As the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection prepares to issue 5,000 Marcellus Shale gas drilling permits this year, only one Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the May 18, 2010 Pennsylvania primary is calling for a moratorium on issuing new permits in a state that strongly supports gas drilling. Former Congressman Joe Hoeffel says the natural gas industry should deal with concerns about wastewater contamination before DEP issues additional permits. Gas drilling is a “pretty serious challenge” to the drinking water supply in communities, he says.

In an interview with DCBureau, Hoeffel said, “If it’s going back into groundwater, it’s got to meet safe drinking water standards. Right now, the industry wants to dilute it with freshwater and just put it all back into the groundwater, and that’s not good enough.”

The cruise ship industry wields its muscles in Alaska and wins

There are few times when lobbying efforts pay off so handsomely. The cruise line industry increased its spending on lobbyists at the Alaska State Legislature last year 35 percent. And what did they get from Gov. Sean Parnell who took office after Gov. Sarah Palin resigned in July?

Parnell became chief proponent in March of slashing a voter-approved $46 cruise ship passenger head tax that cruise lines have blamed for declining sales and the loss of ships this season resulting in about 140,000 less passengers. The legislature in the waning days of the session this week looks to pass Parnell’s bill just as the cruise line industry wanted, reducing the head tax from $46 to about $19.

As the infrastructure fails on thousands of old dams, the costs to rebuild them are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Some communities, like Front Royal, Virginia, have abandoned a decades-old structure because the cost of repairs is just too much and the benefits of the dam long ago vanished.

At the same time liberal Upstate New York Rep. Maurice Hinchey, 71, championed strict control over gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, his wife lobbied for a Texas-based landmen association whose members represent gas drillers securing leases from New York property owners. Hinchey claimed that he was unaware of his wife’s lobbying on behalf of the landmen.

For at least two years of their marriage, Hinchey’s wife, Allison Lee, 47, who was previously his district office representative and administrative aide, represented members of the Forth Worth-based American Association of Professional Landmen (AAPL). AAPL members came to New York to work for energy companies acquiring gas leases from property owners.

While most of America was still reeling from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Carnival Corporation – the world’s largest cruise line company – reported a better-than-expected third quarter profit last year of $1.3 billion.

Over the same period, revenues reached $4.1 billion, amounting to a 32 percent profit margin and generous shareholder returns. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Micky Arison called the figure “an achievement” given the “global economic environment” and a “testament to the power of our global brands.”

Despite their reliance on natural resources to sell cruises, the cruise line industry defends its right to treat the oceans like a sewer and a waste dump.

On a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a few years back, Shauna and David Schober were snorkeling off the coast with a tour company that took them by boat to explore some underwater caves. But their snorkel excursion was cut short when less than a mile away a cruise ship discharged its septic tanks.

Under some of the most beautiful parts of rural New York State in the pre-Jurassic era formation called the Marcellus Shale is an unimaginable fortune in natural gas. Getting that gas to market has become an obsession of Wall Street and the biggest gas drilling companies in the world. In this gas rush, New York is fast becoming a geological science experiment that many experts fear will have profound, dire environmental and health consequences. The drilling companies use a witch’s brew of water, pressure and chemicals to force the gas from the shale. It is the secrecy of what is in that brew that has New Yorkers worried and many suspicious. Even the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has not yet identified all of the compounds in products proposed for use in fracturing shale.