Stop Fracking, Now
AJ Robinson

Here’s a little point of information you should consider: you can live for about three days without water. That’s it, three days. I tend to think it just might be more precious than gold. Others might disagree; after all, water is plentiful.

It is, but for now.

Here’s one little word for you: fracking. This is a method for getting natural gas out of the ground. It’s quite simple, a company pumps some sort of liquid into the ground to “frack,� make the rocks in the ground crack. This releases the gas trapped in the stone and then collected.

There are two problems with fracking. One, the gas gets into the ground water. Two, the liquid pumped into the ground also gets in the ground water. This has resulted in poisoned well and, literally, setting your tap water on fire. Check the videos, available on line.

Now, fracking has been going on for years, but tightly controlled by the government, particularly the EPA. It’s more widespread following legislation President Bush signed into law a few years back; it made fracking exempt from EPA rules. Ever since then companies have been pumping any sort of chemicals they want into the ground and no one can do anything about it. For that matter, no one even knows what chemicals are used!

I know some people see government regulations as pure evil. Some people even call for the dismantling of the EPA. Call me silly, call me crazy, but it does seem to me that fracking, at least, is one instance where government regulation is a good thing.

Energy independence is great. Will independence come at the cost of our water supply? Will we, one day, need to choose between water and freedom?

Of course, we could always trust the companies to be careful and learn from their mistakes. Who knows, maybe in the future the companies will stop any dangerous practices. I just have a problem with putting my trust in people motivated by profit as opposed to those motivated by an interest in the public welfare.

Getting gas is an important aspect of our economy; having clear drinking water is vital to life! If we poison it, where will we get a replacement supply, yet another foreign country?