In 2008, Peter Gorman wrote an article for the Ft. Worth Weekly titled:
Peeling the Barnett Shale Onion
Scary questions have already emerged from beneath the drilling-boom bucks – and who knows what’s next?
Here's what's next, Peter:
Natural gas development requires Mountain Top Removal!!!
I know! Like me, you have probably been thinking that the one good thing about natural gas development is that they can stop the mountain top removal (MTR) for coal mining. If so, then, like me, you've been suckered by Big Gas, AGAIN!
I've been in Arkansas for the past couple of days at the Clean Water Network Caucus on Oil Mining & Gas Water Pollution in the Lower Mississippi River Basin. Mining for frack sand is leveling a huge chunk of beautiful Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains area and leaving it nothing but a wasteland.
Some information about frack sand mining in Arkansas from Friends of the Rivers:
Like hydraulic frac mining itself, the State of Arkansas and our counties are NOT prepared to evaluate and manage the risks we face when companies with limited liability for their owners plan to remove the tops of our Ozark Hills and use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day.
- Water – depletion of the aquifer - More information here
- Water – discharge of waste water into creeks - More information here
- Risks to fish and wildlife habitat
- Possible additional erosion of streambanks from non-normal wastewater discharges and higher stormwater runoffs from cleared lands into creeks
- Air – dangers of silica dust causing silicosis - More information here
- Truck traffic – More information here
- Tourism and Economic Impacts - More information here
- Risks to workers
- Reclamation/Restoration after mining - More information here
- Noise and light
- Property Values - More information here
It's happening in Wisconsin too! Canadian Sand and Proppant has a 40 year contract to mine frac sand in the hills in western Wisconsin.
Western Wisconsin sand mining goes against the grain for some residents
Some Chippewa, Wisconsin residents got together and started a blog/website called We Are Concerned Chippewa Citizens, and they have the best description of fracking I've seen yet.
(Fracking is like a high pressure ENEMA with highly toxic substances that bursts open the guts of the earth destroying the inner barriers and allowing oil, gas and water to mix and contaminate each other.)
What a complete scam, this so-called "clean energy".
Let's recap the issues with natural gas extraction:
What else?
TELL CONGRESS TO MAKE ALL GAS DRILLERS OBEY THE SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT
