By Jessica Mastronardi & Joanna Fantozzi

Brewer Cuts Ribbon on Hydroponic Farming Classroom

On Tuesday, February 12, Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer joined students at the Computer School on West 77th Street to cut the ribbon on a brand new hydroponic farming classroom. With the help of $35,000 of discretionary capital funding allocated by Brewer, the Computer School created the state-of-the-art classroom to enhance science learning and provide delicious produce.

A long-time supporter of hands-on science education and green initiatives, Council Member Brewer funded greenhouses at Manhattan School for Children and P.S. 199. Brewer was also instrumental in the creation and development of Urban Advantage, a program that collaborates with the Department of Education and the City’s museums, zoos and gardens to fully engage middle school students in the sciences both in and out of the classroom.

Broadway Scores for P.S. 84

Broadway stars are temporarily leaving their respective stages to gather for a good cause — to raise money for P.S. 84 The Lillian Weber School of Arts. Kerry Butler, Randuy Redd, Renee Elise Goldsbury, Erik Charlston, Mark Soskin and Joe Iconis and Family will be performing “Broadway Scores for P.S. 84 – A Celebration of Songs Featuring Kerry Butler and Friends” under the musical direction of Dan Elish. This event will be held on March 3rd at Robert H. Smith Auditorium at the New York History Society, at 170 Central Park West.

Ticket’s to the show range from $50 to $150 and include access to the 7 p.m. cocktail hour and 8 p.m. performance and live auction.

Use code “Broadway” to get a 20 percent discount on tickets at ps84cabaret.eventbrite.com. All of the proceeds will be going towards P.S. 84 and the PTA’s enrichment initiatives.

ADA Lawsuits vs. UWS Merchants

Merchant owners on the Upper West Side are learning just how much it costs to disobey the Americans with Disabilities Act.  According to Crain’s New York, the Florida-based attorney Ben-Zion Bradley Weitz is on the hunt for UWS storeowners with storefronts that do not meet ADA standards, and charging them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees while plaintiffs on average make $500. Many storeowners claim that abiding by ADA regulations and the regulations of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is nearly impossible to do. The changes the ADA requires they make interfere with the preservation of these historic landmarks.

Affected  merchants are joining together create a defense against Weitz’s acts of alleged extortion. Among the list of supporters for these merchants include Barbra Adler, the executive director of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District and Peter Panken, a labor and employment attorney.

Upper West Side Community Cheers Fracking Delay

Environmental activists and anti-fracking New Yorkers cheered Governor Cuomo’s announcement that the issuance of the final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which would determine the fate of hydraulic fracturing in New York State, will be delayed. The announcement has been counted as a victory by opponents of the controversial drilling practice in the on-going debate over the health and safety impacts of hydro-fracking.

“It is my sincere hope that the Administration would heed the warnings of public health and environmental experts to stop this process in its entirety until a comprehensive and wholly independent health study can be completed,” said Upper West Side Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal in a statement.

Once the health review is completed within the next few weeks, and if it has addressed each of these concerns, a permit to begin the hydro-fracking process could be processed within 10 days.

 Local residents and elected officials applaud roadblock for hydraulic fracturing drilling in the state

Environmental activists and anti-fracking New Yorkers cheered Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that the issuance of the final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which would determine the fate of hydraulic fracturing in New York State, will be delayed. The announcement has been counted as a victory by opponents of the controversial drilling practice in the on-going debate over the health and safety impacts of hydro-fracking.

New York State Department of Health Commissioner Nirav Shah said that more information is needed to complete the public health review before any final statement can be made. Without a public health review, Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens said that he cannot release this Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which would outline the effects of fracking on the natural environment.

“The decision to permit high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) is important, and involves complex questions about the impact of the process on public health,” said Commissioner Shah in a letter to Commissioner Martens. “The time to ensure the impacts on public health are properly considered before a state permits drilling.”

If the hydraulic fracturing processes were approved, the process would involve horizontal drilling for natural gases into the Marcellus Shale rock, and a technique known as “slick water fracturing,” which would utilize large amounts of water. This, said Commissioner Shah, is exactly what he would be analyzing: the fracking’s effect on water contamination, as well as air quality and surrounding community impact.

