While hydrofracking was not listed on the packed agenda for Upper West Side Community Board 7’s first meeting of the new year last week, the contentious issue did receive a fair amount of attention during the public session of the meeting. The general consensus in the room was opposition to any fracking in upstate New York, which Gov. Cuomo appears on the verge of approving.

New York State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who represents District 67, stated that there should be “no rush” to approve fracking, citing the inadequacy of the Department of Environmental Conservation health and safety reports and the potential costs to the climate. Her firm stance on the issue was met with applause from concerned community members who attended the forum and board members alike. Several politicians and their spokesmen echoed this call for caution. The board has taken

New York State Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal

the position that fracking should not be done unless the safety of the water supply for 8 million New Yorkers can be assured, CB7 Chair Mark Diller said in a phone interview after the meeting.

Angela Fox, a concerned community member and head of an anti-fracking coalition called The Mothers Project, which emphasizes the danger to women and children who might be exposed to toxins, namely radon, in gas extracted by fracking. This danger exists whether or not New York State performs fracking itself, since the city pipes in fracked gas from other locales. “She painted the picture of a mother standing at the stove with a baby on her hip, cooking dinner on a gas stove using fracked gas and absorbing the toxins,” Diller said.

“Radon, a byproduct of fracking, is the second leading cause of lung cancer next to cigarettes,” Fox pointed out. “If we get Marcellus Shale gas from nearby, it doesn’t dissipate.” She is also, notably, the mother of Josh Fox, a prominent environmental activist who directed Gasland, a documentary that exposed the dangers of fracking.

It is questionable what CB7 can do to mitigate the damages imposed by fracking if Gov. Cuomo does decide to approve it in select areas upstate, but local legislators such as Rosenthal and newly sworn-in Sen. Brad Hoylman (who replaced Tom Duane) offered a few words on the issue. Both say they remain committed to continuing the legislative fight for their respective districts.

Having reached a consensus on fracking, the board got down to business on issues that proved thornier to reach agreement on, including some lengthy discussion on the Manhattan Core Parking Amendment, which affects off-street parking regulations in Manhattan Community Districts 1-8, such as how many spaces parking garages must set aside for monthly versus transient parkers. “Our concern,” said Diller, “is that we do not want to do anything that will encourage more driving to the Upper West Side.”

Additional reporting by Amy Zimmerman.

Parts of Lower Manhattan may spend the holidays and beyond hooked up to noisy, noxious generators if building management companies don’t soon finish necessary repairs.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many downtown Manhattan buildings relied on emergency generators for power in an effort to return to normalcy. As of last week, Council Member Margaret Chin’s office reported 105 emergency generators were still operating downtown, providing electricity to these buildings.

While these generators may be necessary in an emergency, community members and elected officials are concerned over why they still have such a prominent presence downtown. The generators emit potent, potentially hazardous fumes and often deafening noises. They also appear to be running largely unregulated by city agencies, which have not demonstrated much oversight in the situation, according to downtown’s elected officials.

“Many of the streets in Lower Manhattan, particularly in the Financial District, are literally lined with [these] generators,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. “We all know that after 9/11, thousands of Lower Manhattan residents were exposed to air that caused serious health problems, and we cannot allow that to happen again.”

A Con Edison spokesperson explained that the buildings’ management companies are responsible for the generators still in place.

“They’re the ones who bore the brunt,” he said.

Chin’s office agreed that Con Edison is not to blame for the delay. The buildings’ management companies reportedly continue to push back the dates when they’ll be ready to reconnect to power, now giving time frames as late as April in some cases.

“Con Edison is willing and ready to hook these buildings back up,” said Kelly Magee, a spokesperson for the council member. “The buildings are not ready to receive power. The buildings have some kind of issue, whether it’s damage to the transformer or a part that needs a replacement—they’re unable to hook back up to the grid.”

Magee said these buildings’ management companies would not return their phone calls and there was no explanation as to why the dates kept getting pushed back. She speculated building management companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to make other repairs to their buildings. Without incentive for the management companies and enforcement by the city, she said there’s not enough pressure for the companies to act in a timely fashion.

Once a building is ready to be hooked back up to the Con Edison grid, only a quick inspection is necessary before this can take place.

Council Member Chin, whose Lower Manhattan district has many such generators, is disappointed in the city’s response thus far. She said her office has received many residential complaints over the last month and that she’s repeatedly reached out to the city and tried to work through official channels.

One woman called the council member’s office to complain she had fainted while exiting a downtown subway because of the overwhelming fumes released by the generators.

