I was always impressed by Hopeforpeacenow’s reporting in the past. This frac-enabling piece cringes me out. It’s possible BNR is responsible for the sleaze in it via edits, but holy frac shit this is rubbish reporting pimping politicians snared by Satan.
The Eco-Vote Goes Sideways, How the Environmental Vote in Pennsylvania is Being Derailed by Hopeforpeacenow, Nov 1, 2024, BNR
Craig Stevens made the same phone call every week for seven years. A Tea Party Republican with generational roots in Northeast Pennsylvania, the water on his family farm had been impacted by the fracked gas boom overtaking his corner of Appalachia. Negative impacts to his property caused him to cross paths with a growing number of residents facing air and water pollution related to the extraction of natural gas, also known as fracking.
His weekly call was to the attorney general of Pennsylvania. He left the same message every time, the pollution Craig and his neighbors were experiencing amounted to crimes that demanded an investigation. Week after week, year after year he always made the call. After Josh Shapiro was elected as Pennsylvania’s attorney general in 2016, Craig received an unexpected return call, inviting him to the AG’s office in Harrisburg to elaborate on evidence of pollution he’d been gathering. Craig decided to bring a few impacted residents along, seventeen in all. They recounted harrowing tales of fracking related pollution that destroyed their home’s value and harmed their health. They also described how the company responsible led a public campaign to smear them as lying about the pollution.
Shapiro’s office opened a case and spent more than two years interviewing dozens of harmed residents, reviewing scientific reports and testing. A grand Jury reviewed the evidence and found grounds for an indictment. In June of 2020, charges were announced: “the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General is formally charging Cabot Oil and Gas, an unconventional gas, or ‘fracking,’ company, for environmental crimes that occurred in northeastern Pennsylvania.” Craig and his neighbors were elated. After a decade, the residents thought justice had finally arrived.
2020 became 2021, with no word of a court date or any deliberations. Finally at the end of 2023 Shapiro’s office announced a plea deal. By this time Cabot had merged with a Texas-based company, Coterra Energy. The plea deal promised that Coterra would fund a new water line to bring potable water to Dimock residents, who had been without usable water for more than ten years. Shapiro himself showed up for a local press briefing, with many of the impacted homeowners onstage. There was a tangible sense of jubilation. After ten years, they thought they had accomplished the impossible: making a big corporation pay for their mistakes.
The celebration lasted one night. The next morning, pollution victims realized they’d been duped. Shapiro’s office together with Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Regulation, the agency tasked with regulating oil drilling in Pennsylvania, had been working on a deal with Coterra that basically gave the company what it wanted. Coterra promised to build a water line bringing clean water to residents. But in exchange a decade-long moratorium on drilling and fracking that had been protecting the Dimock aquifer from further pollution was lifted. Cottera could go back to drilling and fracking, once again threatening the area’s drinking water.
Not only that, many families were promised deliveries of bulk water until the water line was built, but the final agreement swapped out the bulk water for bottled water. You can’t shower with bottled water, or do laundry or wash dishes. Complaints fell on deaf ears. One resident has been doing his own bulk water deliveries for ten years and was forced to continue that weekly chore. Other residents are pulling water from their ponds, or nearby Burdick creek.
Once Shapiro was elected governor, he became even more frack friendly. One of his signature initiatives is the Appalachian Hydrogen Hub, which would be fueled by fracked gas from in and around the area where the moratorium was lifted. While the goal of bringing jobs and long-term environmental benefits 
There are no environmental benefits (long or short) with frac’d gas hydrogen, it’s just another scam like carbon capture to help polluters keep profit-raping and polluting, and will drive up prices of everything for ordinary families because of the many massive financial subsidies, tax breaks, and gifts to polluters, notably regulators and politicians intentionally letting then walk from clean-up. More and more jobs in the oil and gas frac patch are automated, punting humans out, breaking promise after promise, as producers make more profits than ever. It’s impossible to make frac’ing safe, impossible to regulate it and, frac’ing intentionally permanently removes from the hydrogeological 25-100% of water injected (that alone is reason to ban it, pronto). to Pennsylvania was laudable, the residents impacted by the fracking boom felt betrayed by Shapiro. The promised water line was making little progress as of 2024 Pro frac’ers in the community will never allow that water line to be built, just like last time it was promised over a decade agoand the kinds of regulations needed to keep fracking safe (if that is even possible)it’s not, for the main reason that frac’ers just ignore the law and its enablers like backstabber Shapiro and Kamala Harris and regulators help them ignore it and lie and promise about it post harms seemed farther away than ever.
