After viewing Josh Fox’s documentary “Gasland” presented on Tuesday night at the Unitarian Fellowship in Hackettstown (courtesy of Laura Kipmeyer), I left with a lot of very disturbing facts about “fracking,” and the helplessness of citizens affected in this practice. We’ve all seen media ads touting natural gas as being “clean and abundant,” and how natural gas will curtail our dependency on foreign oil. What isn’t mentioned in those ads are the 596 chemicals used is the fracturing process, virtual lakes of wastewater pumped back to the surface for [eventual] treatment, the massive around-the-clock trucking operations needed to construct a “fracking” site, and the toll taken on underground and surface water resources. Political and commercial duplicity, present since the inception of large-scale “fracking” operations began, were also exposed in this documentary. What wasn’t mentioned was the affect that liquefying natural gas for transportability is having on where such supplies sold are shipped.
The subject is especially important now because the industry have had their sights set on gas supplies in the Delaware River Basin, where water supplies affect over 15 million tri-state residents. I believe the temporary moratorium on “fracking” operations here needs to be made permanent. Any thoughts?
