Editor’s Note: Thanks to Raging Chicken Press Facebook Fan Spirito Di Verità for letting us know about this series. This is the kind of on-the-ground activism by everyday people that is critical to protect our futures and the futures of our children. For more information on this struggle and more, check out Mothers United for Sustainable Technologies.
Episode 1: Throwing Stones at Goliath
Episode 2: Minisink Moms Say No!
Episode 3: Whose Town? Our Town!
Fracking destroys the environment. It pollutes the water, the ground and the air with cancer causing chemicals, toxic chemicals that can kill you outright or slowly through accumulation,chemicals that can cause mutations and endocrine hormone disruptors. The drill cuttings and the waste water can never be safely disposed of. Flow back and “produced water” cannot be filtered, distilled, chemically or physically treated to be re-used or released to the environment. Organic chemicals that are contained in the fracking fluid create what is chemically known as an anisotropic liquid. You can never extract the water from this mixture. It is permanently ruined and unfit for human, animal or plant consumption. The drill cuttings and the natural gas extracted contain radioactive elements. The drill cuttings contain what is known as NORM or naturally occurring radioactive material. This has to be kept from the environment to avoid spreading cancer and mutations in the biosphere forever. The natural gas contains radioactive radon. Radon is an inert gas, but as it decays, the chemicals that it changes into, once ingested into your body, stay in your body. This causes cancer and mutations. No one is measuring or testing for this contamination of methane with radon.
There are accidents and spills at drill sites. Gas pipelines and pumping stations have leaked and exploded and burned. Fracking fluid has been used on our highways for de-icing and dust control. The casings of the well bore have not been installed properly and only at best last 100 years. After the well is spent or turned into a “deep injection well” for disposal of waste fracking water, what will happen then? Who is going to monitor and clean up these well drilling sites?That costs money that well drillers and gas companies don’t want to spend because it cuts into their profits. These deep injection wells and well drilling have already caused earthquakes. Burning the natural gas extracted by fracking creates global warming and climate change.
And finally, the natural gas extracted is unnecessary for our energy needs. According to the research of Jacobson and Di Lucci in their Nov. 2009 Scientific American article and in their March 2011 articles in the journal Energy Policy, we can convert the planet to renewable energy by the year 2030, without fossil fuel or nuclear energy with existing technology.
Fracking is too dangerous, too expensive and unnecessary for our energy needs. It should be outlawed permanently now!