– Discontinue the use of sodium bisulfate to reduce pH in the ozone contact chamber.

– Trust the Plant Operator to use the optimum amount of ferric chloride required for coagulation.

– Investigate the use (jar tests) of ferric chloride and various water treatment polymers to reduce the use of corrosive ferric chloride.

– Discontinue the practice of lime softening. Continue the flow through the softener facility and consider adding a low dose of filter aid (additional polymer) as necessary during seasonal high turbidity.

– Discontinue the practice of fluoridation.

– Discontinue the practice of re-carbonation.

– Discontinue the use of pre-filtration chlorine.

– Remove the anthracite coal media from the filter beds and replace it with a granular activated carbon (GAC) material. There are specifically engineered products for use in dual media filters. The use of GAC for organic Trihalomethanes (THM) precursor removal will immediately reduce THM formation in the drinking water supply.

– Post chlorinate disinfect based on residual demand requirements. Post chlorination will not be as intensive as the organic material will be dramatically reduced. The GAC will also serve as a barrier to other types of contamination events (petroleum, chemical, and algae blooms).

• Distribution System Operations

– Complete development of the water distribution hydraulic flow model.

– Immediately increase distribution system velocities.

– Re-engineer the distribution system to encourage directional sediment transport for evacuation of system contaminates (sludge, biofilm, sediment, and other debris). This will further aid in chlorine demand management.

• Take at least one of the water system storage reservoirs out of service. Thoroughly clean the storage reservoir, perhaps a program of alternative years of service. With the 2 MG elevated tank, perhaps both reservoirs could be removed from service this year.

• Prepare a budget that accounts for all fixed/variable debts: loans, capital depreciation of infrastructure, retirement system obligations, etc. This will allow the community to understand exactly where it stands in relation to its debt obligations…before one drop of water is produced. The total of the compilation can then be divided among the consumers based on number and class size of services. It is simple, straightforward, and easily understood.

• Prepare a budget that accounts for all commodity/variable costs: salaries, chemicals, energy, contract services, etc. This will allow the community to understand exactly where it stands as it relates to the cost of water. Using historic production and sales numbers, project a water sales figure and divide the commodity costs among the units; this is the true cost of water.

His recommendations were ignored, and we were basically told by the municipality and local officials to “go to hell.” To this day, Bob is still willing to help Flint and yet they have rejected his help and many other expert opinions. It was a full year until the national media picked up the Flint story and major officials finally started to come clean.

Disasters like Flint don’t happen overnight. While I can understand that the city was trying to gain some autonomy and cut costs, they did not have the measures in place to do it safely. As soon as the water treatment operators, the city, and the state became aware of the problem, they should have taken action. But they didn’t. They covered it up. They told residents everything was fine, exposing 100,000 people, including thousands of children, to dangerous levels of lead and cancer-causing disinfection byproducts, which is why so many officials have stepped down, been fired, or are facing felony charges.

So far, fifteen officials have been charged with everything from misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty to involuntary manslaughter. The highest-ranking official to stand trial (so far) is Nick Lyon, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, who has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in two deaths related to the outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease. Lyon denies wrongdoing, but the district judge on his case said that withholding health information from the public was “corrupt.” Flint brought to light exactly how the very agencies that are set up to protect us can put us in very real danger.

By the way, people in Flint pay some of the highest rates in the country for their undrinkable water. On average, Flint residents pay eight times more than the national average. Bills for many residents have continued to soar throughout the crisis. When Bob assessed these rates in 2015, he said they were the highest he had seen anywhere in the country. He found that Flint residents were paying $15.80 per thousand gallons of water for service and use fees, compared to the national average of about $2 per thousand gallons. Budget documents from the city don’t provide enough information for residents to understand how their money is being spent. In 2018, Melissa Mays was paying about $350 a month for her water and was still unable to drink, bathe, or cook with it.

But within this story of local corruption, more water warriors were born, including citizens and scientists working together to get the truth out.

At a February 2016 meeting of the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee, LeeAnne offered her testimony of what happened to her family. “My home was being tested because of the discoloration of my water and the health issues my family was experiencing. We fought the city and the state, saying there was something wrong, and we were dismissed. I decided we needed to get to the science if anyone was ever going to believe us.”