“The residents are contacting our office and saying they need help—these fumes are going right into their apartments,” explained Chin. “People have been very patient and they understand it’s an emergency, but week after week … it’s taking too long.”

“The Department of Health needs to provide solutions,” said Chin. “Now they’re saying seal off your windows with plastic—that’s not an appropriate way to live.”

“The phone calls are seriously disturbing,” added Magee.

Magee said the council member’s office has been working to get the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene to come out and regularly conduct inspections of the generators.

“What it seems like to us is in the beginning there was an emergency situation; a lot was done without much oversight, and it wasn’t until we asked for enforcement that the DEP started doing anything,” Magee said.

“We go and look around ourselves, and we can see the smoke spewing out,” she added. “The DEP needs to be down there every single day, and they need to get the dirty ones out.”

The council member said it seemed not much thought had been given to the generators’ physical placement either.

“To be listening to one 24 hours a day is a lot to ask of residents,” said Chin, who explained they were loud enough to drown out any conversation in the street.

Ryan Carlino works on Water Street, right by the river. He said he was not allowed to return to his office building until Dec. 4.

“We literally have to walk through a tunnel of generators to get to the entrance of our building,” he said. “There’s smoke everywhere. It constantly smells like diesel fumes.”

“I’m sure they’re safe, I guess,” he added. “They were OK’d by the EPA. But they look like they could blow up or electrocute someone at any point.”

The generators are also loud, according to Carlino. “The noise isn’t a huge inconvenience since you can’t hear them inside,” he said. “It’s just really weird and post-apocalyptic walking through them to get to work.”

When asked how he knew the generator had been approved by the EPA, Carlino said his company’s operations coordinators told workers the EPA had checked them out.

A Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson confirmed that DEP inspectors are going block by block in Lower Manhattan to ensure that all generators are properly certified and are meeting emissions standards, and the DEP has also teamed up with the city’s Health Department and the state Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor air quality. The agencies have installed three additional air testing sites since Hurricane Sandy and have not detected patterns of higher concentrations of particulate matter.

While they may technically be safe, the generators are still a huge nuisance. In many cases, residents cannot understand why the generators powering some commercial buildings must remain running all night.

“Imagine that happening continuously all day long and at night when people are supposed to be sleeping,” said Chin. “We have families and lots of young kids down here.”

Chin said the city has already established a rapid repair program with residential buildings, one which might soon have to extend to commercial buildings as well.

“It’s unacceptable that they will be there all winter,” she said. “If there are missing parts, get them.”
While the noise and pollutants affect residents and workers in the area, Chin is particularly concerned about generators operating directly outside of a downtown school complex.

“We need all the help we can get,” said Chin. “We want this done by Christmas. This is our Christmas present.”

Carlino is at least glad to be back in his own office building despite the generators. “We were up in Times Square,” he said. “It was awful.”

Governon Cuomo. Photo by azipaybarah, via Flickr Creative Commons.

Following the completion of a Department of Environmental Conservation environmental impact study, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to decide this week whether or not to allow natural gas companies to extract gas by hydro-fracking, a drilling technique that blasts a high-pressure mix of water, chemicals and other materials deep underground to crack open rocks.

New York is sharply divided over the issue. Many towns have enacted temporary moratoriums on fracking, while many others have passed resolutions supporting it, the Wall Street Journal reports. Cuomo is anticipated to allow drilling to begin on a limited basis in the latter towns along the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich underground rock formation in southern New York that extends out to Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

Proponents of hydro-fracking argue that the technique would help to bolster the state’s economically depressed region by generating tax income for local governments and creating 15,000 of jobs, according to NPR. Pennsylvania, for instance, has experienced a natural gas boom in the past decade by allowing high-volume fracking.

Opponents worry about the practice’s environmental costs. They argue that blasting chemicals deep into the earth threatens small town groundwater supplies. Celebrities including Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney and Alec Baldwin have banned together to fight fracking in the state, and over 1,000 demonstators marched to the Capitol on Monday to make their voices heard.

Check back for updates as Cuomo prepares to announce his decision.

Josh Fox

By Mayara Guimaraes

Josh Fox has been loudly proclaiming the dangers of hydrofracking with his words and films ever since a gas company sought to lease his family’s land in Pennsylvania several years ago. After he conducted some research into the controversial process, he declined the $100,000 offer and set out to educate others on what he had discovered. The result was his Academy Award-nominated documentary, Gasland.

Now at work on Gasland 2 and petitioning local governments to prohibit fracking, Fox spoke to Our Town about the latest developments in New York State and why he thinks Gov. Andrew Cuomo is about to make a catastrophic mistake.

