Thanks to Sandy Wallace for her excellent article describing, in short, the disaster taking place around the sites where they are drilling, or hydrofracking for natural gas in Penn.
The process calls for millions of gallons of water, mixed with tons of chemicals, to be forced into the shale every day. A very small amount of this poisoned water returns at the site and is hauled away. This is what they wanted to dump in the empty gas well in the Pulteney area last year.
When the truckers told Sandy they were taking it to a treatment area, but couldn’t tell her where, you can bet it is probably being dumped into an abandoned well in Penn. Thus, the entire millions of gallons of poisoned water may be being forced into the ground every day, by each and every unit that is involved with hydrofracking.
This same shale is found all throughout the U.S., and the oil companies are rapidly buying the rights to drill it, using this same method.
Sandy has given you a quick look at the surface disaster around the drilling sites. Now let’s take a quick look under the surface:
That highly poisoned water, like all ground water, will travel through the ground. It will flow into cavities in the ground, through the ground, including our water wells, and will eventually surface in marsh areas, and our rivers and lakes. It will not flow in any given direction, but follow the path of least resistance. This means that any well, regardless of its direction and distance from the drilling, is subject to become polluted.
The best way to detect the pollution in water is to test it, as it may not be noticeable by taste or smell. The people who have lived for many years in Camp Lejeune, N.C. are just now finding that out.
It seems that before it became a military camp, there were gasoline storage tanks there, and the ground is saturated with gasoline. When the military took possession and installed their water system, they were told the water was polluted with methane poison.
Authorities chose to keep it quiet. This year, for the first time, the long term residents are becoming ill from using the methane poisoned water.
Last month there were quite a few articles in the papers about the cover-up, the sickness, and the pending law suits.
I know this because I have lived the last twenty-25 winters in my home in Sunset Harbor, N.C., and I am hoping it will help convince you that the oil companies must be stopped from pouring multi-million gallons of poisoned water into the earth, and stopped now before fracking spreads through the U.S. and poisons all our rivers and surface water as well as our wells.
How much of the poisoned water can the fish, birds, wild and farm animals drink before they become sick and die?
Unless the oil companies are soon stopped from fracking, there will be no need for Walmart to plan on importing drinking from China: Who will be here to drink it?
Clesson Cook
Bath
Bath, NY —