The Pennsylvania environmental community was naturally suspicious when Kamala Harris became the nominee for the 2024 presidential election. In 2019 Harris said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” While Harris still supports moving the nation off fossil fuels, and her record on environmental issues is solid, the candidate now says she would not support an immediate fracking ban. This position has been widely seen as a political necessity to win Pennsylvania (90% chance of being the state that decides the election), her flip flop was viewed with hostility by many of Pennsylvania’s environmentalists.
If America shut down our fracked gas energy supply “now” millions would go without power. The real goal is to phase out fracked gas as renewable energy is phased in.ya, right, corrupt sleazy money grubbing fucks like Sierra Club, other NGOs, and JFK Jr. and his band of merry polluters used that spin since the start of the frac insanity, claiming frac’ing was safe, good and clean for communities and the environment, a bridge forward, bla bla bla.
In support of that goal Harris cast the deciding vote in support for the Inflation Reduction Act which is the most comprehensive climate legislation ever passed in the US. But the more immediate need is tighter regulations won’t do any goodand transparency from the fracking industrywill never happen, no matter what anyone promises. Human life on earth will be over before frac’ers all discloses the secret toxic ingredients in their frac brews. These are the kinds of policies left-leaning voters can get behind and that Harris naturally supports.Harris is a Republican barely in disguise and a vile genocidaire, she’s not left-leaning ffs.
Harris and Shapiro have driven some left leaning voters in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania to declare they will vote for neither Trump or Harris. A recent Guardian article highlighted the trend with a title declaring; “I’m not voting for either.” Losing too many in that base could cost Harris the state and the election. Former President Trump told Fox News in an interview that he would be a dictator for one day, and on that day he would dictate ‘drill baby drill’, a chilling promise for water pollution victims living in frackland. Trump is a staunch deregulation supporter. But that’s an outcome some anti-fracking voters seem fine with. The specter of a deregulation focused “frack frack frack like a duck” President Trump doesn’t seem to be enough to get these voters over their loathing of Governor Josh Shapiro and other Democrats they feel have let them down.I’d never vote for a corrupt political gang that stabbed me in the back that are supplying Israel with $billions to wipe out Palestinian women and kids (to steal their lands, water, oil and gas). I’d wreck my ballot writing “No Genocide” across it.
One politician this group did trust was Robert Kennedy jr. An early and vocal supporter opponent of fracking, Kennedy was a passionate supporter of anti-fracking efforts. An environmental lawyer at the time, he was also arrested in front of the White House while protesting the Keystone Pipeline. When he announced as a candidate for President in 2024, many in this group were all in. Kennedy visited Dimock in Spring of 2024 and produced a short film to help raise awareness of the ongoing pollution issues faced by residents.Kennedy Jr is a chameleon, changes colours to fill personal coffers, all in to dupe voters to get donations for himself, which is why he spews anti vax crap while his family is vaccinated. Running initially as a Democrat then dropping out to join Team Trump is as dirty politically as one can get (like Alberta’s petro grunge girl, lobbyist Danielle Smith). Why do most people ignore/forget Kennedy’s frac love-in?
Then Kennedy left the race and endorsed Trump. Trump’s platform includes; “Make America the dominant energy producer in the world, by far!” That’s a goal you would think most environmental voters would rush to oppose.
