It was one year ago this month that we broke the story wide open about Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to import radioactive wastewater from natural gas fracking to the Buffalo Avenue water treatment plant to dump into the Niagara River. Toxic waste was to become Niagara County's new "cottage industry.”

Much has happened since then. More than 100 towns, villages and cities across the state have passed local "frack bans.” Massive Albany rallies, organized and attended not so much by "environmentalists" as farmers, homeowners, scientists and parents, and an onslaught of negative public opinion have forced Cuomo back on his heels.

The NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has scaled back plans to turn upstate New York into an oil and gas patch, its latest proposal restricts the practice to five counties located along the Pennsylvania border. This too is being met with a firestorm of criticism across the state.

Last week the DEC got caught sharing advance details of draft regulations for fracking with industry insiders prior to release to the public. Although technically not illegal, it's characteristic of the relationship the Cuomo administration's ahs with natural gas drillers.

The facts are as follows:

1)There is no treatment plant or process that can filter radioactivity and petrochemical waste in frack water.

2) 6% of well casings fail immediately after a well is drilled. 50% fail within 30 years, causing irreparable harm to fresh water aquifers nearby.

3) There has been no long-term health impact studies of fracking yet the state is rushing the process.

4) The natural gas drilling industry is flooding Albany with campaign contributions.

In response to a five-column series in the Reporter, the Niagara Falls Water Board's the meeting room at the Water Board's palatial Buffalo Avenue offices became packed with citizens who were orrifed to learn that frack imported waste contains 750 chemicals, 29 of which are carcinogens.

The Water Board sat mute as the community expressed alarm at the board's reckless proposal.

Observing this was the Niagara Falls City Council. Months before, the Buffalo City Council passed a local frack ban. Through phone calls, emails and personal conversations, it was getting through to the council that the public was getting sick of cleaning up other peoples' toxic messes and that never again should our children be threatened by another Love Canal.

On March 5, 2012, the council passed a ban on the treatment, transport, storage and disposal of gas frackwater within city limits.

“We’re not going to deal with this again — a chemical disaster,” promised Council President Samuel Fruscione, told the New York Times.

Sal Paonessa, host of the Niagara Broadcast Network, asked councilmember Glenn Choolokian, who worked at the treatment plant for decades, whether it was capable of treating frack wastewater. Choolokian answered “Absolutely not!”

Last Wednesday Josh Fox;s award winning documentary "Gasland" was featured at the Wilson Free Library. Gasland. Gasland exposes fracking as a dirty, dangerous industrial practice that ruins freshwater, rural landscape, infrastructure like roads and bridges, the health of children, pets and farm animals to fatten the bottom line of Texas and Louisiana-based drillers and the politicians who serve them. Fox follows with an internet video addressing Cuomo's push to frack in upstate New York.
With the largest beach in Niagara County and a sport fishing industry that supports a local economy, the Village of Wilson should be next in Niagara County to ban the importation or transportation of frack wastewater.