Our Town: Do you think that by sharing hydrofracking regulations with the gas industry before they were released to the public, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) gave the industry an advantage?

Fox: I think that this shows the deep and very cozy relationship between the gas industry and the agency that is supposed to be regulating on behalf of the people. What is even more shocking is that they were answering questions about the regulations, back and forth with the gas industry, but they weren’t answering the people’s questions. We submitted a list of 25 very technical questions, very similar questions to the ones sent by the gas industry, and we received absolutely no response. This could become a moment where people will say the gas industry has bought out our democracy. Why is that the industry gets to write the rules?

How is the fracking debate here in New York different than in other states?
New York had the benefit of taking a looking at what happened in Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania—they had the benefit of knowledge. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Rendell and Gov. Corbett rolled out the red carpet for the gas industry. The people did not know what fracking was, and as a result Pennsylvania is being trashed. It is a devastating situation. We have nightmare after nightmare in environmental disasters unfolding in Pennsylvania, and it is the same in Colorado, Wyoming and Texas. But New York had the benefit of looking at this and getting really well organized.

What are some things that the average New Yorker doesn’t know about fracking but should?
In general, we are used to turning the light switch on and off and not thinking where the energy comes from. That has to change. The fossil fuel industry started to run out of the easily obtainable oil, coal and gas. Now, a sane person would look at that and think, well, let’s start changing to renewable energy. That is not what the fossil fuel industry did. They decided to go to the extreme type of energy—extremely dangerous, extremely hard to get, involving extreme amounts of energy used to get the energy. What I am talking about is fracking, nonstop removal for coal or deepwater drilling on the Gulf of Mexico, which is unpredictable, as we all saw two years ago with the oil spill that they had. Right now, the clean water supply of New York City is on the hook.

A scene from Gasland

What do you think of the possibility that Cuomo will only allow fracking in a few counties that are in favor of the gas industry?
There is nothing in this proposal from Cuomo that says it will stop the industry from working all over the state. The truth is that this is just a way to open the door and pass regulation; once these regulations are passed, the gas industry is just going to say, ‘Well, there is no such a thing as regulations that only are valid in parts of the state.’ And they will have a point. There is something called unequal protection under the law. There is no way to protect some people and not protect others under the same law. We went to Gov. Cuomo and told him not to do this—not to experiment with poor counties that are less politically represented and are desperate because of economic problems.

The one thing that the governor has done right so far is to not move forward with this proposal. I think that he has shown healthy skepticism. This is going to be disastrous for his legacy. We know by looking at the gas industry documents that these wells are going to leak. We know that there is a statistical probability of blowouts, of contamination incidents.

What can you tell us about your upcoming documentary, Gasland 2?
The film is an investigation about the level of the relationship between the government and the gas industry. There is a level of communication and collaboration between the government and the industry that is outsizing the citizen right now. Right now we are seeing a different type of contamination caused by fracking; it is not the water or the air, it is the contamination of our democracy.

Hydrofracking site in Lancaster, Penn.

By Megan Bungeroth & Mayara Guimaraes

The debate over hydrofracking has been raging in New York for years, and it may be coming to a head this year as Gov. Andrew Cuomo contemplates allowing the controversial drilling technique in the state for the first time.

The state currently has a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, but the governor has recently indicated that he would be open to allowing the process in certain areas of the state near the border with Pennsylvania, where fracking is already underway.

Fracking is a process used to extract natural gas from shale rock. Large volumes of water, chemicals and sand or ceramic beads are pumped into rock at high pressures, fracturing it and releasing the gas deposits that can then be piped to the surface. It’s a process that has been in practice in the oil and gas mining industries for decades, but a surge in natural gas production in recent years has put the latest hydrofracking methods into the national spotlight, and many New Yorkers don’t like what they’re seeing.

“While I understand the economic arguments in favor, those arguments do not take into account the potential costs—both economic and environmental—associated with fracking,” said State Sen. Liz Krueger. She’s been a vocal opponent of fracking in the state, as have many of her Upper East Side constituents.

“The experience of other states with ground and surface water contamination and well blowouts, concerns about the contents of fracking fluids and the significant damage to existing infrastructure that could result from allowing fracking are simply too great,” she said.
Problems in other states—contaminated drinking water being the gravest among them—have made New Yorkers especially cautious about allowing the process at home. The potential benefits, however, are what have been swaying some upstate lawmakers and landowners to lobby to allow fracking. Aside from the royalties offered to landowners in economically depressed areas of the state where farming has fallen by the wayside, allowing fracking has the potential to create jobs and tax revenue.

