Maurice D. Hinchey is a Democratic Congressman representing New York's 22nd Congressional District, which spans eight counties from the Hudson Valley to the Finger Lakes region. Born on Manhattan's Lower West Side in 1938, he was raised there and in Saugerties, and now resides in Hurley. Prior to being elected to Congress in January 1993, Hinchey served 18 years in the New York State Assembly, including 14 years as Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Conservation. While Chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee for the Assembly, the committee conducted a successful investigation into the causes of "Love Canal," the nation's first major toxic dumpsite. He also successfully led the fight—first in Albany and later in Washington—to force the cleanup of PCBs from the Hudson River. Now serving in his ninth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Hinchey is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which allocates funds in the federal budget. He has long been an advocate for the economic and environmental health of New York. One of his many accomplishments was the 2007 establishment of The Solar Energy Consortium (TSEC), an industry-driven, nonprofit organization that aims to create green jobs and a major solar energy industry cluster in New York. Congressman Hinchey is also very involved in the issue of gas drilling in New York. He has told the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) that he has serious environmental and health concerns about drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation, large parts of which are in New York. He has urged the DEC, to take a series of concrete steps before further drilling should be permitted in New York. MetroGreenBusiness.com spoke with Congressman Hinchey about gas drilling and other issues shortly before his keynote speech at the Forum on the Future of Gas Drilling in New York State, held at SUNY New Paltz on March 8.
You're speaking at the Forum on the Future of Gas Drilling in New York State at SUNY New Paltz on March 8. There's a lot of interest in this forum on gas drilling. You've introduced, with two congressional members from Colorado, HR7231—the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, dubbed the FRAC Act, which aims to undo the exemption given to the gas industry for hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. What is the status of that bill at the moment?
Well, the status of the bill is that it is in Congressional committee and the committee is now beginning to pay attention to it. The indication is that they are going to be focusing the committee's attention on it sometime over the course of the next month or two. It's beginning to get their attention. And frankly, the problem with getting their attention is not the legitimacy or the validity of the seriousness of this bill, it's that so many other things in the context of what they are doing have a higher priority—like energy initiation, energy stimulation, and economic development that can be done in a variety of ways that they can focus on. There's a whole host of things having to do with the economy. In any case, the indications are they are going to start paying attention really soon and have some time to focus on it and probably bring it up for a hearing.
Representatives Waxman and Markey and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce are launching an investigation into potential environmental impacts from hydraulic fracturing. That's a separate initiative?
Yes. They've initiated an investigation and are starting to look into this more seriously. Our office has been in touch with them on this matter.
Your office also has formally urged the EPA to conduct a study on gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
This is an issue I have been engaged in for a long time. When the repeal of the Clean Water Act Provision in an energy bill came up in 2005, I saw that, argued against it, and voted against it. I voted against it for primarily this particular reason that we are talking about. That repeal of the provision in the Clean Water Act that goes back to the mid-'70s was something that I just was shocked by—that something like that was going to take place—because the Clean Water Act had been so strong in ensuring the quality of the natural resources and people's lives in the context of these drilling operations at a variety of places across the country.
Now, in spite of that, there have been violations in various places across the country, but in a number of places it was doing very well. And so, regarding the EPA, what I've been doing is trying to deal with an analysis done by the EPA about gas drilling which happened the year before the passage of that energy bill in 2005 that repealed the requirement to be honest about the contents of what's used in the drilling activity. In 2004 the Bush administration, through the EPA, came up with an analysis that they generated, which said that it wasn't necessary to require drillers to tell you what they are putting into the ground in the context of their drilling. And so I have asked the EPA to now go back and look at that, because what we know is that, in the context of this drilling, a lot of liquid materials are put into the drilling operations. Some of it is water, but a lot of it also is chemicals. And a lot of those chemicals are toxic chemicals. And those toxic chemicals—if they are injected into the ground in the context of this drilling, without any understanding—could have a very powerfully negative effect on drinking water wells.
It seems that within the EPA there is internal disagreement about this gas drilling issue. An EPA official recently reported that, despite claims by environmental organizations, he hadn't seen any documented cases that the hydraulic fracking process was contaminating water supplies, and he thought the states were doing a good job with oversight. But on the other hand, in December the EPA commented on the New York State DEC's Environmental Impact Statement about gas drilling in New York that they have serious concerns.
I think there can be some amount of reluctance to correct these terrible mistakes which were done in 2004 and 2005, technically and intentionally, by the Bush administration. I think the new people in the EPA, and probably most of the traditional people at the EPA, are trying to do the right thing. The new leaders of the EPA—I've had an opportunity to reveal this situation to them in the context of the committee hearings of the Appropriations Committee, and I did that last year when they first came into office. I told them about the problem and I asked them to look into it. And they have responded positively by saying that yes, this could be a serious problem, and they are looking into it. And they are going to.
My objective and purpose in my asking them this is to get them to correct what I regard as a phoney piece of information that came out of the EPA during the Bush administration in 2004. The purpose of that EPA information was to open the way to get a loophole for the fracking process under the Safe Drinking Water Act. So many people do not understand the ways that this thing is operating, how it happened, and what the circumstances are. The Bush administration had a lot of personal contacts with oil drillers and other energy companies. And the people in that administration—Cheney and others—were directly involved, in my opinion, in creating that false EPA info in 2004 which helped them open the door for this change in the Clean Water Act which they did in 2005. The main purpose of my introducing the FRAC bill was to overcome the harm that was already being done in some states—Texas, Pennsylvania, and a number of other states in the context of this kind of gas drilling, and to try and stop it in those states and other states, including New York.
You wrote a letter to the New York DEC outlining 11 points and steps that the DEC should take before any more drilling permits are granted. Have they responded to that formally or informally?
They have not responded formally, but they have responded informally, and in the context of the informal response, my understanding is that they are now looking at this whole situation much more carefully.
This is a condensed and edited version of the interview, which took place on March 3, 2010.
Paul McGinniss, "The Green Advocate," is a columnist for www.newyorkhousemagazine.com. You can read more about Congressman Maurice Hinchey on his blog: www.thenewyorkgreenadvocate.blogspot.com
Comments, Pingbacks:
No Comments/Pingbacks for this post yet...
This post has 2 feedbacks awaiting moderation...
