The Fracking Boom is a Fracking Bubble

by Walter Brasch

    Gas prices have plunged to the low $2 range—except in Pennsylvania.

    In Pennsylvania, the prices at the pump are in the mid-$2 range.

    That’s because Gov. Tom Corbett and the legislature imposed a 28-cent per gallon surcharge tax. Until 2019, Pennsylvanians will be paying an additional $2.3 billion a year in taxes and fees—$11.5 billion total—to improve the state’s infrastructure. In addition to the increased tax on gas at the pumps, Pennsylvania motorists will also be spending more for license registrations, renewals, and title certificates.

    For far too many years, the state’s politicians of both major parties, preaching fiscal austerity—and hoping to be re-elected by taxpayers upset with government spending—neglected the roads, bridges, and other critical problems.

    What the state government doesn’t readily acknowledge is that much of the damage to roads and bridges has come from increased truck traffic from the fracking industry.  

    The state roads, especially the section of I-80 that bisects the northern and southern halves of the state, were already in disrepair, as any long-haul trucker can attest. The addition of 40-ton fracking trucks on two-lane roads, highways and the Interstates, has added to the problem.

    “The damage caused by this additional truck traffic rapidly deteriorates from minor surface damage to completely undermining the roadway base [and] caused deterioration of several of our weaker bridge structures,” Scott Christie, Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation, told a legislative committee in 2010. Since then, the damage has increased in proportion to the number of wells drilled into the state.  There are about 7,100 active gas wells in the state, with the cost of road repair estimated at about $13,000 to $25,000 per well.  The fracking truck traffic to each well is the equivalent of about 3.5 million cars on the road, says Christie.

    Although corporations drilling into Pennsylvania have agreed to fund repairs of roads they travel that have less than two inches depth of asphalt on them, the fees don’t cover the full cost of repair.  Had the state imposed an extraction tax on each well, instead of a much-lower impact tax, there would have been enough money to fund road and bridge repair without additional taxes for motorists. Every state with shale oil but Pennsylvania has an extraction tax.

    Gov.-elect Tom Wolf, who supports fracking, says he wants the state to begin to impose those extraction taxes. The politicians, who benefitted from campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, claim the industry—and all its jobs—will leave the state if the taxes are too high.

    There are several realities the oil/gas industry knows, but the politicians, chambers of commerce, and those who believe everything politicians and corporations tell them don’t know or won’t publicly admit knowing.

    First—as long as it’s economical to mine the gas, the industry won’t leave the state, even if they have to pay a 5 percent extraction tax, which is at the low end of taxes charged by other states.

    Second—the expected $1 billion in extraction tax per year, even if the legislature approves, should not be expected. The industry has already found most of the “sweet spots,” and production will likely fall off in 2015, leading to less income to the state and to leaseholders.

    Third—like a five-year-old in a candy shop, the industry salivated at the newly-found technology and gas availability and overdrilled the past four years, leading to a glut and falling prices. End of the year prices are about $3.17 per million cubic feet, down almost 30 percent from November.

    Fourth—falling prices have led to drilling not being as profitable as it could be.

    Fifth—the OPEC countries have not lowered their own production of oil, and the reason for the lower  gas prices at the pumps is not because of the shale gas boom, but because of the plunging price of oil per barrel, which has declined by about 40 percent since Summer. Once oil prices fell beneath about $70–73 per barrel, American shale frackers found themselves unable to compete economically. 

    Sixth—To compensate for lower prices in the United States, the megacorporate drilling corporations have begun to find alternative ways to make money. One way is to build a massive maze of pipelines, and send natural gas to refineries in Philadelphia and the Gulf Coast, changing the gas into the extremely volatile liquefied natural gas (LNG), putting it onto ships, and exporting it to countries that are willing to pay more than three times what Americans are paying for natural gas. However, there is an unexpected twist. The OPEC low-cost oil has led to a severe drop in Russia’s economy and value of the ruble. Gazprom, the Russian-owned world’s largest gas supplier, is now forced to drop its own prices to be competitive, and has been developing plans to provide gas to Europe and Asia, especially China where American gas is headed, at a price that makes it uneconomical to do long-term contracts.