She had three tests conducted by the city of Flint, which used extra steps to minimize the amount of lead detected—a common practice. The numbers were still 104 ppb, 397 ppb, and 707 ppb, which prompted LeeAnne to contact the EPA and start working with water expert Miguel Del Toral. Through her own research, LeeAnne discovered that the city was not using corrosion control in its water treatment, and Miguel was able to confirm it. He also introduced her to Dr. Marc Edwards, a scientist at Virginia Tech with thirty years’ expertise in lead pollution, who helped LeeAnne to independently test her water. Of the tests she performed, she found an average of 2,500 ppb of lead in the water coming out of her tap. Her highest reading was 13,500 ppb. The EPA classifies lead measuring at 5,000 ppb as hazardous waste.

“At that point, you do not just have smoke, you have a 3-alarm fire and should respond immediately,” Marc told the Detroit News.

But despite this information and the fact that one of her sons tested positive for lead poisoning, the city and the MDEQ still contended that the water was safe.

“With the help of Virginia Tech, we conducted citizen-based sampling,” LeeAnne said in her congressional testimony. “We educated and distributed 300 samples equally throughout the city. We collected back 277 samples. All of this was done in a 3-week turnaround.”

Just a few months after Bob and I became aware of what was happening in Flint, these Virginia Tech scientists confirmed that more than 40 percent of the homes in Flint had dangerously high levels of lead. The people learned how to conduct field tests from these scientists, and that science backed up their common sense. Now, that’s what we call boots on the ground action!

The researchers also posed the question: How is it possible that Flint “passed” the official EPA Lead and Copper Rule sampling overseen by the Michigan DEQ?

In their report, the Virginia Tech scientists wrote, “In our experience, following the EPA site selection criteria targeting homes with the highest risk for lead, the MDEQ sampling should have found much worse results than our sampling. Instead, MDEQ is asserting that the lead levels in Flint are much lower. Hence, we call on the U.S. EPA and others, to conduct a detailed audit of the 2014 and 2015 LCR sampling round overseen by MDEQ in Flint, to determine if it was conducted consistent with requirements of the law.”

This citizen work caught the attention of two other women in Flint who played a pivotal role in helping the city’s children: Elin Betanzo, a certified water operator and engineer, and her friend Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of the pediatric residency program for Hurley Medical Center, a public hospital in Flint. They were talking in Dr. Mona’s kitchen one night, shortly after learning about the elevated lead levels in Flint’s water. Elin said she had concerns about the water switch back in 2014, when she attended a training session sponsored by the Michigan American Water Works Association. It’s where she first heard the news that Flint was planning to switch their water source, which as a water professional she thought was an unusual move. Cities don’t typically switch from a clean water source to a more polluted one unless there’s a serious reason such as a drought or a toxic spill.

“That’s not something that happens every day,” Elin said in an interview. “It surprised me….They were saying that they were moving off of Detroit water to save money, but usually you don’t save money by going independent. There’s economies of scale, and by having a larger water system, it seems theoretically, if all the economics are working properly, Flint would be saving money to be staying on Detroit. So, from an expense point of view, it seemed unusual that they were changing off of the Detroit water.”

As the women were talking, they realized that Dr. Mona had access to children’s medical records in the city, and that she could use this information to show whether or not the children’s health had been impacted by the water. As I’ve mentioned, lead is a known neurotoxin that can cause irreversible damage and is most toxic to the developing brain. About ten thousand children under the age of six lived in Flint at the time.

“If you do the study and if you document the increase in childhood blood lead levels, this is what would need to happen to make people pay attention to this and actually listen to the residents in Flint,” Elin said to her friend.

Dr. Mona pulled hospital records as data for her study, looking at children’s lead levels before and after the switch to the Flint River. The medical center routinely screened children for lead poisoning, especially at ages one and two, so she knew they had the data. Sure enough, once the data was collected from nearly two thousand children, she found that their blood lead levels had nearly doubled throughout the city and tripled in certain high-risk areas. Her study was eventually published in the American Journal of Public Health. Her research also called out important facts about children drinking water with elevated lead levels:

“Lead in drinking water is different from lead from other sources, as it disproportionately affects developmentally vulnerable children and pregnant mothers,” she wrote in the study. “Children can absorb 40 percent to 50 percent of an oral dose of water-soluble lead compared with 3 percent to 10 percent for adults. In a dose–response relationship for children aged 1 to 5 years, for every 1-ppb increase in water lead, blood lead increases 35 percent. The greatest risk of lead in water may be to infants on reconstituted formula.”

