[Image from thecontributors.com]If you listen to most Republican politicians these days you would think fracking is one of the deity's greatest gifts to mankind. This, in spite of the fact, that some folks in fracking areas find their water on fire!
The politicians and their friends in the energy business to whom they are beholden continue to pressure states and communities to allow fracking. The State of Texas recently forbade a Texas town from disallowing fracking within its borders. Texas is crazy, of course, but still.
The following is part of an message by Ken Kimmel, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a message designed to garner public support for banning the practice of fracking:
It wasn't raining when the streets flooded around Arlington, Texas on a recent Saturday.Dozens of families were evacuated from their homes as thousands of gallons of toxic fluid surged up from deep inside a fracking well through the city's storm drains and sewers and leaked into surrounding streams.1 Yet when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally released a report on fracking after a five-year wait, they led with the headline that fracking doesn't represent a "systemic" risk to groundwater—despite noting numerous incidents of spills and leaks of fracking fluid at drilling sites like the one in Arlington within the report. Unfortunately, the headline didn't capture the body of the report, but that's what the news outlets picked up on.2Fracking companies and politicians will use the EPA's report for years to come to influence public policy. We need to make sure the final report provides a truly balanced look at the fracking risks we know about. The agency is accepting public input on it now, and we have just over a month to demand a more balanced statement from the EPA. One that takes into account the noted adverse effects and potential future contamination of drinking water resources through known pathways, spills, leaks, faulty well construction, subsurface migration, and wastewater disposal.
You can read more about the Union of Concerned Scientists and its work here.
