Ann Bristow, member of the Marcellus Shale Coalition on Safe Drilling Advisory Commision, speaks about fracking hazards at The Third Annual Symposium on Environmental Justice and Environmental Health Disparities in Maryland and Washington, D.C. at Stamp Student Union.
Dozens of environmental experts came to Stamp Student Union this weekend to debate environmental issues affecting the region.
At this university’s third annual Symposium on Environmental Justice and Environmental Health Disparities in Maryland and Washington, D.C., activists and researchers discussed issues such as air and water pollution, jobs and environmental justice and fracking.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process that extracts natural gas and oil from wells by blasting the ground open with millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals. It has traditionally involved drilling vertically into the ground hundreds to thousands of feet. But the practice has come under criticism from environmentalists over the past decade as energy companies started horizontal drilling, a form of fracking that spreads thousands of feet under the ground horizontally.
Panelists such as Ron Gulla, an environmental activist, and Amir Sapkota, a professor of applied environmental health and epidemiology and biostatistics at this university, spoke out against fracking. Sapkota said the drilling in some of these energy-abundant communities in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is so loud, it interferes with residents’ sleeping patterns.
Sapkota experienced the noise himself when he visited some of these communities with his research assistant.
“Frankly, I don’t know how some of these people can sleep,” Sapkota said.
But fracking isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he added. After all, he said, people need energy.
He said the solution to negative health effects for residents of these communities could be neutralized by placing limits on the proximity a well can be placed from residential neighborhoods. He called for activists to put pressure on local governments to achieve set-back distances.
Gulla began speaking out against fracking in 2005, when the company he sold the mineral rights of his Pennsylvania property to began drilling horizontal wells.
Within months, fish began dying in Gulla’s two-and-a-half-acre pond, he said.
Gulla now speaks to audiences across the country about the negative health effects of fracking.
“I’m not giving up,” Gulla said. “They will have to put a bullet in my head to stop me.”
Over the course of the two-day event, experts also discussed air pollution caused by waste-burning in lower-income areas of the Washington area and water pollution in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
They also discussed jobs and environmental justice. The energy industry often argues that environmental regulations cost jobs, but many symposium panelists said there is no trade off.
“Jobs, jobs, jobs and drilling — that’s all you hear from these politicians,” Gulla said.
Keynote speaker Fred Tutman, CEO of Patuxent Riverkeeper, called for activists to present environmental issues in a way that relates more to others.
People don’t care whether their food is organic if they’re hungry, and people don’t want to hear about environmental justice if they don’t have jobs, said Tutman, a former media professional who has been an environmental activist for decades.
“I really believe, fervently, that this work does nothing if it only helps crabs and oysters and the ecosystem,” Tutman said. “It also has to help people and communities.”
Attendee Richard Callan called Tutman’s speech inspiring.
“It has to be a broad conversation between people of all different backgrounds,” Callan said. “People need to understand that the environment is not an issue that only pertains to one particular group or set of groups — it pertains to everybody.”
Correction: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story misidentified a source’s affiliation. This article has been updated to reflect the correct information.