A source close to Robert Kennedy says that Kennedy hopes to move Trump away from deregulation to stricter environmental regulations.
Any look at the candidate’s rhetoric would cast doubt on that possibility. Sources within the Pennsylvania anti-fracking movement contend that most voters who were hopeful about Kennedy are now voting for Trump or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, who has vowed to keep Harris out of the White House.
In 2014, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Regulation admitted they had sent letters to 243 residents alerting them that their water had been impacted by fracking. Ten years later no one knows how many cases of pollution have occurred. DEP does not keep track.
All impacted residents have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they can have their water restored.
It’s not possible to know how widespread the negative impacts from fracking are because all pollution victims are gagged in this way. Taking a Trump led deregulation road from here spells even more trouble.
“The difference between the climate and environmental impacts of a Trump or Harris presidency would be vast. We know this because we’ve already seen it.” says Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist and climate journalist. “The Trump administration rolled back every possible environmental regulation during his first term. It was a polluter’s dream. RFJ Jr is on Team Polluter and is an avid frac fan under guise of sometimes being opposed.Conversely, the Biden-Harris administration signed into law America’s largest-ever climate bill in the Inflation Reduction Act, and implemented numerous strong climate and environmental regulations.”
While trusting Harris after she changed views on fracking may be hard, it’s valuable to remember that banning fracking on the fly sounds nice, but it’s not realistic.Oh come on. There are infinite ways to make a frac ban work. If Ireland, France, and PEI can criminalize it, so can the mighty USA.If the fracked gas switch was shut down tomorrow, millions would be without lights. Bullshit. There are 1,000s of oil and gas wells that will be producing for years without frac’ing, and there is solar and wind and geothermal and reducing energy waste and improving energy efficiency and passive solar buildings making as much energy or more than they use and walking and bicycles and so much more keeping the lights on.“Phase out fracking” would have been a more accurate promise from Harris, a promise that could draw these voters back to here in these last days, in a state she desperately needs to win, and these water pollution victims need her to win.Tragically for earth and humanity, Trump and Harris are both pro polluter genocidaires; there will be no winners in the 2024 American election, only much more suffering and death and losers globally.
Refer also to:
1989: Companies and Canadian regulators know horizontal frac’ing contaminates groundwater
1995-96: Companies, their major lobby group, CAPP, and Alberta and Saskatchewan regulators know horizontal wells leak more than conventional vertical
SCVF = Surface Casing Vent Flow
GM = Gas Migration
Deviated wells are those that are slant or horizontal (e.g. not conventional)
2001: Encana begins using the small community of Rosebud Alberta as super shallow brute force and ignorant frac experiment including frac’ing into our fresh water drinking water aquifers – illegally.
2003: Encana files with Alberta’s water data base records showing the company intends to illegally perf and frac multiple fresh water aquifers at Rosebud. No authority stops the company; no one warns my community.
By 2004: Frac’ing contaminates drinking water supplies in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and more in Canada; and Wyoming, Colorado, Louisiana and more in USA; with Canadian and American regulators enabling the harms and law violations.
March 2004: Encana again intentionally illegally frac’d multiple Rosebud’s drinking water aquifers, repeatedly injecting 18 million litres into them, enabled by Alberta’s regulators and politicians. After our water began burning our skin and exploding, all we received from our authorities and Encana was one hell of a lot of abuse and lies.
Encana perf and frac depth data on file with the regulator, records copied above Ernst obtained after spent thousands of dollars via FOIP
The above perfs and fracs were illegal; the only one the regulators, courts and my own lawyers (after sacrificing my life long savings) punished, was me.
2005: My contaminated water hits Front Page of the Edmonton Journal (before Post Media – American hedge fund owned – took over nearly all Canada’s newspapers, now publishing oil, gas and frac lies and propaganda and climate chaos denial).
