The fracking fight

~ susie

Big Gas goes after Josh Fox, the filmmaker who made “Gasland”, for exposing what they’re up to:

When speaking before audiences, Fox often employs his map to highlight the risks of secondary contamination. “When you include fracking’s effect on local water tables, you can color in much of the rest of the country red,” says Fox. “This includes some of our biggest cities.”

As research deepens our understanding of fracking’s environmental impacts, the incidents continue to pile up. Most of these fracking spills do not make headlines. An investigation conducted last year by Scripps Howard found that in Ohio alone, gas companies have in the last decade been charged with nearly 2,000 violations resulting in pollution and contamination of the local environment. Similar numbers could soon be reported across Fox’s gas map of the United States, where 34 states are now being targeted for drilling.

Published by susie

5 thoughts on “The fracking fight”

  1. Ah, yes, the Obama et al we’ve come to know and loathe.

    …. “The regulators at the EPA and Justice Departments are dying to do their jobs – it’s the lawmakers who are the problem,” says Fox. “Obama’s people are not listening. We led a letter campaign in which thousands of people wrote the president expressing concern over drilling in their communities. The White House sent back a form letter about the importance of national parks. We were like, ‘Did they send us the wrong letter?’”

    In early May, energy secretary Steven Chu announced the creation of a panel tasked with studying the environmental impacts of fracking and coming up with recommend guidelines for state and federal regulators. The panel of seven, which has six months to issue its report, is led by former CIA chief John Deutch, currently director of Cheniere Energy, a Houston-based firm and a major player in the development of liquefied natural gas. (The company’s slogan is, “North America’s LNG Gateway.”)

    Fox is trying to keep an open mind about the White House initiative, but does not find the line-up encouraging.

    “It’s worrisome that the panel is frontloaded by advocates of gas drilling,” he says. “There is no one with established scientific credentials with a history of saying, ‘These are the risks,’ no one who has a track record of looking at issues such as drinking water contamination in the past three years. Why not pick experienced people?”

    Why not, indeed. Because Obama et al don’t want people knowing about the downside, the dangers, the possibility of losing potable drinking water…since that would interfere with their Big Bidness buddies making Big Money. And with less natural gas, it would be more important to do the research for dependable renewable clean energy sources.

    And that is not on the Obama’s To Do list. Or it’s not on his masters’ To Do lists. He does not work for us; he works for his Big Money Overlords, the MOTU’s.

  2. Do read this — scary and so terribly pertinent to, well, living and staying alive.

    Up to 50% of the chemically treated fracking solution stays undergound, mixing with the ground water and traveling…everywhere.

    The rest of the wastewater, sometimes up to half, remains underground, where it can contaminate nearby water tables and seep into the environment in ways that are still not completely understood. “We know there are significant risks associated with … the pollutants involved in fracking,” says Anthony Ingraffea, a rock-fracture mechanics expert at Cornell University. “These drilling techniques result in amounts of toxic matter so large – in solid, gas, and liquid states – that, in effect, everybody is ‘downstream.’ You can’t get far enough away.”

    You listening, Steven Chu???? Michelle Obama? Note: So far nothing gets all the bad contaminants out of water.

  3. Well, good thing Americans can’t afford to see doctors. That should make it easier to hide the public health consequences of all this.

  4. My family lives in Ohio. Many of their neighbors have already signed on with Gas co.(I beleive Chesapeake). My family is in a catch 22, being that if their neighbors property is being fractured the underground water table will contaminate their water even if they don’t sign up. My family has four good wells! They attended meeting with their neighbors, every time my family mentions the affects of the water they get shut-up!! The economy is so bad and with property values down and people unable to sell their property, they are caving in to the pressure to sign over the gas on their property. These are sad times we live in!!!!

  5. Consider this after water seeps out of these cracks it will seep towards the center of the earth leaving a vacuum. That vacuum will suck in gas from other sections of the reserve thru cracks and porous shale rock. Simultaneously sucking in oxygen from earths surface. Backfilling all depleted sections with gas & air. Should any portion of the reserve become ignited it will simultaneously ignite all connected sections, creating an explosiion that would encompass the whole North American continent. This would be a huge explosion!! The likes we have never seen. This would destroy us in about ONE HOUR, I repeat ONE HOUR!!! CONSIDER IT PEOPLE!!! THIS IS SERIOUS!!

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