Download the DCS Appeal Newsletter, detailing our accomplishments and work to be done, as a pdf.
YOUR DONATION TODAY enables us to continue working for YOU!.

DCS at work:  protecting water, the environment, and health for all

People Power – Our Outreach and Advocacy

DCS has always been a catalyst for real change. From being the first to sound the alarm on the menace of fracking, then documenting the harms that it causes, to guiding the transition away from fossil fuels.

Sometimes tedious and incremental work, it pays off with wins like the reversal of the DRBC’s decision to allow import of oil and gas liquid waste and its disposal on roads in the Delaware River Basin.

We are committed to the communities affected by energy practices. The education we provide on the impacts of gas drilling is often the motivator that creates a unified voice and collective action. Over 18,000 copies of our Delaware River Basin What’s in the Water poster gave the clear, informed, accurate and basic science that the oil and  gas industry was trying to deny. Telling the truth in understandable language drives change!

Without your support, we just can’t continue our advocacy and outreach efforts. So, of course, this appeal letter is a request for financial assistance; it also offers an opportunity to be an all-important part of our work. Your help this year will drive tangible change. Please give generously. See what we’ve accomplished this year and what we’re striving towards in 2024.

ongoing ☑️☑️☑️

Saving the Milanville-Skinners Falls Bridge

We are fighting for this bridge with a combination of people-power and legal actions. Since lead agency PennDOT’s own contractor declared that YES! the bridge is restorable, keeping its historic character right up to its original 10-ton capacity for a 25-year design life (longer with proper maintenance), now we will push to get some movement on making that restoration a reality. It will likely need some legal fire for PennDOT to eliminate the lengthy delay they have declared they want.

☑️ done and ongoing ☑️☑️☑️

Voter registration assistance-website & in-person

Over the last several months, DCS has made voter registration forms, voting calendars and important information available to Delaware River Basin States. We are encouraging local voters to register, check registration status, and vote in municipal and federal elections. By tabling weekly at the Narrowsburg Farmer’s Market at The Union and publicizing registration on our website we  have mobilized many individuals and groups in the area to get-out-the-vote..

Did you know if you own or rent two properties in New York State you can register at your secondary home? We have provided this information, printable handouts and more on our website. Please register to vote and join us in encouraging local and wider voter turnout!

☑️ done ・ also ongoing  ☑️☑️☑️

Educating and empowering
the grassroots with powerful posters

Over the years, DCS has commissioned informational posters that have been widely distributed, starting with our seminal What’s in the Water poster pertaining to the Delaware River watershed.

Last year we completed a long-asked-for companion, What’s in the Water: Upper Ohio River Basin, covering areas in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio with maps, timelines, and facts directly pertaining to those areas. As in the Delaware Basin, we can now give people the overview and context of what they are facing and place what the oil and gas industry is telling them next to more accurate historical, legal, and scientific facts.

We are now distributing the posters with western PA groups; one is tabling with them in a Lush Cosmetics store. The Lush Charity Pot program helped fund the production of the poster.

Over 18,000 of the Delaware River Basin What’s in the Water posters have had a powerful impact, clarifying facts and dispelling fossil fuel industry propaganda since their 2010 release. Now with an update sheet tucked in, they are still gratefully received by those concerned but new to the subject.

Contact DCS to get your hard copy of one or more of these posters. Or, head to our website for downloadable PDFs.

Yes, we would like to do more: maybe a What’s in the Water focused on California! – a major oil and gas producing state  with “green” intentions and water shortages.  With your help it can happen.

The Delaware River in Autumn. Photo by David Soete.

☑️ done

DCS Win: DRBC Responds to DCS Lawsuit and Closes Frack Waste Loophole

A remarkable DCS accomplishment for the whole Delaware Basin

The Delaware River Basin Commission’s (DRBC) Dec. 2022 rules governing drilling wastewater contained a loophole big enough to drive a frack waste truck through!

They would have allowed toxic wastewater from “conventional” wells (which are almost always fracked) to be imported and directly discharged into the Basin.  DCS, and only DCS, responded to the setup of this loophole. We engaged brilliant environmental attorney Lauren Williams and sued the DRBC.

The result? The DRBC  agreed to close this loophole and DCS has voluntarily dropped its suit. This is a huge win for everyone living in the Basin!

