Niagara Falls: Drilling Wastewater Won't Be Treated Here

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (AP) — Niagara Falls has gone on record against treating wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, with elected officials saying they don't want the city that endured the Love Canal toxic waste crisis to be a test case for the technology used in gas drilling operations.

The City Council approved an ordinance Monday that prohibits natural gas extraction in Niagara Falls, as well as the "storage, transfer, treatment or disposal of natural gas exploration and production wastes."

The move is meant to head off action by the Niagara Falls Water Board, which has been exploring the idea of accepting and treating wastewater from out-of-town hydraulic fracturing operations as a way to offset declining revenues. The city's specialized plant was designed to handle chemical waste and has the capacity to take wastewater from gas drilling.

"I researched it and it just came to a point where money can't be everything," Councilman Glenn Choolokian, the measure's sponsor and a member of the water board, said Tuesday. "We can't be a test case. We've been through Love Canal. We don't want another Love Canal."

An entire neighborhood was emptied in the 1970s after toxins dumped into an abandoned canal in the 1940s and '50s by Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corp. were found to have seeped into basements and backyards. That created a panic over birth defects and cancer. President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency in 1978, and in 1980 the Superfund cleanup act was born.

"We're not selling out future generations of our children for corporate greed," said Council Chairman Sam Fruscione, who attended school in the Love Canal neighborhood as a child.

Hydraulic fracturing uses pressurized water, sand and chemicals to break up underground shale to release natural gas. The wastewater from the process is contaminated with traces of chemicals that are known or probable carcinogens. During the process, drilling operators capture the wastewater and store it elsewhere.

City council members said they took the action Monday to discourage closed-door talks they believe have taken place between water board members and corporations involved with gas drilling.

The council's passage of the ordinance drew a standing ovation from an audience of environmental activists and residents who expressed concerns that tanker trucks with hazardous wastewater would be rolling through the city or treated wastewater would be discharged into the Niagara River upstream from Niagara Falls.

"It doesn't only affect them and their residents, it affects communities downstream," said Rita Yelda of Food and Water Watch, which praised passage of the resolution.

Although the Niagara Falls Water Board, which owns and operates the wastewater treatment systems, is a public benefit corporation and not under direct control of the City Council, council members said they were confident the city's new prohibition against storing and transporting the wastewater will eliminate any possibility of the board moving forward with treatment plans.

"They'll have to helicopter the waste in," Fruscione said.

Earl Wells, a spokesman for the water board, said the ordinance was under review by legal counsel.

Neighboring Pennsylvania is the center of hydraulic fracturing activity, with more than 3,000 wells drilled in the past three years and thousands more planned. In that state, researchers have found increased levels of bromide in rivers used for gas wastewater disposal.

Bromide, when combined with chlorine in municipal drinking water supplies, produces trihalomethanes, which have been linked in some studies to increased human cancer rates after years of exposure.

The council Monday also passed a resolution urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ban hydraulic fracturing statewide pending further review by federal environmental officials.

On Tuesday, the Buffalo Common Council passed a resolution supporting state legislation to prohibit hydraulic fracturing and the treatment of its wastewater in the state. The council sent a letter to Cuomo calling for a statewide ban on the drilling.

Comments

[Research this]

02:03 PM on 03/09/2012

WHO CARES IF Niagra says no to treament? Who is sending water there? NO ONE!
That's like Gov Christie Banning fracking in New Jersey. Surprise there's no Marcellus gas in New Jersey! FYI Hawaii refuses to take Frack water from PA they signed a measure.....

[Sunwyn Ravenwood]

03:31 PM on 03/07/2012

Actually the Love Canal problem was created by the local government, not the company. The Love Canal was a mile-long trench dug by a man named Love who ran out of money and quit digging. The chemical company bought the canal, which was lined with impermeable clay, to use as a toxic waste dump. They disposed of the chemicals properly, covered the whole thing with dirt and grass. They planned to just hold onto the land and let it sit.

Then the local government decided to buy it and build houses on it. The company refused to sell so they government used "eminent domain" to take the land. The company sold it for $1 and immunity from liability. The government KNEW it was a toxic waste dump and built a school on top of it anyway. Then they sold the rest of it to developers.

It just goes to show that sometimes corporations can do the right thing, and the people who are supposed to protect the public can be so corrupt and greedy that they endanger the lives of the people they are supposed to serve.

[Mike169]

06:09 AM on 03/08/2012

That's true sometimes corporations do the right thing. Massey Energy didn't do the right thing on so many levels from corporate greed to the mining industry writing the laws that are supposed to protect miners at the same time protecting owners from liabilities. This is what we get when the right makes the population scoff at regulations - 29 miners die and the only punishment that can be meted out is a $250.00 fine on first line supervisors. I always hope corporations do the right thing but their interests lie elsewhere - in profits.

[Sunwyn Ravenwood]

07:33 AM on 03/08/2012

Of course, it was 1953 when the company sold the Love Canal. Back then there were a lot more decent honest people running businesses, People stayed with a company for mean years. They still had concepts like loyalty and integrity,

They had not yet succumbed to the new style of management where you take over a company, sell off all the assets, loot the pension fund, fire all the employees, transfer all the assets to another company and then declare bankruptcy.

I have been fortunate enough to work for some good companies and unfortunate enough to work for some bad ones. I regret to say that I think the bad ones are increasing in number and the good ones are decreasing.

[mijjy]

09:38 AM on 03/07/2012

Good for them.

[doodlebug2]

10:09 AM on 03/07/2012

it is , they went through the love canal fiasco.