    Seventh—the banks and investment lenders are getting testy. Because of overdrilling, combined with inflated estimates of how much gas really is in the Marcellus Shale, corporations have found themselves in trouble. Many corporations have begun cutting their drilling operations; others have already left the state, burdened by debt to the lending institutions; some corporations have sold parts of their operations or declared bankruptcy.

    Eighth—The jobs promised by the politicians, the various chambers of commerce, and the industry never met the expectations. Gov. Tom Corbett claimed 240,000 additional jobs. The reality is the increase in jobs is about one-tenth of that; more important, most of the full-time jobs on the rigs and well pads are taken by workers  from Texas and Oklahoma who have extensive experience in drilling; most of the other jobs are temporary, and layoffs have already begun.

    Ninth—The fracking boom for Pennsylvania is more like the housing bubble.  At first, the availability of mortgages looked like a boom. However, a combination of greedy investors and lending institutions with almost no governmental oversight, combined by a client base of ordinary people who were lured into buying houses with inflated prices they couldn’t afford, led to the Great Recession.  Those who didn’t learn from the housing bubble guaranteed the fracking boom would become a fracking bubble.

    Tenth—The continued push for fossil fuel development, and more than $4 billion in governmental subsidies, slows the development of renewable energy, while escalating the problems associated with climate change and brings the world closer to a time when global warming is irreversible.

    Finally, but most important—The fracking industry doesn’t acknowledge that this newer process to extract gas, which has been viable less than a decade, is destroying the environment, leading to increased climate change, and putting public health at risk, something that dozens of independent scientific studies are starting to reveal. It was a 154-page analysis of public health implications, conducted by the New York Department of Health, and based upon scientific and medical studies, that led New York this month to ban all drilling—and infuriate many politicians and some landowners who were expecting to make extraordinary wealth by leasing mineral rights beneath their land to the gas companies. Of course, they didn’t look to their neighbor to the south to learn the wealth promised was never as much as the royalties delivered and that many landowners now say they should never have given up their mineral rights and the destruction of the land and farms that came with it.

    Until prices stabilize, Americans are paying lower prices for gas at the pump; Pennsylvanians are also paying lower prices, but not as low as the rest of the country.

    And the politicians and industry front groups continue to foolishly claim there are no environmental or health effects from horizontal fracking, only blue sky and rainbows of riches.

    [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist and the author of 20 books, is a national specialist on the effects of fracking. His critically-acclaimed book, Fracking Pennsylvania, is now in its second edition.]

   

    

How Americans Came to Oppose Fracking

by Walter Brasch

      For the first time since high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as nonconventional fracking, was developed, more Americans oppose it than support it.

      According to a national survey conducted by the independent non-partisan Pew Research Center, 47 percent of Americans oppose fracking, while 41 percent support it. This is a 7 percent decline in support from March 2013, and a 9 percent increase in opposition.

      The poll also reveals those who support fracking tend to be conservative men over 50 years old with only a high school education, and living in the South. However, support for fracking has decreased in all categories, while opposition has increased.

Fracking is the controversial method of drilling a bore hole into the earth’s crust as deep as 12,000 feet. The company sends fracking tubing, which has small explosive charges in it, to create a perforated lateral borehole, about 90 degrees from the vertical bore hole, which fractures the shale for up to about 6,000 feet to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels. A mixture of proppants, toxic chemical additives, radioactive isotopes, and as much as 10 million gallons of fresh water are put into the tubes at a pressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch. About 650 of the 750 chemicals used in fracking operations are known carcinogens, according to a report filed with the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2011.

        Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown environmental and public health dangers; other research reveals dangers because of the exploration, drilling, storage, wastewater disposal, and transportation parts related to fracking.

    According to the Pew survey, about 52 percent of men favor fracking; 40 percent oppose it. However, only 31 percent of women support fracking, while 54 percent oppose it. The remaining percentages are “don’t know” or “no opinion.”

