For those of you who are not up to speed on Fracking in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and the impending and threatening start of Fracking in NY. Here are a few choice quotes from the internet and a few pictures from a trip to PA last week. A truly frightening mess that New Yorkers wherever you live, upstate or downstate better prepare yourself for, poisoned water, air pollution, horrible traffic, lies and deceit. The entire watershed for over 15 million people from Philadelphia to New York will be affected. The environment of Upstate NY will be destroyed. I'm not being a Casandra here, go to Dimock or Bradford County PA, take a look for yourself. And this is only the beginning, in short order poison wells and cancer will be the norm. Talk to Julie and Craig Sautner for example and many others, their water is poisoned and their way of life ruined, a small microcosm of what is and will be happening on a huge scale.
The rapid expansion of this new form of fracking has brought rampant environmental and economic problems to rural communities. Accidents and leaks have polluted rivers, streams and drinking water supplies. Regions peppered with drilling rigs have high levels of smog as well as other airborne pollutants, including potential carcinogens. Rural communities face an onslaught of heavy truck traffic — often laden with dangerous chemicals used in drilling and declining property values.
Over the past 18 months, at least 10 studies by scientists, Congress, investigative journalists and public interest groups have documented environmental problems with fracking. Findings include:
Toxic chemicals present in fracking fluid could cause cancer and other health problems Fracking wastewater contains high levels of radioactivity and other contaminants that wastewater treatment plants have had difficulty removing; this potentially contaminated wastewater can then be discharged into local rivers.
Fracking is exempt from key federal water protections, and federal and state regulators have allowed unchecked expansion of fracking, creating widespread environmental degradation. Overwhelmed state regulators largely oversee the practice. Even if the laws on the books were strengthened, fracking poses too severe a risk to public health and the environment to entrust effective and rigorous regulatory oversight to these officials. Both state and federal regulators have a poor track record of protecting the public from the impacts of fracking. Congress, state legislators and local governmental bodies need to ban shale gas fracking.
And this is just a tiny amount of information available on the internet. The time is now to educate and understand what is happening and totally Ban Fracking in NY before it's too late.
You've put a human face on fracking. Anyone who's pro-drilling should look at this first. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThese pictures stab me in the heart. While the state of Wisconsin is being carried off by the truckload, this very
ReplyDeletesand which is mostly found in and near the county where I live is being trucked at great expense to facilitate this horrendous industry. Here in Wisconsin we are facing an up hill battle to save our beautiful driftless area and our communities and farms. Mining companies are slick willies when it comes to prospecting and jamming permits through cities and townships hungry for jobs. There are so many desperate people, who can't resist big cash settlements and a chance at a different life. They are selling out and this hurts the whole country.
Thank you for the great photo documentary of "faces of fracking in PA." It is unfortunate that there are those who believe we are against drilling for natural gas. What we are is for clean air, clean water and a healthy environment for us, our children and our children's children. Is that too much to ask?
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