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Hurricanes, Floods, and Climate Change: How Can Farms Survive?

Alison Rose Levy — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:53:44 +0000

Even without grokking the science of climate change, it’s obvious that novel weather events have increased around the country and the world. Thanks to Hurricanes Irene and Lee, at summer’s end, torrential rains swept the Northeast region, flooding the areas where New York’s food comes from. In these upstate regions in Ulster, Sullivan, and Delaware counties, there’s a new breed of organic and sustainable farming. But will those farmers, their farms, and their food survive changing weather patterns to continue to grow and supply the foods health and environmentally conscious people prefer to eat?

With his wife, Holly, Richard Giles typifies this new breed. He owns and runs Lucky Dog Farms, (in Hamden, New York). Sited near the West Branch of the Delaware River, the region of one of New York City’s two watersheds, the farm supplies Swiss chard, kale, and other greens to downstate farmer’s markets, restaurants, wholesalers, and the Park Slope Food Coop. As Irene approached, Giles and his farm staff were up before sunrise harvesting all they could. As the storm hit, they worked in fields in standing water up to their ankles, within two hours, the water had risen to their knees, and a half hour later they had to evacuate waters six feet high, that had yet to fully subside when I spoke with Giles ten days later. Lucky Dog lost nearly the entire Fall crop.

“When Irene happened, most of the group of farmers in our area were saying, “We just have to suck it up,” Martin Stosiek rt of Markristo Farms in Hillside, New York explained. “Then when Hurricane Lee happened, it was even worse.” Some lost crops but with a whole lot of hard work will survive the coming winter. Some may not. Stosiekrt who sells organic greens to restaurants, farmer’s markets, and wholesalers downstate, detailed his losses: cabbage unsaleable, green beans sitting in a swamp of water, un-harvestable, leafy greens, diseased due to the damp.

But will such losses register with the farmer’s customers, New Yorkers, the poster children for the busiest people on earth? Although NYC has a strong dining out tradition, for everyday meals, NY-ers are famed for eating on the run. No one has the time to look beyond the local farmer’s market to the plight of the farmers who grow New York’s food. While the rains may have passed from the headlines, their impact on area farmers is long-term.

“We can’t plant cover crops (like rye) in flooded fields, which we usually do to protect the soil over the winter months,” says Stosiek rt. With weeds going to seed just now, com Spring, this unprotected soil will yield a weed, rather than a vegetable harvest. “An organic farm can’t use pesticides for weed management,” Stosiekrt says.

A few winters back, I attended a special dinner at Park Slope’s Applewood Restaurant, which featured the produce grown at Lucky Dog. After a wonderful dinner, that blend of organic sustainable and New York connoisseurship that makes for a delicious meal, the chef told us diners that, “You can vote with your pocketbook to support organic and sustainable farms in our region by going to the farmer’s market and eating at restaurants that use regionally grown food.”

Back then that suggestion still made good sense.

Flash forward two years: In Lucky Dog’s region, entire towns (like Fleischmann’s and Prattsville) were leveled by rains andwinds. “This is the worst flood in everyone’s living memory,” Giles told me. “We didn’t lose our house and the kids are okay. But the fields were flooded. We lost all our crops — lettuce, cabbages, and greens. We’re losing the root vegetables, like potatoes, and onions, which are sitting in water and deteriorating underground.”

Unfortunately, “The crop we lost is the crop we use to pay large bills,” Giles told me. “Like the farm loans, financed by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA).”

Farmers don’t fall under FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Administration), but are administered by the FSA. Obviously, a renegotiation of loans will be needed. But will it be forthcoming in the current political climate? And who will notice when these crucial matters of public policy, impacting New York’s foods, are determined?

“People don’t expect a product like cars to just appear. There are industries and infrastructures that make that happen,” Giles says. “Because we farmers love farming, we put forth that effort. But it shouldn’t be our sole responsibility to supply New York’s food in the absence of policies that sustain that.”

