Cancer Alley?

Yesterday’s U.S. edition of The Guardian asks the question:

Will a push for plastics turn Appalachia into next ‘Cancer Alley’?

From early in the article:

At a time when scientists warn humans must stop pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and spewing plastics into the environment, natural gas drilling is booming in Appalachia and the ethane-to-plastics industry there is just getting started.

Using the tri-state region’s increasing emphasis on fracking as a backdrop, the long article raises numerous questions about the associated health risks along with concerns about climate change.

AG’s with major conflicts of interest (not surprisingly, WV's Morrisey is singled-out)

From DeSmog Blog earlier this week:

Dominion Buys Pipeline Support at Supreme Court Through GOP Attorneys General

The article notes that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide the future of Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The pipeline has received support from both Republican state attorney generals and the U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. AG William Barr’s conflicts of interest are obvious:

Barr served on Dominion’s Board of Directors from 2009 until his confirmation as Attorney General in February of this year. . . .

Between 2009 and 2018, Barr received $2.3 million from Dominion in cash and stock awards, according to a Forbes report based on SEC filings. Upon his resignation from the Board, he received 2,000 shares of common stock, as outlined in his Ethics Agreement, worth about $150,000 at Dominion’s stock price this past spring. Barr was supposed to divest that stock within three months, according to his Ethics Agreement.

Barr, however, has not recused himself. And then there are the state AG’s including West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey:

Dominion’s co-optation of Attorneys General has also manifested at the state level. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey led a group of 16 state attorneys general – all Republicans – in a filing this July urging the Supreme Court to take up the ACP appeal. The utility has given $60,725 to a key supporter of Morrisey and other signatories – the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) – since 2014, according to Dominion’s political spending disclosures.

Fracking’s local effects

Earlier this week, Pennsylvania NPR’s State Impact looked at nearby Washington County (PA) resident’s efforts to get the attention of state health officials:

The families of several people diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in one Washington County School District told state health officials to update their data at a public hearing Monday night.

They were angered by the state’s report that there was no cancer cluster in the district, and urged the state to look more closely at whether pollution from the region’s natural gas industry may be playing a role in a number of recent cases.

The article documents their efforts as well as providing the industry’s response.

And wildlife

Yesterday, Truthout noted that

We’re Just Starting to Learn How Fracking Harms Wildlife

Early in the article, it notes:

And while many of the after-effects of fracking have grabbed headlines for years — such as contaminated drinking water, earthquakes and even flammable faucets — the consequences for wildlife have so far been left out of the national conversation.

The article is about those consequences.