Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 10:44:08 -0500
From: John Brooks
Subject: Fracking in this neighborhood
I take issue with the statement that migratory birds can deal with our messes. Anyone who saw the oil-soaked pelicans of Louisiana and Mississippi after the oil platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico knows that the companies had no plan to deal with the damage. Now these companies are being invited to try a new technology, fracking, with chemicals they want to keep secret, contaminating millions of gallons of water, and storing the half of it that comes back up in pools, like the coal ash ponds that Duke Energy has used. Sewage can leak, too, but we can test for and mitigate the bacteria. How can we test for chemicals
that are kept secret. Charleston, West Virginia found that it couldn’t even bathe in the water of the Elk River after a secret chemical, MCHM leaked from a storage tank, and was taken into the water supply intake before anyone knew it was there. Almost 300,000 people had to import water, even to wash their hands. I’ll bet those people don’t trust new chemical installations in their watershed, anymore.