“I choose to farm here and it’s really good soil, and it’s my choice and with these weather changes, it’s becoming a poorer and poorer choice,” Giles ruminates. “But if we admit it, we all know we have contributed to changing weather and flood patterns. We stand by and allow the gas drilling upstate to proceed. We leave it to farmers to go through whatever hardships to get the food to us. We cross our fingers and hope it will be okay.”

“Is this really what food’s worth?” he asks.So my question to you is this, do you still believe that acting as a consumer and showing up to buy sustainable and healthy food is all you need to do to help farmers make that food available? If so, why? If not, why not?

To support Lucky Dog Farms and other upstate sustainable farms harmed by the flood, please contact them.

To get the coverage of health, environment, food, public policy, and activism I’ve supplied on Huffington since 2007, please sign up for me free ezine at http://www.healthjournalistblog.com

Come hear me present at Green Festival L.A. http://www.greenfestivals.org/la/social-media-hub I’ll be speaking at #greenfestival about how to promote environmental health activism via social media. @AlisonRoseLevy or Join me on Facebook at Connecting the Dots for Health

Celebrities to the Rescue: Deepak Chopra, Mark Ruffalo, Fran Drescher, and Russell Simmons Go Activist

Alison Rose Levy — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:28:44 +0000

Many urgent social concerns don’t get attention without a star attached to the cause. Fortunately, some celebrity performers are taking the spotlight off themselves and focusing it on crucial matters that affect us all.

Mark Ruffalo defends the waters of life from fracking. Fran Drescher urges women, industry and government to prevent cancer and save lives. Russell Simmons shifts the conversation from traditional notions of power to compassion as real strength. This coming week at DeepakHomeBase in New York City, Deepak Chopra will engage in three conversations on three different nights with these three stars, people who care. Russell Simmons will join Chopra on September 12th. Mark Ruffalo will appear on September 14th, and Fran Drescher on September 15th. All programs will be available on livestream during the event, and following it as well. I’ll cover the events and report on them here.

I interviewed Ruffalo on my radio program, Connect the Dots (on the Progressive Radio Network on Saturdays at Noon ET), and he is a knowledgeable champion, probing how to meet our energy needs without allowing hydraulic fracturing for gas (aka fracking) to pollute our water, food, and air. Ruffalo debunks the notion that gas (as opposed to coal) can help to de-accelerate global warming. He points to recent research by Cornell University climate experts showing that gas has a greater greenhouse gas footprint. Moreover, the same study reveals that flowback water from gas wells carries large quantities of methane, which may be spread far and wide in the hurricane and flood prone Northeast– which in areas upstream from two major cities, just got more flood prone in the last two weeks.

Fran Drescher, who founded Cancer Schmancer in 2007 points out that after a forty year “War on Cancer,” American health is still being held hostage because we aren’t addressing the causes of cancer. She believes that “prevention and early detection should be on equal footing with the search for a cure. Why not triple the weapons in our arsenal?” Like Ruffalo, Drescher urges citizen action. Drescher wants to “turn the tide on cancer through asking Congress to support the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011.” Ruffalo urges that citizens ask President Obama to protect the drinking water of 15 million people (in New York and Philly) through preventing fracking in river basin of the Delaware River. To learn more, people are invited to tune in to DeepakHomeBase to this series of events, follow my reporting on green health activism, and discover why activism is the newest health regimen for healthy people, a healthy society, and a healthy planet.

Become part of the solution by Connecting the Dots on Health. You’re warmly invited to sign up for weekly blogs, radio shows, and activist opportunities in the sign in box on the upper right side of this page.

R.I.P New York

Alison Rose Levy — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 01:09:22 +0000

The Obama Administration declined a request to use its veto power to temporarily halt gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin, which supplies half of New York City’s water. Five percent of this country’s water supply, providing drinking, cleaning, and agricultural water to fifteen to seventeen million people, comes from the Delaware River, recently declared the 2010 “most endangered river” in the U.S. by American Rivers.

Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) asked the federal government to use its deciding vote to issue a temporary ban, pending a study of how “fracking” will impact the water upon which major populations rely. Fracking is a gas drilling process that appropriates public water and injects high volumes of undisclosed and unregulated toxic chemicals into the earth in order to mine gas. As depicted in the film, Gasland, and confirmed by many news reports, this process has contaminated water supplies throughout the U.S.

