Why 'Safe' Regulation of Fracking in New York Is a Fiction

http://www.alternet.org/fracking/why-safe-regulation-fracking-new-york-fiction?akid=10071.277129.9mKQz1&rd=1&src=newsletter796030&t=19

A New York State commissioned Health Review is central to the debate over whether fracking can be done safely in New York. The long awaited release of the Review findings, commissioned in September by the state Department of Health (DOH) at Governor Andrew Cuomo's behest, will inform the Governor's impending decision about whether or not to go forward with proposed fracking guidelines, the prelude to permits to frack New York State.

The Governor has promised that he will only allow fracking if regulations can be developed to assure "it be done safely," which is often asserted, recently for example, by outgoing Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu. But the perennial promises of safer regulations fail to account for fracking as the next in an ever-growing and ever more toxic series of health-damaging industrial outputs that people inhale, eat, or absorb into their skin, guts, and brains. When industry has blocked the EPA from studying or regulating 70,000 chemicals, (from BPA and flame retardants to potent neurotoxins), since 1975, why would regulating fracking be possible?

The Safe Regulation Fiction

Posing a safety debate tempts people to ignore the unsavory thirty-year history of industry blocking regulations aiming to protect public health. Instead of regulation, public officials have routinely allowed industries to unleash novel health hazards without either scientific study, protective legislation, accountability, or any plan for compensation for instances of harm. Whether it's unstudied toxic chemicals in personal products, novel genetic materials in GMO foods, Corexit in the Gulf, antibiotic overuse in mass agriculture, or the latest iteration -- radioactive metals to be recycled as zippers and eyeglasses, when government fails to study, regulate, or plan for the costs or waste management of industrial outputs, the burden of health harms and health costs is transferred to ordinary people. The singular focus on the economic bottom line pervasively masks the health bottom line. In the current regulatory and legislative context, the presumption that any dangerous but profitable practice could be regulated to be "done safely" is a PR inspired fiction.

If government regulators or legislators (at federal, state, or municipal levels) had been willing or able to instate and enforce fracking regulations, they would have started by repealing the Halliburton Loophole, which exempts fracking chemicals from all major EPA regulations. By what mechanism do would-be regulators propose to improve the safety of carcinogenic chemicals that infiltrate underground aquifers after they're exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act? Halliburton cement pipes, which failed at Deepwater Horizon and are known to always fail are not the cure-all for breached regulations.