There’s also a large U.S. supply of natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal or oil. “You have to look at what’s available and what’s viable,” said Alan Herbst, a principal with Utilis Advisory Group, a New York-based oil and gas industry consulting company that has worked with many clients on fracking for natural gas.

“This checks off a lot of boxes. It’s clean, it’s cheap, it’s domestically available. Is it the perfect solution? Maybe not. But it’s something that’s been developed and it will lead up toward energy independence,” he said.

Some argue that energy companies should be investing in alternative fuels instead of pushing for more fracking.

“We’ve known that we need clean, renewable energy for a sustainable planet for a long time. But now, fracking and other extreme extractions are putting us in a precarious position because they’re giving us more fossil fuels at a very high price to our precious water, climate, ecosystems and environment,” said Elizabeth Kelley, a volunteer with the local anti-fracking group United For Action.
“They are delaying renewable energy development and they are taking climate change to the brink.”

Herbst said that while the industry and the state should be looking at other forms of fuel as well as large-scale energy conservation, natural gas will continue to be a big part of the United State’s energy plan for the foreseeable future.

“You can’t be against everything,” Herbst said. “You just can’t produce the power you need with solar and wind. It’s too expensive and it’s not what you call baseload—you can’t rely on it 24 hours a day.”

Upper East Side Assembly Member Micah Kellner has acknowledged the potential benefits of accessing the state’s natural gas reserves but urged the state to hold off until a thorough review can be completed.

“You are not talking about drilling for oil in places that have been used to drilling,” Kellner said. “We are talking about drilling in places throughout New York State—some of the last untouched land in the Northeast—that have never been disturbed.”

The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is taking all of these factors into account as it conducts a Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) on hydrofracking—essentially a report on the potential impacts—and considers the 79,700 comments it has received from the public over two separate comment periods. The report should be completed by the end of the year.

The DEC recently came under scrutiny from several local lawmakers, including State Sens. Krueger and Tom Duane, for releasing some information about their study to the gas industry before making it public. Emily DeSantis, DEC’s spokeswoman, defended that decision.
“DEC has regularly and routinely met with environmental groups, industry, local government representatives and other stakeholders as it develops the final SGEIS for high-volume hydraulic fracturing,” DeSantis wrote in an email.

“Under the State Administrative Procedures Act, state agencies are required to assess the impacts of the regulatory action on the regulated entity. Agencies cannot gather this data without holding meetings and engaging in other forms of communication with the regulated community prior to proposing the regulation. Nothing in the regulations changed as a result,” she said.

Opponents of fracking argue that even strict regulations might not be enough to sufficiently protect the state’s water supply, and that the industry will find a way to get around the regulations regardless. Gas companies are seeking to drill the Marcellus Shale, the rock formation under which most of the region’s natural gas deposits sit. It also encompasses the watershed region in the Catskills from which New York gets most of its fresh water, and many argue that in order to protect the water supply, the state needs to maintain the outright moratorium on fracking that is currently in place.

Daniele Gerard, president of the Upper West Side’s Three Parks Independent Democrats, said there should be a hard line to protect the state’s water. “Water is a precious natural resource. We shouldn’t be injecting it with poisonous chemicals to obtain yet another fossil fuel. Energy companies should be using readily available technology to move wholesale to renewable energy and conservation measures,” she said.

The DEC won’t say what factors they are weighing in crafting their recommendations on hydrofracking, citing the ongoing scientific studies, but DeSantis did say that “if high-volume hydraulic fracturing moves forward in New York, it will do so with the strictest standards in the nation.”

That alone may be enough to keep the industry at bay, some argue, as other states open up for hydrofracking with more lax regulations.

“Given the intense interest and degree of concern expressed to date…it’s difficult to imagine that those restrictions would ever be relaxed regardless of pressure from industry,” said Telisport Putsavage, an environmental and energy law attorney with Sullivan & Worcester and former assistant counsel at the DEC.

“There are multiple shale formations and hydraulic fracturing opportunities in the United States, and I believe industry will ultimately gravitate toward the areas where resistance and regulation is less extensive, rather than continue to fight against what will most likely be the strictest regulatory regimen in the country.”

The proposed garbage dump that will go next to Asphalt Green.

Opponents of the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station (MTS) planned by the city are joining forces with a seemingly unlikely ally, the Friends of LaGuardia Airport. What residents against a trash facility in their neighborhood have in common with a group that advocates for safe conditions at an airport in Queens is that both groups want to halt the transfer station in its tracks.