Scientific research indicates that certain chemicals in large concentration in fracking fluid are carcinogens and neurotoxins that act on the hormones and brain even in extremely low concentrations.

“We simply cannot continue to assume that very low levels of harmful chemicals are safe,” says the Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), a scientific research group founded by environmental health analyst Dr. Theo Colborn, in a statement issued this week. Their analysis of fracking chemicals and recent research indicates that chemicals act upon humans “in parts-per-billion or even parts-per-trillion, more comparable to what we encounter every day… to introduce a whole new set of damaging effects (including effects on the) central nervous system that could result in autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases; reproductive system effects such as infertility, male birth defects, endometriosis, cancers of the breast, prostate and testicles; and metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity.”

Last week, the Obama Administration declined Rep. Hinchey’s request and instead used its deciding vote on the Delaware River Basin Committee (DRBC) to green-light immediate drilling of gas wells.

According to the New York Times, a spokesman for Energy in Depth, a gas producer’s promotional group, saluted the decision, critiquing Hinchey for “trying to use a federal agency to direct the actions of a regional water board for the purposes of preventing the development of natural gas in a state where he doesn’t even live. Next … he’ll be ordering the Army Corps to build levees around our well sites in Wyoming.”

Congressman Hinchey, a New York resident, represents constituents in New York, a state that has been a voting member of the Delaware River Basin Commission since its founding, due to the fact that millions of New York urban and rural residents are affected by DRBC decisions like this one. Energy in Depth is a Washington, D.C. based group whose media activities support gas drilling “from Southern Texas to northern Michigan,” according to a press release. This industry group is focused on gas, and gas wells rather than population impacts.

Speaking for the federal government, Brig. Gen. Peter “Duke” DeLuca, commander of the North Atlantic Division of the Army Corps of Engineer, who serves on the DRBC, expressed concern about waiting for the study because “it could be several years before the final results of the study are known.” In a letter to Rep. Hinchey, General DeLuca saw his task on the Commission, as supporting “the economic needs of the region and our nation’s need to secure energy reserves while protecting the environment.”

However, ever since President John F. Kennedy founded the Commission in 1961, its actual mission as stated in its Compact is to “conserve and protect the water basin or any existing or future water supply source.” Since the Delaware is the longest un-dammed river east of the Mississipi, four states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) and their populations are affected by activities in the river basin. The Commission was founded to coordinate the decision-making and planning process, because “water resources planning .. has often required fifteen to twenty years from the conception to the completion..”

Now that the Commission has acceded to gas drillers’ requests, and as General DeLuca states can’t wait a year or two to assess the impact of gas drilling on regional water supplies, there’s one outstanding question:

How many decades will it take to develop Plan B– an alternative water supply for New York City and other DRBC regions after brain-damaging chemicals from fracking have infiltrated the unfiltered water supply. Fifteen years? Twenty years? Since the Commission is charged with long-range planning to provide water to its extended population, the Commission may already be behind the eightball.

Learn more in a radio interview with environmental health analyst Dr. Theo Colborn, TEDX’s founder.

Are You Hiding Out? Or Are You Up To It?

Alison Rose Levy — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:45:32 +0000

I’ve done incremental, individual change. I still do it. But it isn’t enough. And it won’t be enough. Day by day, creeping below the radar and hoping to sneak by and om your way out of what’s going on in the big and ugly out there of America become less and less of an option– if the water gets poisoned and the government is corrupt.

Do you know people who say, “What can I do? We’re screwed. All I can do is control how I feel about it.”

Really? If your baby’s hair was on fire, would you just deal with how you feel about it? Or would you do something and fast? If you hope to live a good life now’s the time to do something and do it fast.

How are you spending your time? Can you set aside 15 minutes per day to act on calls to action, get out votes, save your world? Why bother putting streaks in your hair, or eating healthy? That guy or gal you’re attracted to, that career op, that home fixit, the kids you might have, the skill you might perfect– how well will that go if our world is screwed? Where you gonna hide?