“Dr. Shah is wisely taking the time to come to a careful decision about what needs to happen to protect New York from the harmful effects of fracking,” said Dr. Kathleen Nolan, Catskill Mountainkeeper’s High Peaks Regional Director.

Hydro-fracking has remained a controversial issue in New York, and many local officials have denounced the process. An Upper West Side community forum on fracking was held last week by elected representatives including State Senator Adriano Espaillat and Council Member Gale Brewer.  Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who was also at the community forum and has repeatedly spoken out against fracking at the state level, is concerned about the impact on the local community.

“It is my sincere hope that the Administration would heed the warnings of public health and environmental experts to stop this process in its entirety until a comprehensive and wholly independent health study can be completed,” said Rosenthal in a statement.

This delay, however, is not a permanent setback for the drilling industry. Once the health review is completed within the next few weeks, and if it has addressed each of these concerns, a permit to begin the hydro-fracking process could be processed within 10 days.

VAN SANT AND DAMON’S PROMISED PROPAGANDA

Gus Van Sant must really be out of imagination (or horniness) to make the drab, politically slanted Promised Land. That’s two phony films in a row for Gus, following the 2010 Restless. Promised Land takes on the fracking controversy about drilling for gas in underground shale deposits, using Gus’ Good Will Hunting star Matt Damon as a gas company stooge trying to trick Pennsylvania farmers into leasing their land. As an exposé of the fashionable dilemma, the film is unconvincing politically and fraudulently sentimental about the average American’s skeptical response to technological progress.

When Damon, as corporate shill Steve Butler, tries hoodwinking rural folk (“‘Fuck you money’ is the ultimate liberator” he tells a landowner), his dishonesty recalls George Clooney’s self-pity in Up in the Air. Damon’s a shrewder actor, so he eschews Clooney’s false empathy and portrays a man who corrupts the American Dream while refusing to lose the American rat race. This frick-or-frack quandary turns Promised Land into a reverse-Capra movie in which the little people convert the bad protagonist—reviving his buried good instincts.

But Steve’s transformation is half-ass; his heart isn’t in the job anyway, only his contempt—the phony common-folk stance the Environmental Left prefers. In Promised Land, the anti-fracking controversy seems to be about class superiority as much as about the environment.

Van Sant, Damon and co-screenwriter, co-producer and co-star John Krasinski (portraying Dustin Noble, an antagonistic environmentalist) pretend that political position is more important than complicated truth. Using pretzeled logic, these filmmakers twist their story into unbelievable shapes to make the self-righteous point that Americans’ greed outweighs their truest values. Easy for millionaire filmmakers to say.

The love triangle between Steve, Dustin and local schoolteacher Alice (Rosemarie Dewitt) lacks the gay sexual tension typical of Van Sant; this is just a propagandistic gimmick relying on the sentimentality of white-picket-fence heterosexual normalcy. (You can hear sheep bleating behind Steve’s confidence game, and an American flag is used as backdrop.) Van Sant, Damon and Krasinski present what amounts to anti-fracking propaganda without deciding which side they are on. It’s as if the industrial revolution—and unbiased cinema—never happened.

Documentary ‘Fracknation’ debates ‘Gasland,’ ‘Promised Land’ and the greenshirts—and wins.

By Gregory Solman

Artists Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon and Mark Ruffalo, alongside longtime experts in the field, held a press conference today on the Upper West Side on Aug. 29 to promote Artists Against Fracking, an activist project with the aim of raising awareness about the ill effects of hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking).

Hydrofracking is a process of extracting gas by blasting a pressurized mixture of water and chemicals underground to crack open rock formations. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to make a decision this week on whether to allow hydrofracking in New York state.

Ono, Lennon and Ruffalo launched Artists Against Fracking with the help of nearly 200 other artists and experts, to warn New Yorkers about their important role in stopping Cuomo from approving hydrofracking in the state. Lennon said he believes the city’s elected officials are “smart and have good intentions,” but hydrofracking is not adequately understood by the public. Furthermore, Ruffalo pointed out, “The world is watching New York.”