She held a press conference in September 2015, recommending that the city stop using the Flint River as its drinking water source as soon as possible, but she was quickly vilified by city officials, who called her an “unfortunate researcher, causing near hysteria.” She was accused of splicing and dicing numbers that were not consistent with state data. But numbers don’t lie, and soon those same officials were forced to retract their statements about her work and come clean about what was really happening in Flint. Dr. Mona calls the water disaster one of the greatest environmental crimes of this century and says that the people of Flint were betrayed by every agency that was supposed to protect them.

“Our data is just a snapshot of a small group of children at one point in time,” she said in 2016 testimony to the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on “The Flint Water Crisis: Lessons for Protecting America’s Children.” “Due to the extended time period of potential exposure, the likelihood that most living in the area ingested the water directly or cooked with it, and the short time period in which we are able to detect blood lead levels in children, it is highly likely that there are a large number of children whose elevated blood lead levels have gone undetected.”

Dr. Mona now leads the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, a joint program of Michigan State University and Hurley Children’s Hospital to address Flint’s population-wide lead exposure. The initiative brings together experts in pediatrics, child development, psychology, epidemiology, nutrition, toxicology, geography, education, and community and workforce development. The initiative aims to continue to assess what happened, monitor the effects from the lead exposure, and intervene to help these children. Lead exposure in children has been associated with decreased IQ and an increased likelihood of ADHD, delinquent behaviors, total arrests, and increased rates of arrests involving violent offenses. Her team is using evidence-based interventions to mitigate the effects of the exposure on these children, and she intends to share best practices with medical professionals throughout the country.

The water situation is still a mess in Flint, and the fallout is ongoing. People still won’t drink unfiltered water, and though money has been allocated to replace and update pipes, it will take years to complete this task. The state has poured more than $350 million into Flint to help fix the water problems, on top of a $100 million grant the EPA awarded to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to fund drinking water infrastructure improvements throughout the city.

In January 2016, Governor Rick Snyder and current Flint mayor Karen Weaver appointed Virginia Tech scientist Marc Edwards to oversee all water testing for the state and federal government. The City of Flint reported in April 2018 that Flint’s water met federal standards and the water tested at 6 ppb for lead, below the federal action levels in the Lead and Copper Rule of 15 ppb. The city closed the remaining free bottled water distribution centers that same month. While the city has worked to replace lead service lines that connect homes to the municipal water source, lines inside homes can still be contaminated and many residents don’t have the funds to replace them. Edwards has clashed with Flint activists, his former colleagues, and other Flint researchers based in Flint by filing lawsuits against them. Virginia Tech has been awarded almost $2 million by the EPA to create one of the largest citizen science engineering projects in U.S. history to better understand lead in drinking water. Marc Edwards is the principal investigator of the project.

But great tragedies do foster new possibilities, and in Flint many residents decided they wanted to help save their city. In February 2017, the city clerk’s office had given out fifty-two petitions for city council seats. In order to run for a council seat, candidates have to pick up a petition, file it by the designated deadline, get at least a hundred signatures of registered voters from their ward, and be registered to vote in the ward that they hope to represent. After the primaries, seventeen candidates remained, giving voters the choice of two candidates in eight of the nine wards. Newcomers claimed five of the nine seats in the November 2017 election, taking out incumbents and offering fresh energy to the council. Santino Guerra won the Third Ward seat at just nineteen years old. This University of Michigan–Flint sophomore studying criminal justice and sociology proved that you are never too young to run for office and make a positive difference in your community. His top three policy priorities are safe and affordable drinking water, blight, and public safety.

Local officials are slowly gaining back control of the city. The financial emergency, which began in 2011 and led to emergency managers running the city, resolved in April 2015 with a Receiver Transition Advisory Board (RTAB) overseeing a switch back to local government control. As of January 2018, both the mayor and the city council have gained back most day-to-day decision-making powers, while the RTAB still reviews budgets and debt obligations. With local powers back in place, they have repealed a law enacted by former emergency manager Jerry Ambrose that required the state to approve all resolutions made by the mayor and city council before they could take effect.

