Earthjustice released a great video short earlier this month explaining the threats posed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for unconventional gas, including water contamination, an exploding house, dead livestock, and health impacts on residents living near fracking operations, to name a few.
It’s a great brief overview of the reasons why the lax oversight of fracking and other unconventional gas industry practices deserves immediate and intense scrutiny from public health and safety officials. Just last week, we witnessed Chesapeake Energy’s fracking well blowout in Bradford County, Pennsylvania – which eerily took place one year after the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico – contaminating local waterways and properties with drilling chemicals. That well blowout is thankfully now under control and awaiting a permanent plug, but it serves as another reminder of how ill-prepared the gas industry is to respond to such emergencies, and to prevent them in the first place.
Watch the Earthjustice short:
As Earthjustice Managing Attorney Deborah Goldberg said recently,
“How many wells need to blow out, how many people need to get sick, how many communities need to be devastated before elected leaders say ‘enough is enough’? The gas has been there for millions of years, it can stay there a little longer until we figure how — and if — we can extract it safely.”
Agreed.
Check out Earthjustice’s website for more about their work to curb the fracking bonanza and empower citizens to fight back against reckless gas industry practices.
