By: Ruth Alice White
With a statewide moratorium on fracking, the MD Natural Gas team is working with the Don't Frack Maryland coalition to update our strategy and want your help. Our top focus is to promote local fracking bans and restrictions in counties and cities across Maryland. We are also focusing on public education, and we'll be showing movies and doing education sessions around the state.
Contact Ruth White, ruth.white@mdsierra.org to join the gas/fracking team calls and find out how you can plug into this imporant issue.
Sierra Club Chapter had a Natural Gas Campaign Planning Session on January 31, 2015 with almost 20 people. We had new national Sierra Club policy dated January 22, 2015,
http://sierraclub.org/policy/energy/fracking, which states: “The Sierra Club opposes the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking).To limit the damage from fracking until it can be ended entirely, the Club calls for prompt closure of loopholes that effectively exempt fracking from important aspects of major national environmental law.” And “that Sierra Club Chapters are the best judge of the most strategic way at the state and local level to end fracking and limit the damage from fracking until it can be ended. Chapters are authorized to decide whether the best course of action at the state and local levels is to advocate for bans, moratoria and/or stronger regulations on fracking.”
The Sierra Club position is that we need to pivot rapidly to clean energy. “Total greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas are nearly identical to coal, once methane leakage is taken into account -- and newer, more accurate data continues to be collected. Even without accounting for methane emissions, a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) study concluded that a global shift away from coal to natural gas would do little to get us off the path to climate catastrophe. ” per http://content.sierraclub.org/naturalgas/why-move-beyond-natural-gas. The Our Wild America program emphasizes we need to keep dirty fuels in the ground; see http://content.sierraclub.org/ourwildamerica/keeping-dirty-fuels-ground . The Sierra Club Environmental Law Program is active in stopping fracking in our communities and public lands http://content.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/category/stopping-fracking-our-communities-and-public-lands.
But most significantly the National Sierra Club has the “Beyond Natural Gas” program http://content.sierraclub.org/naturalgas/what-we-do. However, many local members at the retreat hate the term “natural gas” since we are aware we live in the Marcellus Shale region where almost all the gas is fracked gas and there is nothing “natural” about it. We have not formally changed our name but I for one call our Committee the Fracked Gas/Pipeline/CompressorStation/LNG-Export Committee or just Fracked Gas Committee for short. Those of us on the retreat and on the subsequent weekly calls during the legislative session are concerned about all these infrastructure issues connected with fracked gas. We know that in anticipation of exporting fracked gas (LNG) from Cove Point, or pivoting to new gas power plants, there already are and will continue to be more fracking , more new pipelines and more and expanded compressor stations.
However, the immediate urgent concern and the focus of the retreat planning,and a continuing focus of the Maryland Conservation Committee is how to get a long-term moratorium on fracking in Maryland.
The Maryland Sierra Club was and still is a very active member of the Maryland Long Term Moratorium Coalition (recently renamed the Don’t Frack Maryland Coalition - www.dontfrackmd.org). Josh Tulkin and Dave O’Leary gave major support to the legislative effort and many many Sierra Club members showed up in Annapolis repeatedly to support legislation for a long term moratorium. The Maryland Sierra Club made Don’t Frack Maryland tee shirts and signs which were (and still are) very popular with the coalition and which stood out in all the photos from Annapolis. They even showed up at the Cove Point March on May 30th that Kelly Canavan wrote about so eloquently elsewhere in this blog, http://maryland.sierraclub.org/blog/hundreds-marched-vibrant-protest-dominions-lng-export-plan-southern-maryland
This is another photo from that rally and march.
The Maryland Sierra Club, Coalition members, Maryland health professionals and business owners, and others sought an 8 year moratorium with a health study. But the bill that passed the Maryland legislature in April 2015 stripped the health study and instead provided only a 2 ½ year reprieve. See text at: http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2015RS/bills/sb/sb0409T.pdf, The Governor has to publish fracking regulations by October 2016 and these regulations cannot be implemented until October 2017. Governor Hogan did not veto this bill so it is now law.
Just after assuming office, Governor Hogan pulled final O’Malley fracking regulations that were just short of being printed. These regulations, though deemed inadequate by the coalition, would have been the strongest fracking regulations in the country. (The fact is that the O’Malley regulations were “final” regulations. I hear litigators will argue that Governor Hogan was incorrect in assuming he could pull them because technically they were not yet published).
Delegate Kumar Barve, chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, plans to have a study group on fracking and public health this summer. And in Western Maryland there are plans for a study of the economic impacts fracking will have on the region. (Health and economic impacts were not adequately addressed by the O’Malley Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Safe Drilling Advisory Commission. www.mde.state.md.us/programs/Land/mining/marcellus/Pages/Commission.aspx , and major reasons the final Commission report and the resulting O’Malley regulations are deemed insufficient).
We and the coalition realize we need to be very active in the next 2 years of this new moratorium. Some members of the coalition like Food and Water Watch are now calling for a fracking ban in Maryland.
The Coalition plans to seek county and local ban legislation, focusing on Prince George's and Montgomery Counties and hold forums and and public education events including showing the movie Groundswell Rising. The Howard County Sierra Club is already considering co-sponsoring a movie showing and hopefully others will also.
Right now we in the Sierra Club are focused on helping communities decide if they want to allow or ban fracking. We will consider our position on a statewide ban after we give the moratorium a bit more time, and after reviewing more of the research. We remain skeptical that fracking can be done safely, and will likely support a ban, but we fought hard for the moratorium and pushed hard for a health study, and want to give them time to play out a bit.
The “Fracking” Gas Committee had calls weekly during the legislative session, and plans to resume meeting via phone calls over the summer possibly the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays. Email me, Ruth Alice White at ruth.white@mdsierra.org to join the Committee’s gas listserv and get updates on events and upcoming calls. I am not technically the Committee chair; we may have co-chairs for this Committee. There is great opportunity in this new temporary moratorium. But time is short. Join us to assure we “Don’t Frack Maryland”.