It’s not a perfect fix, and Flint still has a long road ahead. The real question in Flint, and in so many other places like it, is how do we begin to fix these broken systems? A lead crisis worse than Flint’s happened in Washington, D.C., in the early 2000s, where thousands of children were exposed to lead-contaminated water and the city didn’t disclose the increased levels until The Washington Post reported about them in 2004. It wasn’t a cost-saving move as in Flint, but rather a switch from chlorine to chloramines to disinfect the water that caused lead to leach from the city’s pipes. The EPA distributed thirty thousand water filters and offered blood testing for residents who were concerned about their exposure. Yet the Lead and Copper Rule from 1991 remains unchanged. How many more cases of amnesia will we get before something changes?

I think more self-reporting and technology advances can help. What if we could post water test results publicly and in real time? What if more people were informed about how those results would impact them? We have access to more technology than ever before and perhaps we can use it to create more transparent and accessible agencies. Imagine how we could enact change if everyone was more informed and felt ready to take part in creating solutions.

Here’s one example. When eleven-year-old Gitanjai Rao from Lone Tree, Colorado, read about the water quality problems in Flint and throughout the country, she wanted to find an easier way to test the water and receive results. This solutions-oriented sixth grader used the skill of observation to get started. “I noticed articles about how there was no solution to detect lead in water that is fast, easy, and inexpensive,” she told Fast Company. “I knew I wanted to solve this.”

She developed a kit, which she named Tethys after the Greek goddess for fresh water, that uses carbon nanotube sensors to detect lead in the water. A Bluetooth attachment sends results straight to your smartphone so you can immediately see if your water’s levels are elevated. Typically, a lead test strip has to be sent to a lab and results come back in a week or two. It can cost about $50 or more for both the test strip and the processing, while Gitanjai’s kit is estimated to cost about $20. Her project won the 2017 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge; the $25,000 prize will help her develop the prototype for production. Her kit could be expanded in the future to test for other toxic chemicals in the water as well. Wow! She is an amazing example of how one person can make a huge impact. She envisioned a world where no children drink lead-contaminated water and then did the research to develop an idea that could really help.

“You are not alone” is what I say to every community I speak with. These problems are everywhere. If you’re thinking water problems are happening in a few cities around the country, but certainly not in your town, I’ve got news for you. Flint is not the only place that’s dealt with lead contamination, not even close. I’ve heard personally from more than two hundred communities that have lead problems as bad as or worse than Flint’s. More than 18 million Americans throughout the country rely on drinking water systems that have violated federal lead regulations, according to a 2016 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Looking at data from EPA records, the report showed that more than five thousand systems failed to protect people on many levels—from not working to reduce high lead levels to not properly monitoring the water for lead, or simply not reporting results to the public or the government. The Philadelphia Water Department is facing a class action lawsuit due to questionable lead and copper testing practices, but cities throughout the country use similar techniques to minimize lead in their testing results by flushing water lines before they test.

Hinkley taught us how corporations conceal huge toxic scandals and how hexavalent chromium got into the public water supply and harmed the health and welfare of consumers. Flint taught us about the cover-ups happening in state and local agencies to protect themselves rather than the people they serve. Now, I want to show you how state and local officials have turned against their constituents in favor of fracking, and how people are fighting back.

FRACK-QUAKES

Let’s look at Oklahoma. The oil industry is Oklahoma’s bread and butter. People there live and die by it. The state capitol in Oklahoma City is the only one in the U.S. with active oil rigs outside it. World oil prices are set in Cushing, Oklahoma, a tiny town with fewer than eight thousand people, which is also home to the world’s largest oil-storage tank farm with capacity for about 90 million barrels of crude oil. Cushing is also considered the “pipeline crossroads of the world,” thanks to its vast infrastructure that supplies up to 6 million barrels of oil daily through thirteen major pipelines.

On November 7, 2016, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake rattled Cushing, damaging homes and large buildings and causing schools to close the next day. I can only imagine how a larger earthquake could disturb those pipelines and storage tanks. It was one of just nineteen earthquakes recorded that week throughout the state. Oklahoma is not known for natural seismic activity, but in 2015 it became the earthquake capital of the world. Before 2009, Oklahoma had about two earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater each year. But activity began to increase in 2010, and from 2013 to 2018, the state had hundreds of earthquakes per year.