Air safety experts have begun to speak against the Upper East Side transfer station, as well as another planned for College Point in Queens, pointing to both planned facilities as wildlife attractants that will increase the number of dangerous collisions between flocks of large migratory birds and airplanes taking off from and landing at LaGuardia Airport. Last week, a Delta flight leaving JFK made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff when it struck a flock of birds and one of its engines was damaged, an incident that has reignited attention to this particular avian problem.

“This is a known risk, one that the aviation community has been dealing with for decades,” said James Hall, a transportation safety consultant and former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “The New York airports sit in the middle of an area that is surrounded by water. They are already an area that provides wildlife attractants and challenges in order to provide for safe flight.”

Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, the now-famous pilot who safely landed his plane on the Hudson River after a bird strike crippled its engines in 2009, has spoken against both transfer stations. He told CBS This Morning last week, “It’s a bad idea to build near an airport anything that’s likely to attract birds, including trash facilities,” mentioning the East 91st Street and College Point stations by name.

While locals and politicians in Yorkville have been fighting the transfer station for a myriad of reasons, it seems like their best hope for actually stopping it lies with the lawsuits that the Friends of LaGuardia airport have filed against the FAA.

“Most people don’t associate our community in Yorkville with LaGuardia Airport in Queens,” said David Mack, one of the founders of the group Residents for Sane Trash Solutions, formed to oppose the Upper East Side MTS. “But as the crow flies, literally, the FAA has a mandated perimeter where they don’t want any wildlife attractants, and we are within that distance.”

Ken Paskar, president of Friends of LaGuardia Airport and a former lead representative for the FAA safety team, said his group is only asking the FAA to do what their own regulations require them to enforce.

“The FAA is very specific about what it means to be a fully enclosed transfer station, and the transfer station at East 91st Street does not meet that criteria,” Paskar said. The FAA recommends that any potential wildlife attractant be located at least five miles from any airports to protect their approach, departure and circling airspace, and has strict requirements that those located within that radius must meet that essentially prohibit any trash or odor escaping the enclosed station.

City officials have said that the transfer station will be built to ensure minimal exposure of the trash to the outdoors, and that its operations will be conducted under the covered facility. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which has issued permits for the facility, did not respond to request for comment on this story.

Opponents contest that there is no way the city can guarantee that the transfer station will operate without attracting additional birds.

“This is not rocket science here, this is something that everyone understands—birds and airplanes don’t mix,” Paskar said. “When you build something on the water with a new food source, which is garbage and waste, for birds, you’re going to have a hazardous situation.”

State Sen. Liz Krueger and Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who have both been vocal opponents of the transfer station along with other East Side elected officials, released a joint statement pointing to the recent bird strike as another reason to halt the East 91st Street facility.

“While this bird strike occurred on a flight path out of JFK, it’s a reminder that we need to work on mitigating the risks for all our airports,” read the statement in part. “We agree with the Friends of LaGuardia Airport, former FAA officials who think that putting bird-attracting sanitation facilities in major flight paths is a bad idea.”

Bird strikes have been increasing over the past several decades, a phenomenon that experts attribute to changes in migratory patterns due to climate change. According to the FAA’s database, there have been 960 wildlife strikes near LaGuardia Airport in the past 10 years, 10 of which resulted in substantial damage and one—Sullenberger’s “Miracle on the Hudson”—that resulted in a destroyed aircraft. While it’s common for birds to collide with planes in the air, large fowl like Canadian geese can cause enough damage to ground a flight.

“To me, it’s just a horrible precedent to be set nationally,” said Hall. “For the city of New York, the Port Authority and the FAA to take an action like this, to add to an area that is already an attractant, to add to that with these waste disposal units is just irresponsible.”

An Upper West Side state lawmaker wants a moratorium on the “hydrofracking” method of drilling for natural gas near the city’s water supply.

Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell asked for the suspension on drilling in New York State in an Oct. 1 letter to Gov. David Paterson, and state and city environmental commissioners Pete Grannis and Cas Holloway.

O’Donnell wrote that possible cuts to the Department of Environmental Conservation would hamper oversight on a potentially harmful form of natural gas drilling.

“One cannot simultaneously expand a new, relatively untested form of drilling and cut funding for the regulatory agency and then expect people to rely on any assurances of safety,” O’Donnell wrote in his letter.

“Hydrofracking” is short for hydraulic fracturing, which involves injecting water mixed with chemicals and sand into a well to free trapped natural gas. New York City elected officials have called for a complete ban on drilling near the city’s water supply.