Grassroots supporters of Howie Hawkins’ Green Party campaign for Governor of New York are holding an online “money bloom” today, Friday 22 October, with the goal of raising $10,000 for voter outreach.

Government interest in fracking has brought about some studies. The proprietary ingredients in the fluids will be listed. There may even be some regulation of an industry with less oversight than the banks.

Today’s lesson is a discussion of ‘Where Rocks and Food Intersect’. No, we are not going to discuss salt mining in the Finger Lakes. I’m still stuck on the Marcellus Shale (Aunt Toby is a tad obsessed). A story appeared in papers regarding an announcement by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, quarantining a herd of cows on a Wellsboro, PA farm, due to exposure to used fracking fluid (sometimes called ‘brine’) when the wall of a retaining pond used by East Energy in their drilling operations leaked.

Okay boys and girls, it’s time for a little more “energy-based geology” courtesy of your Aunt Toby. You didn’t know that I know anything about geology, did you? Well, I had better since I live smack dab in an area which given the amount of natural gas formation there is, has the potential to make the BP oil volcano pollution look like small change.

BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hosting four public information meetings on the proposed study of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and its potential impacts on drinking water…The meetings will provide public information about the proposed study scope and design. EPA will solicit public comments on the draft study plan.

The public meetings will be held on:

* July 8 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. CDT at the Hilton Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Texas
* July 13 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. MDT at the Marriot Tech Center’s Rocky Mountain Events Center in Denver, Colo.
* July 22 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT at the Hilton Garden Inn in Canonsburg, Pa.
* August 12 at the Anderson Performing Arts Center at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. for 3 sessions – 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT

Go below the fold for more essential information.

Having destroyed major salt-water ecosystems, the Energistas are now setting their sights on drinking water.

“There’s a dead dolphin on this beach,” Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland, wrote yesterday in Louisiana. It’s one snapshot of the harm visited on the Gulf Coast by the BP oil spill. Back in Washington, the Senate climate bill, which would put the country on a path to cleaner energy consumption, is on its last legs.

This Earth Day, while an oil rig was burning and sinking and spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico, I joined a small band of protesters during my lunch break to tell the government to stop a similar crime against nature, one that is taking place in my home state of Pennsylvania. There are no offshore oil rigs here, of course, but the new and dangerous method of extracting natural gas through fracking is becoming a larger and larger threat to our water, our land, and our climate. And Pennsylvania is ground zero.

So I took to the streets at a Green Party-organized protest. We stood outside the regional Department of Environmental Protection and made our voices heard.

(Go below the fold for more info on the protest, fracking, and what you can do, including upcoming actions.)

The process being used to produce fossil fuels in many areas is called ‘fracking’ – sounding strangely like what it is doing to our water. Amy Goodman recently interviewed Dr. Theo Colborn, who is leading efforts to find out exactly what is happening when the process introduces materials into our environment that are increasingly suspected of harming the population in the area being ‘fracked’.