We are in the midst of a massive drilling boom across the U.S., in part due to new technologies like hydraulic fracturing, a process that pumps millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals and sand into the ground to retrieve oil and gas deposits. Fracking is happening near neighborhoods and Main Streets across the country. In many of these areas, drilling competes with farming for access to freshwater. From 2005 to 2015, Oklahoma used more than 19 billion gallons of freshwater in fracking operations.

I have a special connection to the tall grasses of Oklahoma, as I spent most of my summers as a kid visiting my grandparents in Ponca City, where my mom was born and raised. My older siblings were born in Oklahoma City. The Sooner State is known for tornadoes and thunderstorms, not earthquakes. It’s not only bizarre, it’s affecting people’s lives.

The drilling isn’t the problem in Oklahoma as much as the wastewater. Scientists have confirmed that the injection of mass quantities of fracking wastewater into disposal wells throughout the state is what’s triggering the tremors. Water plays a crucial role in hydraulic fracturing. The water cycle has five parts to it, according to the EPA, and it’s the last part that’s causing havoc.

Five Stages

Stage 1: Water Acquisition
The withdrawal of groundwater or surface water to make hydraulic fracturing fluids.
Stage 2: Chemical Mixing
The mixing of a base fluid and additives at the well site to create hydraulic fracturing fluids.
Stage 3: Well Injection
The injection and movement of hydraulic fracturing fluids through the oil and gas production well and into the targeted rock formation.
Stage 4: Produced Water Handling
The on-site collection and handling of water that returns to the surface after hydraulic fracturing and the transportation of that water for disposal or reuse.
Stage 5: Wastewater Disposal and Reuse
The disposal and reuse of hydraulic fracturing wastewater.

The Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association has disputed scientific claims linking their activity to earthquakes. The association’s president, Chad Warmington, said in a 2015 statement, “There may be a link between earthquakes and disposal wells, but we—industry, regulators, researchers, lawmakers, or state residents—still don’t know enough about how wastewater injection impacts Oklahoma’s underground faults.”

Initially, state lawmakers kept their heads in the sand. Former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general for Oklahoma, contended that the problem didn’t exist. Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin took the side of industry, saying that the relationship between oil and gas activity and earthquakes was speculation and that more science was needed to understand it.

Man-made earthquakes, or “induced earthquakes” as scientists call them, are not a new concept. In an aptly titled 2015 lecture, “Yes, Humans Really Are Causing Earthquakes,” a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research geophysicist explained that one of the first known human-made earthquakes shook Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1894, and it was caused by an increase in gold production in the area. In Europe scientists in the early 1900s found that mining activities could create seismic activity, and by 1908 Germans had built the first monitoring lab for further study. In the U.S., earthquakes related to oil production first happened in 1925 in Goose Creek, Texas, near Houston. Scientists concluded that the extraction of oil and gas changed the forces on the fault lines, making earthquakes more likely. When Nevada’s Lake Mead was filled in 1935, scientists realized that the pressure of the water on faults below caused them to shift.

Earthquakes relating specifically to fluid injection into the ground were tracked in 1967 at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical-weapons manufacturer located outside Denver, Colorado. The plant disposed of its waste fluids by injecting them into a well that was twelve thousand feet deep. Shortly after, more than a thousand earthquakes rattled the area, some measuring up to 5.0 on the Richter scale.

Seismologists start by asking a few questions to study and identify man-made earthquakes.

1. Is there a recent change in activity?
2. Are the earthquakes close to the source of stress?
3. Are they happening close to the time of the stress?
4. Are they close to the surface? (Many times, induced earthquakes show up closer to the earth’s surface than natural ones.)

Of course, not all induced earthquakes can be traced to this set of questions, but they offer simple guidelines for tracking the activity. The first question—is there a recent change?—is one I use often to determine the source of water issues in an area. It’s all about observing changes and then investigating how those changes can impact the environment.

