Our only water is at urgent risk from becoming like poison. DEC Commissioner Joe Martens has exempted the New York City and Syracuse watersheds from gas drilling with fracking. If it's not safe in some areas, then why should they allow it in others? It's water inequality. Fracking is bound to poison water supplies across the state and fill the air with toxic fumes, as it has in more than 1,000 cases of water and air contamination across the country. Sulfate reducing bacteria degrade the well casings and allow chemical seepage to happen at alarming rates. This dangerous threat will also force us further into fossil fuel dependence, instead of making us domestically independent clean energy producers. The economic boom and bust model that defines fracking's Ponzi scheme is shortsighted, comes along with plummeting home values, and makes it impossible to secure mortgages and insurance policies on properties in areas of gas development. It will ruin established industries including tourism, agriculture, and devastate small local businesses, which all depend on clean water and its innumerable rewards.
