Our Most Endangered River

According to a new report by America's Rivers, the Susquehanna River is the most endangered river in the United States. They clarify that this doesn't mean it's the most polluted river, but that they consider it to be at a turning point due to the issue of hydraulic fracturing -- "fracking" or "fracing" -- which threatens to poison the water supplies of millions of people in the Commonwealth.

Rivers aren't dumping grounds for everything we wish was "someplace else", though we do use them that way. They are the living heart of our landscape.

Reposted below.

Natural Gas Development Putting Clean Water at Risk for Millions of People

Location: New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland

One of the longest rivers in America, the Susquehanna River provides over half of the freshwater to the Chesapeake Bay and drinking water to millions of people. Communities and businesses depend on the river for drinking water, commerce, hydropower generation, and recreational boating. Now this resource is at risk of contamination.

The Threat

The Susquehanna River and its tributaries flow over the Marcellus Shale region, a rock formation underlying much of New York and Pennsylvania, containing reserves of natural gas. The rush to develop natural gas has come without consideration of the impacts to clean water, rivers, and the health of these communities.

The threat of contamination is high. As part of the hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” process to extract natural gas, massive amounts of water are withdrawn from rivers and streams. The water is then mixed with sand and toxic chemicals and pumped underground to fracture the shale under extreme pressure. A portion of that highly toxic, highly saline, and potentially radioactive wastewater will return to the surface, and requires specialized treatment, but at this time, only a limited number of wastewater treatment facilities have the capacity to handle it.

Already, spills from trucks hauling wastewater, leaks from lined fluid holding pits, and cracked well casings have contaminated private water wells. The potential for future environmental and public health catastrophes along the Susquehanna will only increase, considering the number of new wells projected and the amount of toxic wastewater produced.

What Must Be Done

While Pennsylvania and New York have been working to improve clean water safeguards for natural gas development, they fall short of adequately protecting the water supply for millions of Americans. It is the responsibility of these states, along with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), to analyze all of the potential cumulative impacts that could result from natural gas extraction, and ensure proper regulations are in place and capable of being enforced before development is allowed to continue.

Pennsylvania, New York, and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission need to announce a complete moratorium on water withdrawals and hydraulic fracturing until there are comprehensive regulations in place for natural gas development or they will put public health and drinking water at risk.

Rainy Days in May

I'd like to propose a a new metric by which to measure extreme rain events: the number of times the sewer backs up into my basement in any given month. Usually this number equals 0. This month, May 2011, this number equals 2 (so far).

Last night, with up to 2" of rain falling in an hour and a half in Lancaster City, the sewer main that runs through my basement backed up -- again -- and filled it with about 8" of brackish water.

Figure 1. Note the firehose-like quality of the water gushing into my basement.

And here I thought I was clever building heavy duty shelves after the last sewer overflow. I know the water hit the 8" mark because my lowest shelf weighed in at exactly 7.5". 8" of water can really float some stuff, let me tell you....

Hopefully, this time, there will be no actual sewage. Crossing my fingers as the water recedes.

UPDATE: Someone just brought to my attention a column by Jack Brubaker ("The Scribbler") headlined "Lancaster built on a wolf-infested swamp?", in which the Scribbler says that yes, in fact, downtown Lancaster City was once a wolf-infested swamp. Explains a lot, doesn't it? They drained the swamp and cut down all the trees in order to expand the city way back in 1745. Quoting from the column:

"But central Lancaster remained filled with a considerable amount of water. Substantial streams ran down Queen and Water streets. Springs proliferated; some of them are still flowing."

Yeah, through my basement!

I humbly suggest that filling in wetlands (what they used to call "land reclamation", as if the wetland snuck in in the dark of the night) is a really bad idea. Flooding basements with sewage is the least of it. This bad idea points to the root cause of our troubles with water these days: we think we can control it, when ultimately it has much more to say about the nature of our existence than we have to say about its. This is why filling in wetlands is "land reclamation," why modern human settlements are built like shields rather than sponges, why we cover up streams and springs rather than accepting them as an ineluctable feature of the landscape, and why we mix our effluent (human [shit], non-human animal [shit] and industrial [toxic waste]) with water, rather than recycling it, as the rest of nature does.

