Gas drilling, farming, & public health

Living and producing food in an industrial zone

New York’s Foodshed

• NY State’s most productive farmland is beyond the NYC watershed–Western Catskills–Finger Lakes–Southern Tier of NY

• All threatened by proposed drilling

buildout

Gas drilling threatens farming

• Air pollution lowers crop and pasture yields• Water pollution – Endangers health of farm families– Endangers livestock– Endangers food safety

• Consumers are choosing food from non-frack areas

• Farmers are already leaving frack zones of PA

Ozone pollution of air

• Increased ozone causes increase in human death and hospitalization

• Causes crop losses, including species critical to local agriculture, including pasture grasses.

Rise in rural ozone from gas drilling--Sublette County, Wyoming

• So rural, so little traffic there is no stoplight• Since extensive gas drilling…… – Ozone reading higher than Los Angeles all last

year was 114 parts per billion, according to the EPA.

Ozone reduces farm production

• USDA on Crop Damage from Ozone– “Ground-level ozone causes more damage to

plants than all other air pollutants combined.”

• NASA Study---Satellite Study of Crops yields – “The U.S. soybean crop is suffering nearly $2

billion in damage a year due to rising surface ozone concentrations”

Food safety—Livestock exposure

to toxic fracking fluids.

Livestock need clean surface water sources

Tens of millions of gallons of toxic fluid handled in close proximity to water supply

Food safety & Livestock exposure

• Livestock drink surface water – ponds, steams• Frequent small and large spills flow onto

pasture and into these waterways• Pasture and soils contaminated– Heavy metals, radioactivity, hydrocarbons

• These substances become part of food chain.• Minimal oversight of drilling, less of food

safety

Quarantine 28 cattle PA 2010

• The farmer said, "You could smell it. The grass was dying, Something was leaking besides ground water.“

• PA DEP did not test for hydrocarbons• Are these animals in the food chain?

18 cattle deaths Louisiana 2010 from fluid spill—Chesapeake Co. fined

Western PA – 80 dead cattle after surface spill into pond and stream

Western PA -- 18 stillborn calves on one farm---with congenital cataracts

Is there monitoring of food supply produced in an fracking zones?

• Consumers should be concerned• Little or no investigation of cattle by

health officials• Gag orders of farmers in lease contracts• Dead livestock removed and destroyed

by gas companies without testing• What happens to contaminated animals

that survive?

Can Hydrofracking be done safely?• The existing science demonstrates a clear threat to public

health– As EPA stated in Texas---”an imminent threat to public health”

• Every step of new knowledge has shown increased risk• Agriculture will be damaged

– Production– Food safety– Consumer acceptance

• We do not willingly do vast experiments with toxic agents on food and people.

• There is no existing safe hydrofracking technology or regulatory structure.

Can regional agriculture survive gas drilling?