Say 'no' to hydrofracking waste in Nassau

Nassau County Legislators Denise Ford, Howard Kopel and Dennis Dunne, all Republicans, have proposed a measure that would ban the processing of hydraulic fracturing, or “hydrofracking,” waste at county sewage-treatment plants. The bill made it through the Legislature’s Planning and Rules Committee earlier this week and will be taken up by the full Legislature next month.

Legislators Dave Denenberg and Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, both Democrats, filed a similar bill last week. We can only say thank goodness –– and thank you. This is one measure that Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree on, for the sake of all of us who call Nassau home.

Before we go further in praising the measure, a primer on hydraulic fracturing:

Hydrofracking is a process by which natural gas is extracted from hard-to-reach shale deposits deep within the earth. Energy companies drill to depths of 2,000 feet and then inject water, sand and a host of chemicals through pipes to blast open cracks in the shale to release the gas.

New York boasts a rich store of natural gas trapped within the Marcellus shale deposit, which extends from Lake Erie to the Albany area and loops south to the Pennsylvania border. Energy companies have waited for years to get at that shale, promising thousands of extraction jobs if and when they were allowed to mine for what many consider invisible gold.

The trouble is, hydrofracking is fraught with possible pitfalls. The main problem is that no one is precisely sure what’s in the chemical soup that is shot into the ground to get at the natural gas. Energy companies say the mixture is proprietary, so they don’t have to tell anyone. A recent report by the House of Representatives listed the contents of the wastewater fracking produces, and it isn’t pretty. Among the potentially deadly ingredients are a number of known carcinogens and neurotoxins, including benzene, lead, ethylene glycol, methanol and boric acid — even radioactive isotopes.