If you’re ready to step up, step out and make it at least a 15 minutes a day priority to change or world, FB friend me or sign up at: www.healthjournalistblog.com and tell me: “I’m up for it.”

Radio Show: Precautionary Principle for the Environment and Health

Alison Rose Levy — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:11:14 +0000

In the Precautionary Principle for the Environment and Health, Alison Rose Levy www.healthjournalist.com interviews Carolyn Raffensperger, M.A., J.D., the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network (www.sehn.org). As an environmental lawyer she specializes in the fundamental changes in law and policy necessary for the protection and restoration of public health and the environment. Carolyn is co-editor of Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy published by M.I.T. Press (2006) and Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principles, published by Island Press (1999).

Click the Play button to listen.

Radio Show: Our Habitat and Your Health

Alison Rose Levy — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 23:17:45 +0000

Alison Rose Levy’s guest today is Larry Schweiger, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Wildlife Federation. In his book, Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth, Schweiger breaks down the science behind global climate change and takes us from Lake Erie to the icebergs of Greenland, and from Congress to America’s classrooms and farmlands. Today we talk about how a clean energy economy can provide the solutions needed to avert the worst consequences of global warming. http://www.nwf.org/

Click the Play button to listen.

New York Says Wait a Minute to Gas Drillers

Alison Rose Levy — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:11:20 +0000

In a 48-9 vote in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the New York State Senate voted in Senate Bill S8129B, which will ban the issuance of gas permits until May 2011. The concern most recently cited by Senators speaking in Albany late last night were dangers of contamination by chemicals used in fracking to New York City’s unfiltered water supply. This win for environmental safety, public health and clean drinking water, followed months of grass roots organizing efforts, along with mounting media coverage of gas drilling dangers, sparked by numerous incidents of spills, accidents, explosions, water contamination and recent deaths in neighboring states, similar to those captured in the film Gasland.

Although not stated in the bill’s language, a number of Senators expressed hope that under the next Gubernatorial administration, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will work to craft improved regulatory guidelines aimed at addressing a host of serious problems that typically are reported followed drilling. Apart from the routine seepage, air pollution, water contamination, and health risks cited, nearly two thousand accidents have been reported. Additional areas of concern noted by legislators include:

Contamination of water supplies,

The need for disclosure of so-called proprietary chemicals used in fracking so that health risks can be assessed

The disposal of hazardous radioactive materials,

The use of and compensation for public resources, including water and roads,

The compensation for damages and destruction of property, tap water, and health

The costs and health risks to first responders of clean-up efforts following accidents,

Setting appropriate taxation for an enterprise that entails much community disruption and risk; and other complaints

.

Several Senators, including Senator Kevin Parker, of the the 21st district in Brooklyn, noted that the staffing of the DEC, which has sustained major personnel cuts in recent years, is not currently adequate to the task of either defining appropriate policies, or monitoring them. In hard economic times, Parker asked whether gas companies, profiting from New York’s natural resources, would be the ones to bear the additional costs of ramping up staff to address a host of issues arising from prospective gas drilling–or whether New York taxpayers would foot the bill.

“Is natural gas really worth it? “Will we be penny wise and pound foolish to allow fracking to endanger New York City?” Parker asked his colleagues, pointing out that NYC is not only a major economic center of New York State, but also of the U.S.

“Is it worth it to endanger watersheds without proper study? Let’s slow down and prepare for economic opportunities not rush in headlong. Currently, with its disseminated staffing, the DEC is not prepared to do the studies that will tell us whether fracking will endanger New York’s watersheds. Let’s learn from past mistakes. Let’s not forget that the state of Georgia went through water shortage. Are New Yorkers prepared to turn on the tap and not have clean water that to drink?”

Please check out my blog on becoming an environmental health activist here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-rose-levy/act-now-become-an-environ_b_668656.html

For health science, news, and action, sign up at www.healthjournalistblog.com

Are You a Health Ostrich or a Health Activist?

