAB85257AB70069E41E

http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/10/03/guess-whos-fueling-the-fracking-boom/

http://gomarcellusshale.com/group/lawrence-county/forum/topics/hilcorp-lawrence-county-pa-well-pads

http://www.alliednews.com/local/x1783680279/Violations-drilling-permits-recounted#sthash.jEZ3gjOz.dpuf

Skytruth Alert: PA Permit Violation Issued to Hilcorp Energy Co in Jefferson Twp, Mercer County 2014-01-15

http://theadvocate.com/csp/mediapool/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=qBRfsLD0sREKVn6eG4HXOJM5tm0Zxrvol3sywaAHBAlYnNN7y0yPxseDnjbzPlxvE0$uXvBjavsllACLNr6VhLEUIm2tympBeeq1Fwi7sIigrCfKm_F3DhYfWov3omce$8CAqP1xDAFoSAgEcS6kSQ--&CONTENTTYPE=application/pdf&CONTENTDISPOSITION=Jefferson%20Original%20Petition%20-%20Jeff%20v%20Chevron%20_Lafitte_.pdf

Commerce City approves fracking rules - The Denver Post

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/06/14/2940176/hilcorp-pays-115000-penalty-for.html#storylink=cpy

FROM RURAL PENNSYLVANIA TO VLADIMIR PUTIN WITH LOVE: POISONED KISSES FROM THE MARQUARDT, UNIT 1H, EXCO.

Photographing the Marquardt

Thanks to the excellent Shale Justice Executive Committee Member John Trallo, here are some fun facts about frack waste at just one frack pad in Pennsylvania, EXCO's Marquardt Unit 1 H, from July 2009-June 2011--and a few pictures that the industry would just as soon see criminalized--taken from the public roads that the industry would prefer to control for its own purposes:

Total Drilling fluid waste:	29,581 gallons (704 bbls)
Total Flowback fracturing sand:	1,355 gallons (32 bbls)
Total Fracing fluid waste:	720,846 gallons (17,163 bbls)
Waste Details:

Waste Type: FRACING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 6738.00 (Bbl) Disposal Method: CENTRALIZED TREATMENT PLANT FOR RECYCLE: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jan - Jun 2011 (6 months) 
Waste Type: DRILLING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 704.31 (Bbl)Disposal Method: CENTRALIZED TREATMENT PLANT FOR RECYCLEWaste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jul - Dec 2011 (6 months) Comment text: Not yet completed to frack.
Waste Type: FRACING FLUID WASTE: Waste Quantity: 10425.00 (Bbl) Disposal Method: REUSE OTHER THAN ROAD SPREADING: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jul - Dec 2012 (Unconventional wells) Comment Reason: Well Temporarily Shut-In Comment text: APPLYING FOR INACTIVE WELL STATUS

Waste Type: FLOWBACK FRACTURING SAND: Waste Quantity: 32.25 (Tons)Disposal Method: LANDFILL: Waste Facility: ( Show/Hide Facility Details)

Reporting Period: Jan - Jun 2013 (Unconventional wells) Comment Reason: Well Temporarily Shut-In Comment text: APPLIED FOR INACTIVE STATUS AT PA-DEP

This site has five violations, including two for "Pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances," another for "no permit # on sign, cellar full of water - no bubbles, 750 psi on prod. frac tanks on site need to clean up contaminated soil around cellar garbage dumpster is full and trash is all over - clean up," and a spill reported February, 2014: "Spill reported 2/27/14. Several barrels flowback blew out of flare stack. Little sign of spill on ground. Results pending site characterization report."

Wanna see the trash? 

And here's an interesting factoid: when you copy and paste the violation report, it redacts the central content. Hence I have left stand the redactions--so the reader can see precisely what EXCO would prefer you to NOT see. And I have included my own photographs so you can see what EXCO has left of your countryside.

Here are the same sentences, typed out ver batim: This site has five violations, including two for "pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances," another for "no permit # on sign, cellar full of water- no bubbles- 750 psu on prod. frac tanks on site need to clean up contaminated soil around cellar garbage dumpster is full and trash is all over--clean up."

Then there was the spill reported 2.27.14 that included "several barrels of flowback that blew out of flare stack..."

To Putin with Love

As reported in an excellent New York Times article, "U.S. Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin," 

The crisis in Crimea is heralding the rise of a new era of American energy diplomacy, as the Obama administration tries to deploy the vast new supply of natural gas in the United States as a weapon to undercut the influence of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, over Ukraine and Europe.

