Anti-fracking rally in Rockville Centre

    Residents from across Long Island gathered on June 14 in front of State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos’s Rockville Centre office urging politicians to ban hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in the state.

Nearly 80 advocates and concerned citizens attended the rally to protest fracking, a controversial method of drilling for natural gas in which water, chemicals and sand are injected into a well to enable natural gas to flow freely.

“Fracking in any part of New York is going to affect all New Yorkers,” said Sam Bernhardt, the leader of the rally and the Long Island organizer for the non-profit Food & Water Watch advocacy group. “Even hundreds of miles away here in Long Island, [fracking] is going to increase our air pollution, could contaminate New York City’s water supply and it will irreversibly change New York state.”

According to Bernhardt, the State Department of Environmental Conservation announced June 13 that it would allow fracking in the Southern Tier, counties west of Catskill Mountains running along the state’s border with Pennsylvania, though only in towns that agree to it.

Bernhardt also criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo for considering allowing fracking in the state.

Along with Bernhardt, a number of representatives of non-profit organizations, as well as residents of Long Island, spoke at the rally. “We’re going to focus on Binghamton, in the Southern Tier. This is not about money,” said Patti Wood, executive director of Grassroots Environmental Education. “This is about getting our decision makers to make the right decisions. This is about our health and our water, air and clean food supply that it depends on. Highly industrialized hydro-fracking operations put all of this and more at risk.”

Even though the fracking will only be allowed upstate, many residents of Long Island expressed worry. “It’s going to poison our water eventually,” said Gloria Bryon, of Rockville Centre. “My husband and I saw the documentary ‘Gasland’ again last night and I was up all night.”