2006: My water after our aquifers were frac’d by Encana, the explosion when the gases in my water ignited was so violent it made me leap away (thus I am a blur in this photo), and the flame reached the ceiling. After this, I never again showed journalists inside my home how my Encana frac water explodes.
2006: Photo by Colin Smith of my water for an extremely Republican newspaper that serves rural Alberta and Saskatchewan to keep polluters polluting. They of course did not include this photo in their article on my gas contaminated water.
Later tests by Alberta’s water regulator, after proper and adequate purging of the Signer water well showed 110 mg/l methane. The regulator fought like hell trying to keep that data secret. It was an incredible soul bashing and energy and time wasting battle for me getting those records. A common trick by frac’er and regulator testers is to intentionally inappropriately purge water wells so as to test water in the well casing which has had much of the gasses exsolve, rather than test water in the aquifer(s) that has much higher concentrations.
2009 New Years Day:
It began with an explosion on New Year’s Day 2009. Soon, residents of the tiny rural community of Dimock discovered dangerous levels of methane gas had seeped into their private water wells.
Levels of methane were so high in some instances that residents could light their tap water on fire. They complained of headaches and rashes after they showered. They described their water looking like Alka Seltzer, or muddy.
2009: Ernst’s frac’d water (photo by her lawyers) also looks like Alka Seltzer
2009: Canada’s Prime Minister Harper creates an Anti-Terrorist Squad paid for by the citizenry to protect the oil and gas industry rich in Alberta. Two of his squad quickly invade my private property (after I had filed my legal papers) trying to terrify me silent and into dropping my lawsuit. How the hell does one “regulate” this frac shit?
Two of Harper’s squad walking up the steps to my home, warrantless and courageless.
2009: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in Financial Times that US is “awash with natural gas,” which “has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive coal.” RFK Jr was then and is an environmental lawyer for ffs. He knew and knows damn well how toxic and ignorant frac’ing was and remains.
2011:
2011: RFK retracts support for gas
A proportion (25% to 100%) of the water used in hydraulic fracturing is not recovered, and consequently this water is lost permanently to re-use, which differs from some other water uses in which water can be recovered and processed for re-use.The only “regulation” that protects water is to ban frac’ing.
2013: EPA, while lying to and dismissing the harmed in Dimock, admitted Dimock’s gas contaminated water problem in presentations they did not share with the harmed:
East Palestine, Ohio
2023: RFK Jr’s campaign walks back promise to ban fracking following backlash
‘An immediate and total ban on fracking would devastate the US economy,’ the Kennedy campaign tells Fox News Digital Republican Kennedy Jr. is just another power-addicted Shapiro sharpening his knives and changing colours to enable polluters and himself.
2024: RFK Jr.’s family trust earns thousands from an oil and gas company
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who built his public profile as an environmental activist and crusader against polluters, earned tens of thousands of dollars from an oil and gas rights leasing company.
The independent presidential candidate reported the earnings on his financial disclosure form filed last June from Arctic Royalty Limited Partnership, which leases land for oil and gas extraction in Oklahoma, Texas and other states.
Arctic Royalty, which is part of a portfolio of investments from Kennedy’s family trust accounts, leases land to multiple companies that have been fined for pollution and regulatory infractions, as well as to the chemical subsidiary of the company that polluted East Palestine, Ohio, in the trail derailment last year.
Kennedy earned between $17,759 and $29,257 from Jan. 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, from Arctic Royalty — which is a significant portion of the possible earnings from his three family trust accounts. Those accounts produced an income between about $36,000 and $97,000, according to Kennedy’s form. Arctic Royalty has been registered as a business entity in numerous states since 1985.
Overall, however, his Arctic Royalty earnings are a relatively small fraction of his overall income, which he reported at about $9 million.
… On the campaign trail, Kennedy has centered his career as an environmental activist and anti-pollution litigator. He also criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the East Palestine cleanup in a campaign video, saying if he was president that “everybody involved, the corporate officials and the regulatory officials, would be held accountable, both criminally and civilly.”