The organization hopes people will recognize the negative environmental impact of hydrofracking, the overwhelming opposition in America and the “campaign of misinformation” being spread by gas companies. This campaign aims to convince people fracking is a clean alternative to coal, explained Lennon.

“Bloomberg said it can be regulated to be safe,” Lennon said, “but then why did Dick Cheney exempt fracking from the Clean Air Act? Fracking releases unpronounceable toxic chemicals and carcinogens.”

Cornell engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, who has studied the industry for 25 years, said the primary concerns with hydrofracking are leaks that contaminate underground drinking water and the escape of methane into the atmosphere. Ingraffea said one in 20 wells invariably fails, producing leaks. “Methane emissions are a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide,” said Ingraffea. “It will exacerbate climate change. It’s a bad time and this is bad technology for it.”

“Science doesn’t have two sides, just one,” said Ono. “All we want is a place we can trust in terms of pureness for ourselves and our children.”

Ono said the hope is the public will visit their organization’s website, become more informed and send letters to Cuomo every day, to remind him that “we are not forgetting.”
“Cuomo is the gatekeeper right now,” Lennon said, explaining that while the decision currently faces New York, “nature does not abide by state lines.”

The group promotes renewable energy as an alternative to hydrofracking. As to the issue that any alternative to hydrofracking, however seemingly innocuous, would still leave a carbon footprint, Ingraffea said: “We’re realists. Nobody controls the price of the sun or wind, and we can harness those for a smaller carbon footprint.”

“You cannot lie about something forever,” said Ruffalo. “A sun spill is just a beautiful day.”

UWS residents line up Wednesday night to voice their concerns to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

More than 100 residents turned out for an Upper West Side town hall meeting July 19, where Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer fielded questions from concerned residents of the West 90s and 100s. The community pressed Stringer, City Council Member Gale Brewer and a panel of officials representing city agencies on such issues as the controversial Jewish Home Lifecare center, hydrofracking and an explosion of rats in the neighborhood.

The line of people waiting to step up to the microphone to say their piece stretched to the back of the room for the entire two-hour meeting. Armed with literature and, sometimes, unconcealed anger, community members and local activists pressed their elected officials for answers and action.

The most discussed issue of the night was the proposed construction of the Jewish Home Lifecare (JHL) center on West 97th Street. JHL, an organization that provides health care and support services for the elderly, seeks to build a new 20-story high-rise nursing home next to P.S. 163, an elementary school. Although the New York City Planning Commission has approved the application, Community Board 7 and local activists have continued to fight against the project.

Avery Brandon, who lives near 97th Street and whose kindergarten-aged daughter will attend P.S. 163 for the next several years, spoke out vehemently against the new building.

“A huge construction project like this can have untold effects on the health of our children,” Brandon said. “With the noise levels and the mental stress that this construction will cause, how will our children be able to learn?”

Brandon and other residents also cited increased congestion, dust and debris and decreased access to the block for emergency responders as potential negative consequences of the project.

On the issue of fracking, the focus of the conversation centered around the contentious Spectra pipeline, a proposed gas line intended to expand the delivery of natural gas to areas in New York and New Jersey. The project, which was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May, is slated to run along the coast of New Jersey and cross the Hudson River into Manhattan, bringing gas from the Marcellus Shale acquired through the process of hydraulic fracturing to New York City homes on the Upper West Side.

Residents at the meeting voiced the concerns of many critics of the controversial method, citing in particular what they said are particularly high levels of radon and other radioactive material in Marcellus gas. They emphasized the dangers of using radon-infused gas in New York City kitchens, which tend to be small and often poorly ventilated, as well as the potential effects exposure could have on children in the neighborhood.

Attendees also complained of a growing rat infestation on Upper West Side streets, a problem Brewer assured would be tackled next month in a block-by-block effort conducted by the Department of Health, and the New York Police Department’s ever-contentious stop-and-frisk policy, which NYPD representatives declined to discuss in detail last night.