When it comes to Oklahoma, the waste and cleanup from hydraulic fracturing activities is the source of trouble. During the natural-gas-extraction process, fracking fluids rise to the surface, along with ancient seawater, known in the industry as produced water. The water is so salty that it can’t be dumped at the surface, as it can kill plant life and harm soil health. When it spills into waterways, it can kill fish. In fact, spills of this saltwater from fracking in North Dakota have caused outrage among landowners and farmers alike; they say that saltwater is far more devastating to our environment than oil. Companies dispose of this water by pumping it down another opening deep in the shale—a process called deep wastewater injection. As these wells fill up with the wastewater, it builds pressure on geological faults, causing man-made earthquakes to occur. Oklahoma’s geology is particularly prone to quakes. The rock is highly absorbent of the wastewater and the buildup over time allows deep faults to slip, leading to dozens of earthquakes occurring in the same area for days. Since 2011, well operators have injected more than 2 billion barrels of fluids each year into the ground in Oklahoma. These disposal wells have also been linked to earthquakes in Texas, Arkansas, and Ohio. In fact, Arkansas lawmakers banned the use of deep injection wells in 2011.

The impact of these quakes on the people there includes structural damage to their homes, along with concerns for their water supply. One family I spoke with lives in a house that is essentially rubble on the first floor. It’s dusty and is more like a cabin than a house. Another household is looking at $75,000 worth of repairs on a home valued at $65,000. Earthquakes also impact drinking water, as they are known to cause wells to dry up and to lower the quality of surface water.

The state did begin to take some precautionary measures after seeing the increase in earthquake activity. In 2015 the Oklahoma Corporation Commission began implementing restrictions on the number of wastewater wells. After nearly 4,000 earthquakes in 2015, the number dropped in 2016 to 2,500 thanks to those regulations. But when it comes to earthquakes, size matters more than frequency.

Oklahoma’s Pawnee Nation has sustained some of the biggest earthquakes in the state, including the largest earthquake ever recorded in Oklahoma’s history—a 5.8 magnitude that struck the 2,200-person town of Pawnee on September 3, 2016. The earthquake occurred on a previously undiscovered fault zone, according to researchers.

“That was the one earthquake that started out with a bang but then rumbled and rolled,” Andrew Knife Chief, executive director of the Pawnee Nation, told National Geographic. “It was the one earthquake where I go, ‘Oh, this is a big deal. This is a big one.’ You could feel it. It kept going and going. It shook the ground for about a minute.”

The Pawnee Nation’s long history in this country spans more than seven hundred years; the tribe has been based in Oklahoma since 1875. Several of their buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They have been dealing with physical damage to their structures, such as sagging beams and cracked walls. And buildings in Oklahoma were not designed to withstand earthquakes like those in California. The Pawnees are worried about their drinking water too.

“We are not anti-using our land’s resources,” Andrew said. “What we are trying to push back against is the irresponsible production of oil and gas and the irresponsible disposal of wastewater. If an earthquake comes through here and destroys the buildings, we can rebuild, but if you pollute our water, we’re done. And we have warning sides [sic] and indications that our waterways are becoming more polluted.”

In 2016, the EPA released results from a multi-year study that looked at the relationship between fracking activities and drinking water and confirmed that the practice does impact drinking water. This study provides valid research as more communities work to protect themselves from fracking. Some of its main points show that fracking activities can cause stress on surface water and groundwater supplies because of the withdrawal of large volumes of water; because spills and faulty well construction can contaminate underground sources of drinking water; and because the disposal of wastewater into underground injection wells can impact surface waters.

I came to speak at a Pawnee town hall meeting in early 2017 and came back with Bob for another talk at Oklahoma State University to discuss the earthquakes and their impact. Community meetings provide information to help everyone to understand the issue and help people who have been impacted through no fault of their own. “We should never be bullied for coming forward with concerns,” I said to the audience. “You have a right to ask for the truth and to ask for solutions.”

As I’ve mentioned, my father was a mechanical engineer who worked for Texaco running the pipelines. He worked for industry, but he also said, “When we cross the lines and jeopardize the environment and our public health and welfare, we’ve gone too far.” He came from a place of respect and understanding the difference between right and wrong. The oil and gas industry—not communities or families—needs to pay for the damage caused by fracking. These companies knew they were causing the quakes, and they also knew that the state was friendly to industry.