Alison Rose Levy — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 11:52:45 +0000

I’m a Health Maven, both an agent and a product of the self-help movement. But something funny happened on the way to transforming the world through transforming ourselves. A bunch of people who didn’t share our values got there first. Unfortunately, our compassion and positive intentions did not convey themselves to the hearts of corporate executives such that they dashed off their yachts to call back their lobbyists. Nor did they elect to self-regulate to keep our children and planet safe. We did yoga, they got busy donating to candidates, electing officials and changing laws and regulatory policies. As we looked within, the outer world changed.

Now the laws that most of us assume are there to protect us, our children, our food, our environment, even our drinking water–no longer exist. With gas drilling contaminating water with toxic chemicals nationwide, and 80,000 untested chemicals in use for over three decades, votes in Congress (and the New York State legislature) are long overdue. But we can’t count on legislators to do the right thing when it comes to health.

Will health conscious people step up to become Health Activists to support the legislation the supports the health of people, food, and the earth? Or will we remain Health Ostriches, making our personal choices, without making sure that our elected officials enact laws that protect our health?

“We react after the fact when the damage is done. Rather than preventing exposure that could lead to harm, we’re way behind the 8-ball,” says Richard Denison, Ph.D, Senior Scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF.)”We’re all being exposed in ways we don’t understand. We’re not monitoring and tracking. What we’ve learned is that people around the globe are being exposed to hundreds of chemicals, many of which we know from lab studies with animals are linked to serious chronic diseases. Yet that understanding is coming too late.”

Preventive health, anyone?

The Safe Chemicals Act would require chemical producers to prove safety, targeting toxic chemicals which migrate into our products, foods, earth, air and drinking water. The CLEAR Act would, among other things, force gas companies to reveal the toxic chemicals used in a process called “fracking,” that has contaminated water nationwide, following an exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act, orchestrated by Dick Cheney. As we speak, supporters of a ban on gas drilling in New York State are urging State legislators to bring a moratorium to the floor for a vote.

It’s hard to see, taste, or smell these hidden chemicals so it’s easy to play Health Ostrich. But many people experience their health impact. Even the 2010 President’s Cancer Panel, consisting of Bush appointees, concluded that these chemicals are a major unaddressed causal factor in cancer. Yet we lack research, sound toxicological models, public health driven safety policies, and treatments to address them.

“In our research and policy framework, we’re not applying what we know about cellular biology,” says Denison. The ongoing and cumulative effects of the toxins alters cellular pathways that cascade down to affect many functional areas of the body.

The reality is that we and our children are Health Guinea Pigs, participants in an ongoing experiment in to the health consequences of unregulated, untested and unavoidable toxic exposures.

Will making green purchases help? Slightly, but not significantly.

“You can’t solve this problem on an individual basis,” says Denison. “Our use of chemicals, is so ubiquitous and extensive — there’s no “away” you can go to — to avoid having toxic and persistent chemicals in your body. Case in point: High levels of flame retardants show up in arctic residents, even though they don’t come near any products that contain them.”

Current laws give a higher priority to protecting so-called trade secrets than they do public health, thus allowing chemical producers and oil and gas companies to conceal the chemicals they use, even when these chemicals confer serious health risks.

“The overbroad secrecy provisions in current law threaten public health,” says Kenneth Cook, President of the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Because companies are allowed to conceal chemical data, “Researchers and the public simply do not know how many of those chemicals are present in our bodies and in newborns,” says Cook. “The more we look for them, the more we find them. Toxic chemicals are found in the placentas of newborns. Industrial chemicals that cross the placenta to contaminate a developing child should be placed at the top of EPA’s to-do list. Few factors translate to greater risk to health.”

And when newborns begin life already pre-poisoned, it’s obvious that personal choice can readily be trumped by health risks we allow as a society.

That’s why our good intentions won’t be enough to pass laws that affect our health and our children’s. But clicking a link, or making a phone call to your Senator today — right now — just might help. Here are a few calls you can make this week to become more involved as a Health Activist.

To empower the EPA to require industry to prove chemical safety, follow links at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Or at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

And the Environmental Working Group.