An AP article about this concludes with a quote from DCS Director, Barbara Arrindell: The agency “has thankfully seen the light. We are glad to see DRBC fulfilling its role to proactively protect the Delaware River Basin.”  DCS will continue to monitor the situation and will go back to court if necessary.

ongoing ☑️☑️☑️

More legal work is necessary!

The use of fracking waste as road de-icer. We are especially concerned about rural areas, but even more developed municipalities might be tempted to “save money” by allowing this waste with heavy metal salts, other toxic and radioactive contents as a de-icer in winter, which is a recipe for large-scale harm to residents and surroundings.

The oil and gas industry bullies individuals, small towns, and organizations (like DCS) by operating with exemptions to major federal protective environmental laws. 

These exemptions remove liability for damages the industry knew would occur making redress so very difficult. Case in point: we have been subpoenaed over help we gave to some people in western PA to itemize their health impacts from nearby drilling,  who are now challenging the industry and PA DEP for the contamination of their home’s water and harming their health. Legal help is needed to respond properly.   However, lawyers are expensive.  Your donation today makes sure we have the resources to fight for you.

Your donation will help continue to reveal these industry secrets and hold the gas and oil industry to account.

.☑️ done ・ also ongoing ☑️☑️☑️

Exemptions: Quantifying how the government gives away big dollars to the fossil fuel industry

Publicizing the oil and gas (and coal) industry exemptions to major federal protective environmental laws has been a priority since we began as an organization. They remove liability for damages that the industry knew would occur, making community and individual redress difficult to impossible.

Why exemptions?

Since the 1980s, these industries have campaigned to get a pile of exemptions including:  making the wastes “special” via amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, removing oversight over oil and gas workers from OSHA regulation, and exemptions to the “exploration and production” that are in the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

These exemptions are actually subsidies paid for by the environment, by people in communities where the activities are and downstream by the global impacts we are seeing today.

Over a number of years we have appealed in writing and in meetings to a half dozen congresspeople to use the Congressional Research Service to quantify in dollars what the exemptions are worth to the industry. Each time they reply, “Yes, what an excellent idea, I’ll make that happen” but they don’t.

WE ARE NOT GIVING UP! We will go more public, involving more organizations, approaching many more congresspeople and making this potentially embarrassing if not followed through on. We will prevail.

 ☑️ done ・ also ongoing ☑️☑️☑️

Working with big cities, small towns, to protect  the DRB

We will continue to invoke the power of municipalities to take a public stand against drilling, waste import into the river basin and water export for fracking elsewhere.

In the early days of our fight against fracking in the Delaware River Valley, DCS, as NYH2o, educated and persuaded all but one of the Community Boards that make up the New York City Council passing  resolutions banning fracking to protect the NYC watershed.

New York City has figured prominently in DCS strategy, producing tremendous results with Mayor Bloomberg ordering the first ever environmental assessment of frack drilling, the Hazen and Sawyer Report.

The towns and cities’ stance was a significant element in the DRBC’s 2011 decision to abandon its original proposed regulations allowing fracking in the river valley. This led to a de facto moratorium until the eventual DRBC vote to ban high volume fracking in the Delaware Basin in February, 2021.

Sincerely, and the happiest of winter seasons to you and yours,
B. Arrindell, Director

Please make a contribution today!

We insist that gas is just one more fossil fuel that needs to be phased out as rapidly as possible. Damascus Citizens continues its work to make fracking a thing of the past for the generations to come and to work for a sustainable, renewable future.

Please give as generously as you can, and together we will continue to be the little, grassroots organization that makes a BIG difference.

Your contribution is fully tax deductible! Damascus Citizens for Sustainability is a 501(c)3 tax exempt, non-profit.

Donate using PayPal or credit card.
 
Or send a check to:
DCS
P.O.Box 147
Milanville, PA  18443

Visit our new office – upstairs in The Union!
Suite 203 – 7 Erie Ave, where the Narrowsburg Farmers Market is on summer Saturdays
 
Call for office hours: 845-252-6677

THE DCS STOREFRONT – 25 Main St, Narrowsburg, NY

Our administrative offices are now at The Narrowsburg Union. We’ve maintained the DCS Storefront, at 25 Main Street, with a mission to become an Environmental Hub. Folks can pop in, pick up our What’s in the Water poster, and get important up-to-date information. We’re there on Saturdays and Sundays from Noon – 3pm. Come spring, we’ll have Childrens’ programming and incorporate the work of local poets and visual artists; all-ages can share and be part of the solutions that the earth so desperately needs.