American Energy Diplomacy.

Honestly. What transparent Bull Shit. This is merely code for: exploit the crisis in Ukraine as an opportunity to effectively appropriate from Russia the very thing that fuels Putin's hegemony--gas. This isn't about aid to Ukraine; this isn't about the reincarnation of the Cold War; it's about taking full advantage of political and economic instability as a means to "justify" the export of natural gas from the United States, and thereby "justify" the continues conversion of the shale regions--just like Davidson Township--into frack-gas colonies for multinationals like ExxonMobil. 

Reduce Ukraine's dependency on Russia, by what? Swapping it out for that struggling nation's dependency on ExxonMobil--or one more company whose profits line the pockets of our elected representatives? If we think there is any real difference between Gazprom and ExxonMobil (or any of the other natural gas giants), we are fools. This struggle isn't about geography, national identity, or cultural and ethnic heritage nearly as much as it's about whose fossil fuel regime is going to control our addiction to what's left of the gas. 

While nationalism may provide one very ugly face to this conflict, and while other equally ugly ideologies like Neo-Nazism may capitalize on the conflict, the facts are that this is about who has access to these last drops of gas, whose going to make money off it, and who is going to bear the expense. If we do not begin to see this clearly--if we do not end this addiction--the struggle we are watching play out in Ukraine is merely a preview of coming attractions.

But I digress, so let me bring this right back down to home:

All the while the United States, the European Union, the Russians, and the Ukrainians are playing a ludicrous game of brinksmanship over geographical boundaries that matter no more to multinationals like ExxonMobil or EXCO than the mileage they can get out of waving flags in advertising campaigns, the only real obstacle the multinationals face is a growing global citizenry that's wising up to the destruction of the only planet any of us have: this one.

So--no wonder they're willing to use whatever means they have--governments, police forces, surveillance agencies, private security forces, retired intelligence officers to shut us up and shut us down. 

The only real difference between, say, the Pennsylvania State Police/Joint FBI Terrorism Task Force Officer at your door and the "State Department initiative to use a new boom in American natural gas as a lever against Russia" is a difference of strategy to the very same ends--the conversion of fossil fuel into the cool crisp color of money.

We all have a right to know the ways in which we are being poisoned, the real meaning of regulation as rate of harm, and the deception, manipulation, and extortion to which the industry is willing to put its time in the interest of getting the gas out to the highest bidder. We have a right to know what our government might be willing to go to war for--cuz' it ain't you.

Hell, with the new push by the gas companies--especially ExxonMobil to exploit to its maximum potential the crisis in Ukraine in order to create new markets for shale gas--and the willing complicity of the Obama Administration to this latest industry gambit, why shouldn't we expect to see even more reckless behavior, more pressure to drill, more pressure to construct pipeline--more explosions, more spills, more of the transformation of Pennsylvania--and everywhere there's frackable shale--into the profits of companies who are more than willing to exploit nationalist and ethnic rivalries, ego-driven posturing of world leaders, and the economic destitution of entire peoples to its profit objectives.

I am often cautioned not to use the language of "genocidal profiteering" to describe the behavior of the fossil fuel industry.

But what else is this maniacal rush to extract the last drop of gas using technology that liquidates our ecologies, destroys our communities, contributes to climate change--and is right now fueling, literally and figuratively, the machinery of war?

What none of these heads of state or their operatives seem to get is that people--Americans, Ukrainians--people want to live. And we want our children to live. Folks are beginning to wake up to the fact that "sustainable" means nothing to ExxonMobil or Shell or Anadarko or Chesapeake or Chevron than a barely survivable wasteland that looks more like the stripped arm of a heroin junkie than like a world you could leave to our kids.

And that's pretty much where I always end these musings. Your kids. My kids. Ukrainian kids. Russian kids. The kids who live near EXCO's Marquardt, Unit 1, with its insufficiently constructed pits and tanks, it's spills, and its "stakeholders" willingness to hold us all hostage even to the threat of war for the sake of its relentless pursuit of the only green it knows, the one it uses as a cadaver's cosmetics, but whose real color is always that of money

(THE WRENCH: CADAVER COSMETICS: THE AESTHETICS OF "SUSTAINABILITY").

Wendy Lynne Lee
Shale Justice/Shale Justice
Flickr Photographs of the Marquardt:
It's all the loyalsock to me: Rine road frack pad, sullivan county, pa - a set on Flickr