To the Editor:
(Canastota, NY – Feb. 2012) CNN reported 15 students in a school near Rochester are experiencing involuntary twitches and verbal outbursts. Could this illness be the after-effects of a huge toxic spill from a train derailment 40 years ago? Is the school ground located on soil trucked in from the contamination site?
LeRoy School has five gas wells drilled on the property with the controversial procedure known as hydraulic fracturing. If the district burns gas from its own wells, is the processing done in a facility on school grounds? If so, are toxins entering the air?
In New York, the state Department of Environmental Conservation analyzed wastewater extracted from wells and “…found levels of radium-226 as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink.”
Or is it combination of the spill and the drilling? EPA’s 2004 report on hydraulic fracturing concludes fluids migrate unpredictably – through different rock layers, and to greater distances than previously thought. Did the fracking open up a pathway for the migration of the toxic spill to the school grounds?
The Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act established the Superfund program that ensures parties contributing to damage to natural resources are legally responsible for the cost of cleaning it up. The 1970 train spill site was placed on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1999; however, there is no compensation fund for incidents involving natural gas extraction, and the liability rests with owners who lease the rights to drill on their property.
What’s causing this mystery illness? Maybe something else entirely. The thing is we don’t know how our children’s health will be affected by hydraulic fracturing or by companies not cleaning up toxic spills. What we do know is that these tragic and unexplained illnesses maybe need not have happened at all.
Cheryl Cary, Canastota
