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Former Enron employee testifies in support of natural gas industry
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Former Enron employee testifies in support of natural gas industry
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is considering a set of regulations that would govern natural gas drilling in the watershed, and has invited the public to comment.
But the DRBC hasn't yet held a public hearing about the regulations in Philadelphia, so Philadelphia held one itself on Tuesday night at City Hall. It was organized by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, Clean Water Action and other environmental groups, and the testimony gathered there will be sent to the DRBC. City Paper counted at least 100 people in attendance, maybe more.
Fifty-six people testified at the hearing. Only one person who testified spoke out in support of the natural gas drilling industry. Denise Furey, a West Philadelphian, said that drilling had created thousands of jobs, that "recent media accounts ... have been proven be inaccurate," and that additional regulations would not enhance the public's safety.
Furey did not mention her work background during her testimony, but City Paper later found that she was once a senior director of Enron. Reached over the phone, Furey confirmed that the online biography CP found was accurate. She said she currently works as a private financial consultant, but declined to be more specific.
"I've been a financial analyst following the energy sector for 25 years," she said.
Furey said she'd found a flier about the hearing in the neighborhood, and critiqued Brown's office for not reaching out to more people like her.
Other attendants included everyone from Grid coverwoman Iris Marie Bloom to City Council candidate Jeff Hornstein to a high schooler.
The attendants called for many different things — moratoriums on drilling, an extended public comment period on the DRBC's regulations (it's currently until April 15), a cumulative impact study for the Delaware River Basin, and much more. One thing that testifiers repeatedly brought up was a recent New York Times article, which found that confidential studies by both the E.P.A. and the drilling industry "concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways." But, according to the article:
The E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008. ... The risks are particularly severe in Pennsylvania, which has seen a sharp increase in drilling, with roughly 71,000 active gas wells, up from about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the wastewater has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water.
According to the DRBC, the Marcellus Shale — where much recent gas drilling is taking place — "underlies about 36 percent of the Delaware River Basin," which is a source of Philadelphia's drinking water. In other words, the DRBC's proposed regulations could have far-reaching effects, even here.
Many attendants were upset that the DRBC hasn't held a public hearing in Philadelphia. A document that was being circulated by Bloom, the aforementioned Grid coverwoman who is director of Protecting Our Waters, read: "We are not protected from high levels of radioactivity in gas drilling waste; this in an outrage! You must hold hearings downriver, including in the state of Delaware."
Hornstein, the Council candidate, testified, "We must insist that the DRBC extend the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware Basin until the cumulative impact study is done and the EPA’s study of hydrofracking’s threat to groundwater is completed."
Marjorie Lofland said, "Anything that we do is not going to stop them ... we have to behave like killer bees!"
One of the final testifiers, Rebecca Trabin, darkly joked, "Our forefathers did not steal land from Native Americans just to make it uninhabitable."
Read more about the proposed regulations here, and for the science and politics behind drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale, read Isaiah Thompson's story Drill, Baby, Drill!
Looking forward to the first DRBC hearing in Philly. The cocktail of carcingenic and neuro and endocrine disruptive chemicals being placed in our water supply would make for a great bizarro world ad campaign.— Brion Shreffler
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