Act to clean up the Gulf, and close the Halliburton loophole, and require gas companies to reveal the nearly 600 hundred toxic chemicals they use nationwide.

For ongoing health and environmental actions, news, and science, sign up for my free weekly ezine at www.healthjournalistblog.com You can listen to my radio interview with Safer Chemical’s Andy Igrejas here.

New Best Friends Forever: The Chemical and Gas Industries

Alison Rose Levy — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:39:49 +0000

This year Congress has stepped up its pace on the 36-year crawl towards assuring the safety of 80,000 chemicals to which infants, children, adults, food, air and water sources are regularly exposed, with most unstudied, and many causing health problems. And guess who has emerged as the self nominated new BFF of chemical safety? Why, behold, it’s the American Chemistry Council!

Surprise! Our new pal is as concerned as we are about safety in chemicals, and even in oil and gas drilling. Well, maybe not as concerned. But concerned.

The ACC wants to assure us “that information and dialogue have the power to create change: in our industry, in our communities, and in our world. Our member companies are investing in the future through community outreach projects.”

Dialogue and change are important? So glad you feel that way. Want to talk? Music to our ears.

So let’s talk whether or not our new BFF is on the same page with us.

According to the 11 million people in the Safer Chemicals Coalition, we need “Public safety information for all chemicals, and prompt action to phase out the most dangerous chemicals.”

Our BFF wants to delay action while only studying a handful chemicals already proven dangerous, rather than all 80,000 others.

Gosh, do we have less in common than we thought?

Well, let’s see where we all stand on options for chemical safety testing:

Should we test the exposures as we actually experience them in real life?

Should we study one chemical at a time with no reference to actual exposure levels and combinations as they show up in people? The ACC wants it that way. Too bad no one lives in a lab.

Can we still save our friendship? Let’s see.

Next, we’re concerned that BPA is a reproductive health risk. We want to protect our kids.

When California proposed its new BPA ban, did our new BFF support it? No, they spent $5 million trying to defeat the new BPA ban.

Hey BFF, Is this what you mean by “community outreach?” What a pal!

“For the last year the chemical industry has expressed support for reform and taken bows for being forward thinking,” said Andy Igrejas, the director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. “Yet they have relentlessly attacked reform efforts in Congress. We hope to expose that contradiction and urge Congress to get tough on toxic chemicals now.”

Now it turns out that the ACC wants us to meet its BFF– the gas and oil industry. Their poor friend is not very popular at the moment. They can’t think why.

Since this is our new BFF’s BFF, let’s listen when the ACC stands up for its buddy. “With proper oversight, the (oil and gas) industry should be given the opportunity to continue doing its important job,” says the ACC President in a recent post in the Hill’s Congress blog. “With the chemical industry already facing high costs for energy, intense foreign competition, and razor-thin margins, we need domestic, competitively-priced oil and gas more than ever.”

Talk about close friends! What a bond. Let’s all hold hands.

Wait a minute. “Competitively priced.” Haven’t I heard that before? Doesn’t that mean something like despite billions in profits, we can’t afford safety?

Where does our new BFF’s BFF really stand?

Well since the Gulf disaster, which neither the oil industry nor government can remediate, do our new friends want to go back and do their homework on adequate safety measures? Not exactly. They oppose any ban on drilling to do that.

Well, let’s take the practice of hydraulic fracturing gas drilling, which injects into the earth billions of gallons of water mixed with 595 toxic chemicals. Hey, chemicals. No wonder the ACC is a stand-up buddy for oil and gas drillers.

Natural Gas, called NG by its pals, is hot, new, and trendy, and insists it’s oh-so safe and green, despite explosions, spills, groundwater contamination, and air pollution. Since our quote unquote natural new pal was exempted by Dick Cheney from the Clean Water Drinking Act, did NG volunteer to adhere to it? No.

Did NG volunteer to make chemical information available? No.
Will NG hold back from forcing its friendship on New York until environmental studies and good regulation can assure safety practices to protect New York City’s unfiltered water supply? No.