    In geographical distribution, those opposed to fracking live in the Northeast (48 percent opposed; 37 percent in favor), Midwest (47–39 percent opposed), and West (54–38 percent opposed.) In the South, 45 percent favor fracking; 42 percent oppose it. The biggest shift from the March 2013 survey is in the Midwest. In that previous survey, 55 percent favored fracking, with a 16 percent drop in support in only 20 months.

    Among all Republicans, 62 percent favor fracking, a drop of 4 percent from the earlier survey. However, among Republicans, 68 percent of those who identify themselves as conservatives favor fracking, while only 52 percent of those who identify themselves as moderate or liberal Republicans support fracking.

    Among Democrats, 29 percent support fracking; 59 percent oppose it. About 33 percent of conservative and moderate Democrats support fracking; 54 percent oppose it. Among liberal Democrats, 67 percent oppose it, while only 25 percent support it.

    Support for fracking in all age groups has also fallen in the past two years; about half of all those under 50 oppose it, while only about 38 percent under age 50 support fracking. Even opposition to fracking among those 50+ has increased. By November of this year, 43 percent of those 50-64 (7 percent more than in 2013) and 40 percent of those 65+ (6 percent more than in 2013) oppose fracking.

    The biggest drops in support are among those who attended college. In March 2013, 45 percent of college graduates supported fracking; 20 months later, only 38 percent of college graduates support it. About 52 percent of all those with some college education supported fracking in March 2013; by November 2014, only 40 percent support it.

    To understand why there has been a shift in public attitudes about horizontal fracking, it’s important to understand the nature of the mass media.

    The mainstream establishment media are not in the forefront of society, but follow it—sometimes years behind emerging issues. In the past decade, the media at first didn’t cover fracking, perhaps because it was too complicated for reporters who weren’t trained in the sciences, perhaps because significant downsizing by publishers left fewer reporters to cover critical issues, perhaps because the media didn’t think fracking affected their own circulation and viewership areas.

    The first stories came from the oil and gas industry, and the establishment media accepted what was handed out to them. Thus, public perception was mostly from pro-fracking information.

    But, the people knew. They could see their roads being torn up by gas-industry trucks, sometimes more than 200 a day on rural roads. They could see acres of agricultural and forest land leveled for the access roads and well pads. They could hear around-the-clock noise from the trucks, well pads, and compressor stations. They could empathize with neighbors whose land was condemned by eminent domain so that pipes could be laid across and beneath private land.

    They learned about politicians who took campaign funds from the oil and gas industry and many front groups, and then crafted industry-friendly regulations to benefit those who fracked the land.

    They heard about the economic benefits of fracking, of how fracking would help the local unemployed find work in the deepest recession in decades; but, the high-paying technical jobs went to those from out of state who had experience on the rigs and well pads, did their jobs, and moved onto other out-of-state sites. 

    They were told about how natural gas was inexpensive, how it was better for the environment,  and how renewable energy was unproven and far too expensive for the average homeowner. But, they learned that it was the investors and fossil fuel executives who benefited, and how the process to capture the natural gas, with the flaring of methane, may be more dangerous to global warming than even coal emissions.

    At first, the few individuals cried into the winds. But, they came together to form small groups, and then larger groups. They read the environmental and public health studies. They heard from the people about the problems associated with fracking.

    They didn’t have the millions of dollars the industry had. They couldn’t afford full-page newspaper ads, radio and TV ad time, or the costs to design and produce 4-color flyers, innumerable mailers, and billboards.

    Theirs was a grassroots campaign. They went door-to-door, to their neighbors. They called their friends and strangers who might be affected by fracking.

    They attended flea markets, farmers’ markets, and community events. They went to city council meetings.

    They became adept at the use of social media. They produced black-and-white flyers and PowerPoint presentations. Some, using inexpensive digital technology, created micro- and mini-documentaries and posted them on YouTube. Others wrote letters to the editor, letters to their legislators, and articles and opinion columns for the alternative media. A few wrote articles for the establishment media; one developed a 107-minute documentary; others produced a feature-length film; several developed shorter films; one wrote a book.

