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| Sugar Run on the Susquehanna River Site of methane bubbling since September 2010 Chesapeake Energy has accepted responsibility, but the bubbling continues Photo: Carol Manuel |
Ms. Bloom went for a bike ride August 10th, and, based on her experience, she wrote this piece. Here are a few excerpts:
If I didn't personally know people being hurt by fracking right now in Susquehanna County and Bradford County, in Washington and Greene Counties in southwestern PA, and elsewhere in the state and country- I could really imagine the seductive appeal. How much more appealing it must seem to those who have not been listening to hydrologists, biochemists and climate scientists make the case for a moratorium on fracking.
Carl and Judy Stiles of Sugar Run in Bradford County were told by a toxicologist to get out of their home last November after they'd been suffering severe abdominal pain, muscle tremors, dizziness, racing heart and other cardiac symptoms for months......They have been told by one doctor to expect to get leukemia within two years.
The health impacts from gas drilling are so new, and the chemicals and other contaminants brought up by the drilling and fracking, compressor stations and condensate tanks, pipelines and frack pits, are so little understood, that the current wave of families whose health is being severely impacted by fracking in Pennsylvania are literally guinea pigs for a process being sold to the public as "clean." Nothing could be farther from the truth.Read the entire article.
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| Methane bubbling at Sugar Run Used by permission |
Can you imagine what would happen if the CEO of Chesapeake got symptoms and a bad prognosis like the Stiles did? The politicians and scientists and DEC would be buzzing around like bees until they found out what caused it and whatever caused it would be shut down immediately. But these things AREN'T happening to the bigwigs.They are happening to hard-working, salt-of-the-Earth people, who don't have access to billions of dollars. Their lives have been destroyed by hydrofracking and they have no recourse. The gas company doesn't care if there are a bunch of casualties along its way to making billions. It is up to us- people who can see the pain these people are going through and understand the for-now-unsolvable problems connected to the industry- to help vote out politicians who support hydrofracking. The environmental cost of hydrofracking and the inability to deal with the inevitable by-products from this process should make it illegal until they come up with waste management solutions that don't involve citizens getting sick and/or dying.Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face- we are destroying the water sources we need to exist!Perhaps it's just some cosmic joke and something out there is watching us like people watch "World's Worst Drivers" and saying, "Oh, look what the humans are up to today! I think their road to extinction will be a little shorter than we anticipated. They are so darn funny!"
ReplyDeleteYes, walking a mile in our shoes is not exactly something that ever enters the minds of the Big Oil Guys. The most charitable thing one might say is that these big wigs actually believe what they are doing is going to be helpful to the country in the long run. They would be wrong about that, though.
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