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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFracking Our Food Supply = The NATION
This is far more than a quick read!
Fracking Our Food Supply
http://www.thenation.com/article/171504/fracking-our-food-supply
In Pennsylvania, the oil and gas industry is already on a teardrilling thousands of feet into ancient seabeds, then repeatedly fracturing (or fracking) these wells with millions of gallons of highly pressurized, chemically laced water, which shatters the surrounding shale and releases fossil fuels. New York, meanwhile, is on its own natural-resource tear, with hundreds of newly opened breweries, wineries, organic dairies and pastured livestock operationsall of them capitalizing on the metropolitan areas hunger to localize its diet.
But theres growing evidence that these two impulses, toward energy and food independence, may be at odds with each other.
Tonights guests have heard about residential drinking wells tainted by fracking fluids in Pennsylvania, Wyoming and Colorado. Theyve read about lingering rashes, nosebleeds and respiratory trauma in oil-patch communities, which are mostly rural, undeveloped, and lacking in political influence and economic prospects. The trout nibblers in the winery sympathize with the suffering of those communities. But their main concern tonight is a more insidious matter: the potential for drilling and fracking operations to contaminate our food. The early evidence from heavily fracked regions, especially from ranchers, is not reassuring.
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octoberlib
(14,971 posts)Excellent article. Love the Nation!
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)NEOBuckeye
(2,781 posts)Useless in FL
(329 posts)How can we possibly stop these greedy monsters who have no COMPASSION for fellow human beings. I tell you, I am just exasperated and I'm so despondent. I'm tired of the end of lifers who feel they need to keep pushing this agenda.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)and those laws need to be rewritten to protect health and the future of our food supply and environment. Things like the Halliburton exception are what is wrong with the current situation, where Big Oil and Bush/Cheney colluded to enrich themselves.
The biggest problem is that the controls are not up to date with the methods and dangers posed by the chemicals employed by the new methods.