    And, when they had to, they blocked and marched, non-violent acts they knew would attract some media attention. And they were willing to be arrested, charged with trespassing, and jailed o protect the people against an invasion of their environment.

    A few groups of a few residents became larger, now with memberships of environmentalists, scientists, physicians, social rights activists, landowners, and people whose lives and health were directly affected by fracking.

    Those who leased mineral rights to the gas companies, hoping to get some income to help survive the recession, soon realized the royalties were not as much as they were led to believe, and the land was not being restored to its previous condition, as was promised.

    Against heavy opposition from politicians and the fossil fuel industry, the people succeeded in getting more than 300 towns to enact moratoriums on fracking until, at least, the health and environmental effects were fully known. They had the passion for truth and not the lust for greed.

    Eventually, the establishment mass media caught up, running some syndicated stories about fracking, sometimes a local story, always careful to make sure the industry—with its carefully manicured PR staff and hordes of money—got a chance to respond to the masses of people.

    In March 2013, 48 percent of Americans favored fracking, 38 percent opposed it.

    In November 2014, only 41 percent favored fracking, and 47 percent opposed it.

    A social movement to protect the people’s health and their environment has begun to show the effectiveness of grassroots determination and the dissemination of truth, and not the propaganda of deceit.

     [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist more than four decades, is the author of 20 books. His latest book, Fracking Pennsylvania, was the first book to explore fracking and its effects upon public health and the environment, as well as to discuss the truth of the economic impact and connections between politicians and the fossil fuel industry.]

      

A Fracking Good Letter

by Walter Brasch

    The oil and gas industry has retreated from its entrenched position to have the public delete the “k” in “fracking,” and write it as “frac’ing” or “fracing.” Those who have been the strongest advocates for fracking scorned and mocked those who place the “k” in the word. The problem is that without the “k,” the word sounds like “frasing.” However, the first use of the word “fracking” can be traced to an oil and gas journal article in 1953.

    As hydraulic horizontal fracturing became a standard to extract gas and oil about 2008, anti-fracking activists began using the word—with the “k”—in advertising, social media, and public protest campaigns that slyly bordered on the obscene—“Frack off!” and “No Fracking Way!”

    The oil and gas industry, faced with being the brunt of a series of near-obscene jokes, dug in and demanded that “unconventional drilling” or just “horizontal fracturing” were the “proper” terms. But, if “fracking” had to be used in print, the preference was for “frac’ing” or “fracing.” Most dictionaries—including the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster—use the word “fracking”–with the “k”—as the preferred and acceptable term.

    In September, the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), a front group for the oil and gas industry became proactive with a series of newspaper, radio, TV, and YouTube ads. The ads, scheduled to run through the beginning of 2015, were revealed at the annual Shale Insight conference, sponsored by the MSC in Pittsburgh.

    The fractivists “tried to hijack that word and paint it as something negative,” David J. Spigelmyer, MSC president, said, pointing out it was the industry’s intention “to take that word back.” Randy Cleveland, XTO Energy president, told the conference where people said “frac’ing,” the industry thrived, but where they said “ ‘fracking,’ we have difficulty.” The PR and advertising campaign, said Cleveland, is “to regain the high ground.”

    Stephen Moore, chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the conference, “The disinformation and propaganda machine against what you do is frightening,” adding that the campaign against fracking “may have been instigated by outside agitators.” It was a claim echoed by thousands in the industry.

    With absolutely no proof, Moore was referring to the possibility that Russia and the oil-rich oil countries, and not millions of Americans, were behind the anti-fracking campaign. Russia’s Gazprom is the world’s largest natural gas distribution company, and many in the U.S. oil/gas industry believe Gazprom or Vladimir Putin wanted to increase Russia’s share and domination of the natural gas industry by closing down American natural gas production. The same gaseous windbags blamed the Arab countries for being anti-fracking because they were making money off oil and didn’t want competition. None acknowledged that the Arab countries have been far ahead of the United States in the development of renewable energy, knowing that fossil fuel contributes to global warming, is not infinite, and there are no more dinosaurs willing to die to allow greedy corporations to make outrageous profits.
    Nevertheless, the industry is digging in and defending not only its destruction of the environment and public health—which it doesn’t acknowledge, even though dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies indicate otherwise—but to recapture “fracking”— with a “k”—as good and pure.