Hate to spoil this new friendship, but… With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Watch this clip that shows what your wannabe BFF says behind your back:

It looks like NG’s fave shade of green is military drab, as in march in and take over. Hopefully, in upcoming elections, Americans will be less naive about “friendly” legislators tempted by deep pocket offers and economic promises from our former BFF’s and their clique.

Do you know who your real friends are? What kind of friend are you? Do you stand up to be counted with friends who stand up for you? Or are you too busy with your own stuff?

Hope you don’t mind this gentle reminder. Cause isn’t that what friendship’s all about?

Ask your Congressman to support strong provisions in the New Safe Chemicals bill in Congress right now.

Just in from Josh Fox, director of Gasland, Yesterday the Delaware River Basin Commission, which has the duty of protecting water used in PA, NJ, and NY, granted permits for frackers to take public river water, and dig wells in the river basin basin area. WRITE THEM NOW to object. clarke.rupert@drbc.state.nj.us and carol.collier@drbc.state.nj.us and pamela.bush@drbc.state.nj.us

Protect Gulf clean up workers from toxic chemicals.

Save Gulf wildlife

Demand safety before drilling to protect New York’;s water supply.

Follow me on FB, Twitter, @AlisonRoseLevy, and my green health action and information blog at: www.healthjournalistblog.com

Take the Gas Drilling Quiz: What’s Your Water Quotient?

Alison Rose Levy — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:12:28 +0000

The peaceful Delaware River-- now the most endangered river in America
The Oscar nominated documentary, Gasland, alerted millions to “fracking,” the cute nickname for hydraulic fracturing, a form of gas drilling that has swept the nation, blithely leaving behind bewildered citizens, irate legislators, and contaminated water in 34 states. Are New Yorkers immune? Take the quiz and find out! …

Since it was first used in arid regions of the Southwest, it’s impact in rainy, hilly regions, has never been thoroughly studied for environmental impact, but gas drillers (along with rural farmers signing away their rights hoping to win the gas lottery) are urging New York State legislators to bypass planned EPA studies and green light the gas bonanza.

Breaking News:
PA Environmental Protection announcement: Cows in Pennsylvania quarantined after drinking contaminated frack water, which leaked into in a field, killing grass there.

Are city dwellers downstream for earthquake like fracturing immune from fracking chemicals in their water supplies? Let’s find out!

What’s Your Water Quotient: Take the Gas Drilling Quiz

1. Who makes fracking fluid? (Halliburton or Celestial Seasonings?)
2. Who exempted fracking fluid from Safe Drinking Water regulation (Dick Cheney or the Little Mermaid)
3.How much fracking fluid stays in ground after drilling? (85% or a few drops of holy water)
4. What’s in fracking fluid? (Nearly 600 hundred proprietary toxic chemicals or the same ingredients in your mouthwash)
4. Geology of upstate NY drilling locale near watershed? Multiple choice:
a. Rivers that flow downstate to NY, NJ, and Philly
b. Rainy zone on hurricane path with seasonal flooding and little flood control near upstate watershed
c. Water confined within red Sharpie lines drawn on map by politicians
5. What’s protecting NYC watershed from drilling?
a.”Promise” by Chesapeake Gas
b. “Promise” of case by case impact studies by NYS Dept of Enviro Conservation– yes, they’re the ones who promised drillers to fast track gassing by December
6. Guess which downstate residents may get a big surprise when poor upstate residents sell land and waterways in gas lottery?_______________________
7. Fracking will affect the water supplies or how many people? (17 million or 1,000 upstate residents of rural communities)
8. What about upstate organic, local, and sustainable agriculture? (Decimated, or Not to worry, we’ll grow vegetables and fruits hydroponically on a rooftop in Greenpoint, using water trucked in from Canada)

Sum total: Guess anyone in New York, New Jersey, or Philadelphia, better take action if they like drinking water.

Take action:http://www.catskillcitizens.org

Take action: http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/alerts/view/6

Related articles: Mark Ruffalo talks to Alternet: http://tinyurl.com/2g6lrv5

Chemicals left in ground: http://tinyurl.com/ygdoqo2

Halliburton Loophole: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-rose-levy/gasland-will-new-york-be_b_617072.html

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