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Mail
Magazine 24
Who’s
Afraid of Fracking?
by Deroy Murdock
If
frackophobes are to be believed,
natural gas fracking is the most frightful environmental nightmare
since
Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down after an earthquake
and
tsunami.
In
"Promised Land," Matt
Damon's new anti-fracking movie -- funded in part by the United Arab
Emirates
-- one character demonstrates this production technique's "dangers"
by drenching a toy farm with household chemicals and then setting it
ablaze.
In
the upcoming pro-fracking film,
"Fracknation," one Pennsylvania homeowner absurdly claims that
fracking polluted his well water with weapons-grade uranium.
In
a New Yorkers Against Fracking
agitprop poster, the Statue of Liberty furiously topples natural gas
drilling
towers with her torch as energy company 18-wheelers flee in horror.
These
warnings might be believable
if fracking regulators seemed even slightly worried. Instead, federal
and state
environmental officials appear positively serene about hydraulic
fracturing, a
decades-old technology that uses sand and chemically treated water to
shatter
shale deposits far below the water table and liberate natural gas from
the
ruptured rocks.
--
"In no case have we made a
definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals
to
enter groundwater," Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa
Jackson said last April. In May 2011, she testified on Capitol Hill:
"I'm
not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has
affected
water."
The
EPA tested drinking water in
Dimock, Pa., which ecologists claim fracking has tainted. "EPA has
determined that there are not levels of contaminants present that would
require
additional action by the agency," it concluded last July.
--
"A study that examined the
water quality of 127 shallow domestic wells in the Fayetteville Shale
natural
gas production area of Arkansas found no groundwater contamination
associated
with gas production," the U.S. Geological Survey announced Wednesday.
--
"Significant adverse impacts on human health are not expected from
routine
HVHF," or high-volume hydraulic fracturing, according to a February
2012
preliminary report from New York's Department of Environmental
Conservation.
New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pondered this issue since
2010 and
promises further contemplation, including another draft of what DEC now
calls
an "outdated summary."
Marcia
McNutt elaborated:
"This new study is important in terms of finding no significant effects
on
groundwater quality from shale gas development within the area of
sampling."
Read
this and other articles at Mail Magazine
24
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