    In the newspaper ad, the word “fracking” is used five times; the largest word in the ad is “JOBS”—the ad emphasized job creation, using the inflated and discredited number of 240,000. (The Pennsylvania Fiscal Office reports only about 17,500 new jobs were created since 2007. Dr. Tim Kelsey, Penn State professor of agricultural economics, reports that at most there were fewer than 35,000 jobs, only about half in the core industry. No matter what the critical number is, Pennsylvania was 49th in the nation in jobs creation in 2012, two years after it was ranked seventh in the nation.)

    Anchoring the ad is a new aphorism: “FRACKING: ROCK SOLID FOR PA.” In radio and TV ads, a girl says, “Fracking rocks! My dad does it.” At the conclusion of a three-minute YouTube video, in which a series of rumors was replaced by a series of half-truth “facts,” one of the narrators tells the audience, “Fracking, a good word,” and concludes with the newly-created motto. One of those many half-truths is that fracking has been around for more than six decades and has been proven to be safe. That part is relatively accurate—but it is “vertical” fracking, an entire different process than the recently-developed “horizontal” fracking, that has been around since shortly after World War II. Horizontal fracking uses significantly more water, sand, and toxic chemicals, and has significantly more methane leaks than vertical fracking.

    No matter how well the industry tries to shine up its 120-foot phallic-like rigs and spew prattling absurdity, the reality is that fracking has not added much to the economy or many new jobs. As in every other energy development, when mining the gas becomes unprofitable, possibly within five years in the Marcellus Shale, the industry will move elsewhere and continue the “boom and bust” economy. What it has done is to cause additional problems leading to increases in air, water, and ground pollution. It has caused documented health problems. And, it has, despite all the PR about “clean energy,” contributed to global warming.

    [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist and former reporter and editor, is the author of 20 books. The most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster, an overall look at the health, environmental, agricultural, and economic effects of fracking, combined with an investigation into the connections between politics and the oil/gas industry.]

   

   

Arsenic-Laced Coffee Good for You

by Walter Brasch

      You’re sitting in your favorite restaurant one balmy September morning.

      Your waitress brings a pot of coffee and a standard 5-ounce cup.

      “Would you like cream and sugar with it?” she asks.

      You drink your coffee black. And hot. You decline her offer.

      “Would you like arsenic with it?” she asks.

      Arsenic? You’re baffled. And more than a little suspicious.

      “It enhances the flavor,” says your waitress.

      “I really don’t think I want arsenic,” you say, now wondering why she’s so cheerful.

      “It really does enhance the flavor—and there’s absolutely no harm in it,” she says.

      “But it’s arsenic!” you reply. “That’s rat poison. It can kill you.”

      “Only in large doses,” she says. “I’ll add just 150 drops to your coffee. It tastes good and won’t harm you,” she says, still as cheery as ever.

      “But 150 drops is deadly!” you reply, looking around to see if you’re on “Candid Camera.” You’re not, and she’s serious.

      “It’s really nothing,” she says, explaining that 150 drops, when mixed with five ounces of coffee is only 0.5 percent of the total. She explains that 99.5 percent of the coffee—about 2,800 drops—is still freshly-brewed coffee.

     

      Ridiculous?

      Of course it’s ridiculous.

      But the oil and gas industry want you to believe that 99.5 percent of all the fluids they shove into the earth to do horizontal fracturing, also known as fracking, is harmless. Just fresh river water. Move along. Nothing to see here.

      As to the other half of one-percent? They tell you it’s just food products. Table salt. Guar gum (used in ice cream and baked goods). Lemon juice. Nothing to worry about, they assure you.

