Public Employee Press

Battle rages over hazardous gas "fracking"

Travel outside New York City and you can see the debate over hydrofracking writ large on billboards and the lawn signs along roads in upstate Rhinebeck, Kingston and Binghamton.

In hydraulic fracturing, energy companies pump water and toxic chemicals - some known to cause cancer - deep into underground rock to release natural gas.

The practice has spread across the country and is now targeting New York State, including New York City's water supply area.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney helped exempt the dangerous process from the Clean Water Act, but environmental and community activists are pressing for state and federal laws to ban it. State Sens. Avella, Krueger, Addabbo, Montgomery, and Serrano have sponsored S4220, which is mirrored by Assembly member William Colton's A7218.

ExxonMobil, one of the giant energy corporations behind the fracking push into New York, is running television ads featuring a man in a business suit, calmly explaining that hydrofracking is just a natural process involving pumping water into rocks to release gas.

The truth is more complicated, and there is nothing natural about it. Fracking is poisoning America's drinking supply as it forces millions of gallons of chemical-laden water into the earth.

A dramatic photo from a hydrofracking area shows one of its frightening results: A man lights his running tap water ablaze.