Health Commissioner Nirav Shah Testimony Feb 3rd, 2014 ( 02/02/2014) (Fracking only)

New York health review is a secret in an enigma wrapped in propaganda, New York scientific community and it's constituency, deserves more! Just like TAPP, industry views using state secrets claims as a means to push forward unpopular decisions on an unwilling populace.

The most important point to remember is that Dr. Shah says the review when completed will be open for peer review. Not that Joe Martens will wait for this review to approve fracking (this is an important distinction). The fact that Dr. Shah says the scientific community will be able to review his finding means either :

1) That Dr. Shah will not use his knowledge of the poisonous proprietary chemicals to generate the final report.

OR

2) Joe Martens gave him a very strict charter, and did not provide the list of proprietary chemicals. In other words we might have a review generated by a person that has no idea of the chemicals used or their acute or chronic exposure symptoms. If that is the case, IMHO, no wonder they want to keep it a secret.

After four rounds of hearings, hundreds of thousands of public comments, two governors and a pair of voluminous draft reports, New York's review of hydraulic fracturing is now taking place entirely behind closed doors. The Seneca Lake Pure Waters Association previously filed Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests in an effort to obtain the documents but Shah refused. As a result the group sued the state Department of Health, attempting to force the agency to release documents related to New York's review of hydrofracking, the much-debated technique used to free gas from underground shale formations. Hopefully the courts may finally force Andrew Cuomo to finally make a decision by requiring Shah to release his findings.