      The Environmental Protection Agency, in 2013, identified about 1,000 chemicals that the oil and gas industry uses in fracking operations, most of them carcinogens at the strengths they shove into the earth. Depending upon the geology of the area and other factors, the driller uses a combination of fluids—perhaps a couple of dozen at one well, a different couple of dozen at another well. But, because state legislatures have allowed the companies to invoke “trade secrets” protection, they don’t have to identify which chemicals and in what strengths they use at each well. Even health professionals and those in emergency management aren’t allowed to know the composition of the fluids—unless they sign non-disclosure statements. Patients and the public are still kept from the information.

      What is known is that among the most common chemicals in fracking fluids, in addition to arsenic, are benzene, which can lead to leukemia and several cancers, reduce white blood cell production in bones, and cause genetic mutation; formaldehyde, which can cause leukemia and genetic and birth defects; hydrofluoric acid, which can cause genetic mutation and chronic lung disease, cause third degree burns, affect bone structure, the central nervous system, and cause cardiac arrest; nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, which can cause pulmonary edema and heart disease; radon, which has strong links to lung cancer; and toluene, which in higher doses can produce nausea, muscle weakness, and memory and hearing loss.

        Each well requires an average of three to eight million gallons of water for the first frack, depending upon the geology of the area. Energy companies drilling in the Pennsylvania part of the Marcellus Shale, the most productive of the nation’s shales, use an average of 4.0–5.6 million gallons of water per frack. That’s only an average. Seneca Resources needed almost 19 million gallons of water to frack a well in northeastern Pennsylvania in 2012; Encana Oil & Gas USA used more than 21 million gallons of water to frack one well in Michigan the following year. A well may be fracked several times (known as “restimulation”), but most fracking after the first one is usually not economical.

    After the water, chemicals, and proppants (usually about 10,000 tons of silica sand) are shoved deep into the earth, most have to be brought back up. Flowback water, also known as wastewater, contains not just chemicals and elements that went into the earth, but elements that were undisturbed in the earth until the fracking process had begun. Among the elements that are often present in the flowback water are Uranium-238, Thorium-232, and Radium, which decays into Radon, one of the most radioactive and toxic of all gases.

    Wastewater is often stored in plastic-lined pits, some as large as an acre. These pits can leak, spilling the wastewater onto the ground and into streams. The waste water can also evaporate, eventually causing health problems of those living near the pits who can be exposed by inhaling the invisible toxic clouds or from absorbing it through their skin. In the eight years since drilling began in the Marcellus Shale, about 6.5 billion gallons of wastewater have been produced.

    Many of the pits are now closed systems. But that doesn’t prevent health problems. Trucks pick up the wastewater and transport it to injection wells that can be several hundred miles away. At any point in that journey, there can be leaks, especially if the truck is involved in a highway accident.

    Assuming there are no accidents or spills, the trucks will unload flowback water into injection pits, shoving the toxic waste back into the ground, disturbing the earth and leading to what geologists now identify as human-induced earthquakes.

    Now, let’s go back to the industry’s claim of innocence—that 99.5 percent of all fluids shoved into the earth are completely harmless. Assuming only five million gallons of pure river water are necessary for one frack at one well, that means at least 25,000 gallons are toxic.

    Would you like cream and sugar with that?

    [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning social-issues journalist, is the author of 20 books. His latest book is the critically-acclaimed Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster, an overall look at the economics, politics, health, and environmental effects of fracking.]

   

Railroad ‘Bomb Trains’: Speeding to Disaster

by Walter Brasch

      It’s 3 p.m., and you’re cruising down a rural road, doing about 50.

      A quarter mile away is a sign, with flashing yellow lights, alerting you to slow down to 15. It’s a school zone.

      But, you don’t see any children. Besides, you’re going to be late to your racquetball match. So, you just slide on past.

      You’re an independent long-haul trucker. You get paid by the number of miles you drive. If you work just a couple of hours longer every day than the limits set by the federal government—and if you can drive 75 or 80 instead of 65, you can earn more income. You have your uppers and energy drinks, so you believe you should be able to work a couple of hours a day more than the regulations, and drive faster than established speed limits.     Now, let’s pretend you’re the CEO of a railroad. Your trains have been hauling 100 tanker cars of crude oil from North Dakota to refineries in Philadelphia and the Gulf Coast. That’s 100 tankers on each train. A mile long.