An Eaarthly Civilization

Welcome to An Eaarthly Civilization. In this inaugural post, I suppose I should give a little explanation. What do I mean by a title like that? Well, I'll get to that. First, I want to let you know that I'm writing from Lancaster County, PA. I intend to write about the impacts of peak oil, climate change, and economic collapse -- basically, what it means to be well past the limits to growth -- and their impacts on my home. I will also write about efforts now underway to build resilience in the face of these impacts. In doing so, I will make repeated references to national and global trends, but always with an eye towards the impact of those trends on Lancaster County. However, that will only represent a portion of the postings you'll find on this blog. Many more will be about specific, Lancaster-centric goings-on. This is a very new sort of project for me. I've been a writer in one capacity or other for most of my life, but never have I attempted to produce a blog -- an ongoing, persistent account of the world as I see it. Well, nevertheless. I hope you enjoy it, and find value in it. I should also mention that I am a co-founder of Transition Lancaster (TL), which is part of an international movement to transition off our deadly addiction to fossil fuels, which is becoming ever more urgent. You can reach me, in my capacity as a member of TL's Initiating Group, through TransitionLancaster(at)gmail(dot)com. Without further ado... Anyone who has read Bill McKibben's Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, knows we're in for a tough ride. The old Earth we all grew up on -- the Earth that humanity itself grew up on -- is gone. It has been replaced by Eaarth (you've got to let your inner-Schwarzenegger out to pronounce that correctly). The details of this new Eaarth are one thing this blog will be exploring -- primarily as they relate to Lancaster, but also as they affect the broader planet we all call home. You see, despite the fact that, on average, we're living as if we've got another planet to move to once this one's all used up (and despite physicist Stephen Hawking's declaration that we need to colonize a new one fast to avert inevitable extinction), I think it's fair to say that Earth -- or Eaarth -- is the only planet we've got, and the only one we're ever likely to have, so we had better get used to the rules around here. One of those rules is: don't shit where you sleep. Now, we think we're following that rule when we take a dump in a pot of drinking water and flush it directly into the Conestoga River, but the cascading effects of that action prove we're fooling ourselves. For example, the Conestoga drains in the Susquehanna, which drains into the Chesapeake Bay, which now has the full force of the EPA behind its cleanup. I have it on fairly good authority that the EPA takes it none too kindly that we have the habit (in Lancaster City) of dumping around one billion gallons of raw sewage into the Conestoga every year. You shouldn't, either. Another example of shitting where you sleep is our nasty habit of converting ancient decayed plant matter (fossil fuels) into carbon dioxide, among other things. We treat the atmosphere as a trash dump, and one of the consequences is a rapidly warming planet. According to a recent report of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the effects of that warming is that 1/3 of all counties in the US are likely to face increasing drought and water shortages in the years ahead. Lancaster County is expected to face "high risk" of water shortages. Good thing we're crapping in that water. One last note before I end this first post. I just read about a new study in the journal Nature, in which it has been learned that, since 1950, phytoplankton in the oceans have declined 40%. For anyone that knows anything about the global ecosystem -- the biosphere -- a decline of 40% in phytoplankton is, frankly, terrifying. The whole marine food chain -- which means most of the terrestrial food chain, too -- is dependent on phytoplankton. This is in addition to the increasing acidification of the oceans, the projected collapse of every major fish species by 2050 and, of course, lest we forget, or recent forays in disposing of oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico. I strayed a bit beyond where I intended to go with this first post. But I'm trying to make the point that civilization itself is about to undergo a radical change, whether we like it or not. The reason for that is that the most basic thing that civilization -- and we, as people -- depend upon is the stability of the biosphere. Since modern, industrial civilization has specialized in nothing so much as undermining that stability, change is surely afoot. In this blog, I will explore those changes, what they portend, how we can adapt, and what may still be done to avert the worst of the impending calamities that hang over our heads like the sword of Damocles.