Welcome to Watershed Wednesday! Each Wednesday from now until March 30, Mountainkeeper will send out reminders and sample comments to make it easy for you to urge the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to say no to fracking and drilling activities in the Delaware River watershed. There's no limit to the number of comments you submit.
Since today is Valentine's Day, we're focusing on love; our love of clean, pure, uncontaminated water. Water that hasn't been poisoned by fracking wastewater. Please tell the DRBC to ban fracking wastewater in the watershed.
TODAY: Submit a comment to the DRBC. Tell the commissioners: fracking wastewater cannot be regulated in the watershed--it must be banned.
According to the DRBC itself, fracking wastewater from the Marcellus shale formation can contain:
- Salts, including chloride, bromide, sulfate, sodium, magnesium, and calcium;
- Metals, including barium, manganese, iron, and strontium;
- Naturally-occurring organic compounds, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes(BTEX), and oil and grease;
- Radioactive materials, including radium; and
- Hydraulic fracturing chemicals and their chemical transformation products.
These potent and toxic cancer-causing chemicals are hazardous to human health and our river ecosystem--they cannot and should not be regulated. They must be banned.
15 million people rely on the Delaware River basin for drinking water. The DRBC must ban fracking wastewater in the basin to protect our health and our environment. Your comments are critically important for convincing the DRBC to the right thing. The stakes couldn't be higher.
To make the comment process easier, and for folks with limited internet access, we’ve prepared some simple ways for you to weigh in as often as you can over the next month and a half. Simply click here to find an easy form where you can type your own comments. And in the form itself, we've added a link to some suggested comments in case you're looking for inspiration. We'll collect all comments submitted and deliver them to the DRBC.
If this is the first you're hearing about this, read on below for more info about the river, the commission, and DRBC's proposal. Otherwise, please submit a comment now and tell DRBC that it needs to ban fracking, water withdrawals for fracking, and wastewater storage and disposal to protect our families' health and keep our water clean.
Thank you for all the love you show our water.
Wes Gillingham, Mountainkeeper Associate Director
About the Delaware River - The Delaware River Basin is a 13,539 square mile territory that stretches from New York’s Schoharie County south to Delaware Bay and includes much of Delaware County, Sullivan County, in New York State and the Poconos in Pennsylvania. Over 15,000,000 people rely on the waters of the Delaware River Basin for drinking, agricultural and industrial use. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy and the governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York signed a compact with the force of law to create a regional body--the Delaware River Basin Commission--to manage the Delaware River and the land through which it runs. It was the first time the federal government and a group of states joined together to oversee a river basin.
About the Draft Regulations - The DRBC issued draft natural gas regulations on Nov. 30, 2017 and the public may comment until March 30, 2018. The commission proposed a ban on fracking in the basin, but in the same draft regulations also proposed allowing companies to store, process, and discharge toxic fracking wastewater into the Delaware River Watershed. The proposal also allows water to be exported from the Basin for fracking elsewhere.
Every Wednesday through the end of March we will be sending out reminders and examples of comments you can tailor for your own submission, and we'll touch on different topics. Feel free to comment once or submit a number of comments on the issues you care about the most.
Thanks for all you do, and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions.
