Dear Senate President Miller, House Speaker Busch, Committee Chairs and Vice-Chairs, and Members of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, and other distinguished members of the Legislature:
I’m writing to you today, before the 2017 Annapolis Legislative Session begins, to share a new poll about fracking (see the message being forwarded below) which confirms what my door-to-door conversations with fellow Frostburg residents has already suggested: that Western Maryland opposes fracking, as do the citizens in the rest of the state. (The poll can be found here at Citizen Shale’s Website: citizenshale.org)
This may come as a surprise, since the Western Maryland delegation has been insisting, by right of their standing, I suppose, more than solid evidence, that our region wants to frack. Meanwhile, on the ground here more than 600 residents of Frostburg have signed a petition which has been presented to our Mayor and City Council in what I have called the largest protest rally the city has seen since Coxey’s Army marched up Big Savage Mountain and along the National Road (our Route 40) on their way to Washington, DC to petition the national government for public works jobs in the wake of the depression of 1893.
Our rally last Thursday evening in Frostburg (October 20th) saw more than 200 in attendance at a council meeting which usually sees zero to five citizens. The vast turnout is having an effect, democracy in action, and we have a public session scheduled for November 10th to work with our city government to pass a new ordinance banning fracking from atop or under our city boundaries, as well as the watershed lands we own in Garrett County, which will not be protected by the new Hogan administration regulations. Or the session may revert to a weaker zoning amendment “tweak.” It remains to be seen.
I am pleased to be working with the citizen group Frack Free Frostburg and other regional (CCAN), statewide (CitizenShale) national groups (Food & Water Watch), as well as the ecologically minded students at Frostburg State University — and looking forward to being at the negotiating table on the 10th.
What has been happening in Western Maryland mirrors the change over the past two years nationally among environmental groups, where fracking (and reliance on natural gas) has gone from the “bridge fuel to the future” to a dead end road, doing more to block the crucial transition away from fossil fuels than to facilitate it.
And our Frostburg residents have been reminded of something they may have forgotten: that our city sold some of its fine water to fracking firm Samson Resources of Houston, Texas, in 2009, and that Samson racked up 8 violations and $35,000 in fines from the State of Pennsylvania, including two for the sites the water was for sold for. And in 2012, the city began water monitoring for fracking generated pollutants (conducted by Maryland Environmental Services) at a cost of more than $5,000 per year.
I believe that we’ve had to monitor because the PA county of Somerset, to our north, and where almost one third of our hydrological watershed lies, has been a veritable horror story of fracking violations, the saving grace being only that the density of drilling has not been as heavy as in Southwestern or Northeastern, PA. In a fitting commentary, Samson Resources has gone out of business, via Chapter 11, unable to ride the roller coaster price swings which destroyed their business model.
And in another punctuation mark coming from Pennsylvania, which the Hogan administration has held up as a regulatory model for us in Maryland, on October 23rd the Medical Society of Pennsylvania passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on fracking in the state, an independent registry of problems, and research into the health effects of the fracking regime, a resolution which had failed just three years ago.
All these events, and revelations, point to the conclusion that passing a ban on fracking in Annapolis is needed and is doable this coming year, especially so for a city not fully in control of its hydrological watershed. The political facts on the ground in Western Maryland are changing fast to support this vital legislative necessity.
Your backing in this great endeavor will be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
bill of rights
Frostburg, MD