In March 2017, the Pawnee Nation filed a lawsuit against more than twenty-five oil and gas companies operating wastewater injection sites near their home. It was the first earthquake-related litigation filed in a tribal court, and it accuses the companies of knowingly causing the tremors with “reckless disregard for public or private safety.”

“It was important to the tribe because it’s an assertion of sovereignty,” said attorney Curt Marshall, co-lead counsel on the case. “There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage through no fault of the tribe and we are working to get them money so that repairs don’t come out of tribal funds.”

He added that they are not looking to shut down the industry, as the oil and gas activity is vital to the local economy.

When the case goes to trial, the jury will be made up of Pawnee Nation members. While the lawsuit focuses on property damage to historic buildings, it’s also an opportunity to use the court system to fight against this practice. Other personal and class action lawsuits have been filed in the state, but so far they have either been dismissed or are still pending.

A TOWN THAT BANNED FRACKING

It doesn’t get more idyllic than the fourteen-thousand-person town of Dryden, New York. Frank Capra, director of It’s a Wonderful Life, was inspired to make his movie after visiting this quaint place, known for its picturesque farmlands and historic homes. The town sits upon the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that stretches from upstate New York into Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and parts of Ohio, one of the largest shale formations in the U.S. and one that contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This small farming town in upstate New York fought to preserve its way of life and won.

Mary McRae, a farmer in Dryden for more than thirty years, was first approached in 2007 by a young man who said he wanted to lease her land to drill for gas. She turned him down swiftly, but he was persistent. He called her on the phone, wrote letters, and even showed up at her door several times. She eventually signed the lease after he told her that her neighbors had already signed the deal and the company was moving forward with their plans. She had no idea what she had agreed to and eventually started reaching out to her neighbors for help. That’s how she met Deborah and Joanne Cipolla-Dennis, recent transplants to Dryden, who didn’t want to see the town’s rural way of life ruined. The group started researching the issue and discovered that their town was slated to become a hotbed of fracking activity. They created the Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition as a means to explore the impact hydraulic fracturing could have—not only on their neighborhood but also on the state and region. They met up as often as three times per week for discussions that centered around what actions they could take to protect their land and water.

They connected with David and Helen Slottje, former corporate lawyers from Boston who now lived in Ithaca, just a twenty-minute drive from Dryden. The couple had been offering pro bono legal help to many nearby towns that were concerned about fracking. David and Helen knew there wasn’t much legal recourse when it came to regulating the industry, but they discovered a potential loophole: a local land-use prohibition that could stop the drilling. Local zoning laws might be able to ban fracking, just as towns regulate noise activities or enact other ordinances to protect neighborhoods.

The first step toward making it happen was to start a petition drive. The group began collecting signatures from fellow residents and were able to present almost 1,600 signatures to the Dryden Town Board, an impressive accomplishment for a small town. They showed just how many locals were concerned about fracking, reaching out across party lines and to all parts of town, organizing information sessions, collaborating with neighboring communities, and pursuing other strategies.

They presented their signatures at a packed town hall meeting with more than a hundred locals. One dissenting voice came from Henry Kramer, who spoke amidst the many who were in favor of the ban.

“You do not have the jurisdiction,” Kramer told the town board. “Has the state given us any legal authority to overwrite or impede state policy?” He worried that the town would be exposing itself to lawsuits by enacting the ban: “If we are among the first to do so you can expect a major assault from the gas companies.”

Still, after much support, the Dryden Town Board approved a change in its zoning ordinance, clarifying that oil and gas development activities, including fracking, were “prohibited uses” of land within the town.

Their fight did not stop there. Just six weeks after the town board passed the measure in a unanimous bipartisan vote, the privately held Anschutz Exploration Corporation sued the Town of Dryden to force the town to accept drilling within city limits. The case went all the way to the state supreme court, which sided with Dryden. In June 2014, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that Dryden could use local zoning laws to ban oil and gas operations in their town. By December 2015, after seven years of study by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Health, the state announced that fracking was prohibited due to human health concerns.

This precedent-setting case serves as a model to more communities throughout the country. As of the writing of this book, about 165 local fracking bans have been enacted, according to research from Food & Water Watch. Three states have banned fracking entirely: Vermont’s legislature enacted a permanent moratorium on fracking in 2012; New York governor Andrew Cuomo banned fracking in 2014 due to concerns about health risks; and Maryland governor Larry Hogan signed a bill banning fracking in 2017. In March 2019, Oregon passed a ten-year ban on fracking. Two other states, Florida and New Mexico, are also considering bans or restrictions.