Look at that! His trousers on fire look like my frac’d water!
As a candidate, Kennedy pledged to ban fracking last fall as part of a 10-point plan to “fix” plastics pollution. But four days later, he walked it back. The campaign said he wouldn’t ban fracking because that would harm the U.S. economy….
… Kennedy, however, did not detail the companies that lease land for oil and gas procurement from Arctic Royalty in his financial disclosures. But his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, who filed the same report to become ambassador to Australia, did.
The complete and transparent disclosure of a candidate’s financial investments and holdings is a vital part of the public vetting process, experts say.
“It’s really important for candidates to disclose their financial interests to voters because voters are deciding whether to entrust these people with an incredible amount of power,” said Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. “The public has a right to know that these people are going to be acting in the public’s best interest and not in the interest of someone who used to pay them a lot of money to drill on their land, or used to pay their salary, or be a client of theirs.”
The OGE guidelines have specific rules for oil and gas rights leasing companies, which say that Robert Kennedy should have included in his own disclosure a similar list breaking down the companies that leased land from Arctic Royalty LP.
“You would expect to see it reported in the way that the ambassador reports it just based on what OGE guidance says,” Marsco said. “Not to say that it was an intentional omission, that you know, he was trying to hide something because clearly, it’d be very hard to hide it because it literally exists exactly in somebody else’s report.”
Caroline Kennedy’s disclosure, which was also filed in 2023, reported that Arctic Royalty works with fossil fuel companies that have been fined for polluting by the EPA, Justice Department and state regulatory bodies as well as at least one other company that was served a notice of a potential violation.
Arctic Royalty also leases land to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp., according to the latest available county appraisal property filings in Yoakum County, Texas. The chemical arm of Occidental Petroleum was transporting its products on the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.
The chemical subsidiary is also a member organization of a lobbying group that weighed in on the Railway Safety Act of 2023, introduced by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), which did not become law.
And the Occidental Chemical Corporation president is on the board of another lobbying group that argued against the Railway Safety Act. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers wrote in a letter to Senate leaders that while it agreed with the “legislative intent,” it opposed reforms not directly related to the cause of that specific train derailment. This included opposing an accelerated phase-out of the tank car fleet.
Occidental Petroleum also reported lobbying the government on a variety of issues, including rail safety, rail customer service, tank car safety and oil vessels, according to public lobbying reports from 2023.
Occidental did not respond to a request for comment. Kennedy said he could not find records of Arctic Royalty leasing land to Occidental, but the county records available online show a relationship dating back to 2013. Arctic Royalty could not be reached for comment.
Kennedy has used the East Palestine train derailment to highlight his background as an environmental activist who has a record of legally holding polluters accountable. He’s also used it to draw a contrast between himself and President Joe Biden, including making a campaign video that explains how his response would differ if he was in office now.
Kennedy did not mention in the campaign video about East Palestine that he received revenue from Arctic Royalty, which does business with the Occidental Petroleum’s subsidiary.
…
Email in, with photos, from one of the Coterra/Cabot frac-harmed families:
“Nice article. Photo below is of the bogus “water treatment system” which DEP mandated in 2010 then let the gas co run away from. DEP also ignores complaints from certain people seemingly because Perry issued the homeowner a so called “cease & desist” in attempts to halt them from complaining. Photo were taken in March 2023 & ignored by DEP, gas co, Ag, & governor:”
2024:
I’m still hauling alternate safe water, not easy in freezing conditions in rural Alberta
2024: @Kahlissee:
An unidentified baby girl, less than 3 months old, was left abandoned and lifeless.
Born at the start of the genocide she joined a list of thousands of murdered children
No one visited or claimed her body, abandoned in a tent filled with corpses. Her family is most likely victims of the same tragedy in Gaza
This was on Day 104 of the Genocide
And Kamala Harris’ legacy that needs to haunt her until the end of time.