The Common Council voted yesterday to ban the storage, disposal, or use of all waste products associated with oil and gas exploration, drilling, and extraction. The vote was 10 to 2.
The motion was introduced by Council Member Mary Bartolotta, who spoke passionately about the need to protect the city from the toxins found in the waste produced by the process commonly known as fracking. Council Member Seb Giuliano expressed his opposition, urging the Council to avoid banning a process; he argued that the Council should instead ban from the city all chemicals that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has deemed to be dangerous.
Giuliano's goal may have been to kill this anti-fracking legislation, but the net effect of his proposal would not only have led to the same ban on fracking waste (which does have known toxins), it also would ban many chemicals commonly found in consumer products, which the EPA has found to be carcinogenic, for example, NMP (plastics) and and TCE (dry cleaning)
Middletown joins 10 other Connecticut municipalities to ban fracking waste from within their borders. The new city ordinance is HERE.
Who was the other council member to oppose the ordinance?
ReplyDeleteThe other council member who opposed this was Deborah Kleckowski.
ReplyDelete