Everyone wants energy, but we need to look at how we’re extracting it and the price we’re paying in the process. How are we handling the chemicals involved in fracking, including the wastewater? We can’t get so greedy and careless that we stop observing what’s happening to the environment around us. You can watch Josh Fox’s films, Gasland and Gasland Part II, for even more stories and examples of how fracking is impacting communities across the country. If we want to continue this practice, we need to find ways to do it in a sustainable way so that it doesn’t hurt the communities involved.

ACTION STEPS

Connecting Science, Schools & Communities

More partnerships between schools and communities can be a way to address water issues at the local level. If you have kids in school (any grade level), ask if the science teacher is willing to add water quality testing to the curriculum. Students can collect water samples from local sources, including school drinking fountains, a local pond, a home tap or well, a nearby stream, or a large lake. Using water test kits, they can measure the chemical components of their water samples and learn about the various factors that affect water quality. Find out if they can also tour the local water treatment operation to learn more about your source water and how the drinking water is treated in your community. Children are our future and we can teach them from an early age to value the water around them and learn more about water testing and treatment.

Water Testing & Sampling 101

Do you know who can test your water? Many times, a county health department will help you test for bacteria or you can have your water tested by a state-certified laboratory to get more details about the quality of your drinking water. You can find one in your area by calling the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791 or visiting www.epa.gov/​safewater/​labs.

Once you’ve connected with a lab, either you will have a technician come out and test the water, or they will send you a kit to do it yourself. Whether it’s part of a school project or you would like to independently collect water samples, the EPA offers guidelines for collecting a water sample.

• Collect the sample before any water has been used. Water should not be used for 8–18 hours before sampling.
• Make sure you have clean hands.
• Complete the sample recording form.
• Only use containers (250-milliliter) supplied by your certified lab. (Containers should not be opened until you are ready to collect the sample and keep food and drink away from the sample and its container.)
• Make sure no water has been withdrawn from the tap or water fountain before you collect the sample.
• Place the container under the faucet or drinking water fountain that is being tested and collect 250 milliliters of water. If a faucet is being tested make sure you turn on the cold water tap.
• Turn on the water and fill the container without allowing any water to run down the drain.
• Close the container according to the instructions from your certified lab.
• Make sure the container is labeled with the same information from your sample recording form.
• Prepare the container for shipping according to the certified lab’s instructions.
• Ship containers according to the certified lab’s instructions.
• Samples must be delivered to the lab within fourteen days of collection for proper testing.

Petition Writing 101

There’s an art and science to writing a petition. The first step is to make a clear main point at the top of your petition, which is your headline. You want to keep it to fewer than ten words: We oppose fracking in Our Town, USA (six words). We oppose using ammonia to treat our drinking water (nine words). Making a clear point at the top will make it easy to get signatures and build support.

Next comes the body of the petition. You’ll want to write a few sentences or paragraphs that briefly explain the topic. Imagine that you have thirty seconds or less to convince someone of your cause. What would you say? Be sure to include research to back up your point and make sure you are offering a solution. Every petition has two audiences: the citizens who will sign it and the lawmakers who will decide on it. Keep the argument brief so that both the people signing it and the officials reading it can quickly understand your point of view.

Here’s an example from Dryden’s petition:

To: Town Board of the Town of Dryden, Tompkins County, NY:
We, the undersigned residents of the Town of Dryden, believe that high volume, slickwater hydrofracking for gas extraction threatens our water and our air.
Allowing this practice in our community will significantly endanger our health and well-being.
Hydrofracking is a heavily industrialized process that in surrounding states has snarled traffic and caused significant air, water and noise pollution, and severe damage to roads and other infrastructure. In many places, it has had deleterious effects on tourism, hunting, fishing, agriculture, and the local economy in general.
We urge the Town Board to ban slickwater hydrofracking in the Town of Dryden.

One of the easiest (and free) online platforms to begin a petition can be found at Change.org, which has lots of great tips for petition writing. Anyone can start a petition to help raise awareness and gain support for a cause you care about.