Pennsylvania Fossil Fuel Company’s Study is Missing Key Measurements for Pollution
We are greatly concerned with CNX’s Radical Overstatement (no trademark) regarding their fracking operations in Pennsylvania.
CNX representatives’ claim that operating for nine months with “no sustained high levels” of five specific dangerous air pollutants at a selected number of sites proves fracking is “inherently good” for communities, is not just wrong, it is ridiculous.
Their claim that their levels of dangerous fine particulate matter upwind from a major metropolitan area are lower than concentrations in more urban regions suggests that their operations are “safe” is another example of this overreach. Many urban areas, especially our Environmental Justice communities, have been demonstrably overburdened by pollution for generations. Our priority should be on providing all Pennsylvanians a clean and healthy environment, instead of holding these pollution levels as a benchmark to aim for.
National Ambient Air Quality Standards are intended to limit levels of selected air pollutants across an entire region, not to ensure people are protected at individual industrial sites. The fact that one site is not exceeding this standard should be the absolute minimum expectation and is hardly data worth celebrating.
While voluntary industry measures to reduce pollution are not inherently problematic, they are no substitute for strict regulation and enforcement of standards to protect public health and the environment. Furthermore, those standards must be significantly more broad than the selected pollutants touted in this study. Emissions of methane, which makes up more than 80 percent of fracked gas and is a potent greenhouse gas, need to be held to the absolute minimum. After the industry’s opposition to strict controls on methane, maybe it isn’t surprising it was not included in this study.
We also find it curious that CNX is taking its independent monitoring data and drawing conclusions through a press release as opposed to independent study by health experts.
If CNX were truly as safe as advertised, they would not have been the subject of multiple violations and fines over the last six years. Perhaps a detailed accounting of those failures should be a key element of Radical Transparency TM.
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Image Source: Positive Energy Hub. Washington County, PA.