    About 90 percent of the 106,000 tanker cars currently in service were built before 2011 when stricter regulations mandated a new design. The older cars are susceptible to leaks, explosions, and fires in derailments. But, because of intense lobbying by the railroads, they are still carrying oil.

      Railroad derailments in the United States last year accounted for more than one million gallons of spilled oil, more than all spills in the 40 years since the federal government began collecting data. The oil pollutes the ground and streams; the fires and explosions pollute the air.

    Most of the derailments threatened public safety and led to evacuation of residential areas. One derailment led to the deaths of 47 persons, the destruction of a business district, and an estimated $2 billion for long-term pollution clean-up and rebuilding of homes and businesses. Three derailments, including one in a residential area of Philadelphia, occurred this past year in Pennsylvania.

      The derailment and explosions of “bomb trains” became so severe that in May the Department of Transportation declared the movement by trains of crude oil  from North Dakota derived by the process known as fracking posed an “imminent hazard.”

      The federal government wants to reduce the speed limit for those trains carrying highly toxic and explosive crude oil.

      If you’re Hunter Harrison, CEO of Canadian Pacific (CP), you say you “don’t know of any incidents with crude that’s being caused by speed,” and then tell your investors, “We don’t get better with speed [reduction]. We get worse.”

      If you’re Charles Moorman, CEO of Norfolk Southern, you agree completely with your colleague from CN, and say that a higher speed limit is safe.

      If you’re Michael Ward, CEO of freight giant CSX, you say that lower speed limits “severely limit our ability to provide reliable freight service to our customers.”

      You and your fellow CEOs have even had one dozen meetings with White House officials to explain why slower speeds are not in the nation’s best interest. You explain that your railroad should be allowed to determine the best speed for your trains.

      Driving a car through a school zone, you don’t have the right to determine your best speed.

      Driving a truck on interstate highways, you don’t have the right to determine your maximum speed.

      But, if you’re a multi-billion dollar railroad industry, you think you have the right to set the rules.

      [Dr. Brasch is a former newspaper and magazine writer and editor. He is the author of 20 books, most fusing historical and contemporary social issues. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster.] 

An Injunction Against the First Amendment

by Walter Brasch

Vera Scroggins of Susquehanna County, Pa., will be in court, Monday morning.

      This time, she will have lawyers and hundreds of thousands of supporters throughout the country. Representing Scroggins to vacate an injunction limiting her travel will be lawyers from the ACLU and Public Citizen, and a private attorney.

      The last time Scroggins appeared in the Common Pleas Court in October, she didn’t have lawyers. That’s because Judge Kenneth W. Seamans refused to grant her a continuance.

      When she was served papers to appear in court, it was a Friday. On Monday, she faced four lawyers representing Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., one of the nation’s largest drillers. Seamans told the 63-year-old grandmother and retired nurse’s aide that to grant a continuance would inconvenience three of Cabot’s lawyers who came from Pittsburgh, more than 250 miles away. He also told her she might have to pay travel and other costs for the lawyers if she was successful in getting a continuance.

Disposable Assets in the Fracking Industry

by Walter Brasch

     The oil and gas industry, the nation’s chambers of commerce, and politicians who are dependent upon campaign contributions from the industry and the chambers, claim fracking is safe.

    First, close your mind to the myriad scientific studies that show the health effects from fracking.

    Close your mind to the well-documented evidence of the environmental impact.

    Focus just upon the effects upon the workers.

    The oil and gas industry has a fatality rate seven times higher than for all other workers, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control. (CDC). According to the CDC, the death rate in the oil and gas industry is 27.1; the U.S. collective death rate is 3.8.

Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Trump Health and the Environment

by Walter Brasch

            Politics continues to threaten the health and welfare of Pennsylvanians.

            The latest is how the Republican-dominated legislature and Gov. Tom Corbett separated one of the wealthiest and more high-tech/industrial areas of the state from the rural areas.