Copyright © 2012 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation

  The mining process involves pumping a fluid and a propping material such as sand down the gas well under high pressure to create fractures in the gas-bearing rock. The propping material then holds the fractures open, allowing more gas to flow into the well than would naturally occur. The fluid is water mixed with various chemical compounds such as anti-friction agents and anti-bacterial gel.
The complete effects to public health and the environment are not fully known yet, with the CDC and EPA calling for studies. Public outcry was deafening as 6,000 attended public hearings and 20,000 submitted written comments.
Citing the overwhelming opposition they will call on Governor Andrew Cuomo to withdraw the Department of Environmental Conservation’s flawed environmental impact statement and for the state legislature to pass a bill to ban fracking in New York.

 
One of many videos circulating the net about the effects of hydrofracking on drinking water.

Finnegan: What actually is hydraulic fracturing?

Josh Fox: Hydraulic fracturing is a new method for drilling for natural gas. The reason why this is happening now is that the U.S. Congress in 2005 passed a law exempting this form of drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Hydraulic fracturing injects millions of gallons of water laced with toxic chemicals into rock formations at such high pressure that it breaks apart the rocks, and the gas that’s trapped inside these rocks frees up.

The problem is that it is an underground injection of an enormous amount of chemical material that creates a lot of hazardous waste, and what’s been happening is that both the gas and the chemicals are turning up in people’s aquifers, and their private water wells, and it poses a great threat to the New York City watershed because they’re proposing to drill there.

It seems like this is dangerous for the environment and bad for people. So what is the fight in support of this?

You would think that the drilling is so problematic—and it’s been documented so many times as a heavy-duty industrialization process that this would be ruled out—but that would be underestimating the power of Haliburton and Chesapeake and Exxon. They have billions of dollars and considerable influence in Albany and in Washington, and everybody in New York City and New York State should be involved in getting them out of here, because it’s going to be very very difficult to do that.

New York City residents definitely need to wake up to the fact that they have the best tap water in the world, the largest unfiltered drinking source in the world, and they have to work to protect it, or else they could end up with these Haliburton chemicals coming out of the tap all over the city. It would be enormously costly, very very problematic for health, and virtually impossible to control.

Could there ever be an industry incentive for these companies to develop alternate methods?

People have to start realizing that we have to move beyond fossil fuels, and that that’s everybody’s responsibility. The truth here is that you cannot rely on the government in this instance. Where it really comes from, and where change really comes from in the United States is when people take to the streets, get upset, march, go crazy and do all those things that people did in the civil rights movement.

You’ve been pushing for the passage of the FRAC [Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals] Act, which would require disclosure of chemical compounds used in fracking and end the exemption from the Safe Water Drinking Act. Would that be enough?

No. There should be a moratorium, nationwide. The truth is that we don’t need this energy. There are a lot of other ways to go about getting energy for the United States that do not include the systematic contamination of the water supply, the systematic destruction of land and property value, the incredible amount of greenhouse emissions that go on with this form of energy development. It is simply a show of power on behalf of those gas companies that they are allowed to do this at all.

Natural gas is often touted as the cleaner alternative to coal—is it really a better option?

Fracking for natural gas has a much higher emissions profile than was previously suspected. Methane itself is a greenhouse gas, it’s far more potent than CO2. It escapes throughout the process, at every stage of the process, the drilling, the pipelines, the fracking, the tanks. And that means that the emissions of raw methane that isn’t being burned, when you take together the whole life cycle, it shows that fracking for natural gas is actually worse than coal, worse than our worst fossil fuel. Because of all this new information that’s coming out, both from the EPA and from Cornell University and other places, natural gas has to be viewed as the worst fossil fuel option.

What is the biggest thing that New York City residents should be aware of?

To continue the campaign for this New York moratorium is the number one priority. Get involved with the local Sierra Club, get involved in the local Frack Action group or with United for Action, NY H20. There are so many amazing grassroots organizations on the ground in New York City. If they want to continue to have their tap water, they’re going to have to volunteer some time.