Extra Extra Read All About It! The New York Times just sampled 200 wells in Pennsylvania and found carcinogens like Benzene and radioactivity at 10,000 times the levels considered safe by the EPA. I hate to say I told you so. Back in 2007, I sat through a presentation in Del Norte, Colorado where ranchers from the Western Slope were going from town to town telling the story of how "hydrofracking" polluted the 3500 acre family ranch ground water supply to the point they had to abandon the land that had been in the family for over 130 years.
The rancher's wife even explained that she had been the chairperson for the Republican party in southwest Colorado and was completely black-balled when she raised her voice in opposition to what Halliburton was doing to her livelihood and way of life. If you could have seen the "crocodile tears" running down the weathered ranchers faces as they watched a slide show punctuated by dead and dying calves poisoned by the fouled waters.
Amazingly, a handful of determined locals convinced the all republican county commissioners to issue a 6 month moratorium on drilling and the Rio Grande National Forest temporarily withdrew the 144,000 acre lease, which was just long enough to send the prospectors packing. Score one for the right-wing-rancher-left-wing-liberal coalition. Just goes to show you how hard it is to wash down profits with poisoned water.
And they say natural gas is cheap, sure it is, if you don't own the land where they do the drilling or live downstream from the contamination. To learn more about conserving natural gas in your daily life, go to
www.thisefficienthouse.com to learn more.
Here's the link to the NYTIMES article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?src=me&ref=homepage
The attached pictures are of the watershed in Del Norte where the auction for leases was to happen.
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