Drilling in Towns is Unacceptable Risk

...

Phil Doe environmental director of Be The Change had this to say:

"I invite your attention to two recent symposiums; one the Colorado School of Health where a lot was said about health risk, particularly air from fracking. Its online. You should all look at it....
Hear recordings of speakers at the Symposium here

I want to turn to what you said about water use and deep well injection. That one well, injects and destroys enough water for a city's domestic needs of 3600 people annually. There are over 200 wells, injection wells in this state, and the capacity is going up. How much of our groundwater, how much of our water ... are you contaminating, and how much are you destroying?..
The water in this state constitutionally belongs to us, it doesn’t belong to you, and it doesn’t belong to the gas and oil industry. You have no right to destroy it; we have not given you permission.
Secondly, how much are you going to destroy if as the oil and gas industry predicts they are going to double the size of their operations by 2019. How much water is that going to take, and how much destruction are you going to do before we say cease. Consider the future.!”

Please read the rest:
http://frackcity.blogspot.com/2014/08/drilling-in-towns-is-unacceptable-risk.html

a gentle reminder for the underinformed...

In other words,

Drilling in Towns is Unacceptable Risk

...

Phil Doe environmental director of Be The Change had this to say:

"I invite your attention to two recent symposiums; one the Colorado School of Health where a lot was said about health risk, particularly air from fracking. Its online. You should all look at it....
Hear recordings of speakers at the Symposium here

I want to turn to what you said about water use and deep well injection. That one well, injects and destroys enough water for a city's domestic needs of 3600 people annually. There are over 200 wells, injection wells in this state, and the capacity is going up. How much of our groundwater, how much of our water ... are you contaminating, and how much are you destroying?..
The water in this state constitutionally belongs to us, it doesn’t belong to you, and it doesn’t belong to the gas and oil industry. You have no right to destroy it; we have not given you permission.
Secondly, how much are you going to destroy if as the oil and gas industry predicts they are going to double the size of their operations by 2019. How much water is that going to take, and how much destruction are you going to do before we say cease. Consider the future.!”

Please read the rest:
http://frackcity.blogspot.com/2014/08/drilling-in-towns-is-unacceptable-risk.html

I'll take mine with cream and a little sugar, please.

Dang, I do love a good conversation! A cup of coffee, and yes, have a seat and kick off your shoes and put your feet up.

“Did you see that story about…”

“Really? I didn’t know that…”

“Yep, I was there, heard him say…”

“Hey, thanks for lending me that book…”


Then there are the ones I’d just as soon take a pass on:

“What in hell are you talking about?!”

“Oh, sure, next you’ll tell us…”

“Really? So it’s okay with you that…”

“Whatsa matter, can’t take a little criticism?”


Happily, I get to choose those with whom I converse. I may be in my seventh decade but I still enjoy learning, and I learn the most from the first example, which keeps that door open. Highly preferable to the second example, which teaches only how to close a door.

Just made a fresh pot, mugs are on the counter.

"What's the big deal?"

An afternoon at the laundromat found me reading a day-old newspaper. I glanced up to notice that one of my neighbors had just come in. We nodded in greeting and she proceeded down the row of washers to find available machines. I’d pulled the crossword puzzle out of the paper and had just started it when the neighbor took a seat and picked up the newspaper I’d just set down. Thirty-something with a couple of kids, working part time at a realty office, husband a line manager at the meatpacking plant. Anyway, after a couple of minutes she tossed the paper down, shook her head and said that she just didn’t get why people get so upset at that stuff.

So, more to be polite than anything else, I asked “What stuff?”

“This,” she said, as she pointed to the story about events transpiring in Israel. “It’s not like it’s real or anything.”

I asked what she meant, and she said her father had long ago taught them that Israel was a made-up country, like in fairy tales, a place that preachers talk about when telling stories to teach people how to act.

It took a minute for me to get my bearings after that, but I was eventually able to respond by saying that the country does, in fact, exist. She looked at me as though I’d sprouted a second head. I picked up the newspaper, which had a small map in the story; I used my pencil to sketch in a larger (albeit somewhat crude) map of Africa, Europe and Asia Minor, with the Mediterranean and Italy prominent (she at least knew that Italy exists). She still looked a little doubtful, so I suggested that there was lots of interesting history about the place, that there are reasons that we pay attention, and that the library might be a good place to start.

That conversation took place in 1982. When I next saw that neighbor, a couple weeks later, she said she'd looked at some maps and was thinking about going to the library. Shortly after, I moved across town and haven’t seen her since. But I do think of her every time someone opines “What’s the big deal?” when Israel is in the news.

Do you remember?

Remember when the Tea Party kept insisting that they were all about TAXES, that it wasn't their fault that people from Storm Front and Aryan Nations (with attendant rhetoric) showed up in droves at Tea Party events? Remember how they got louder about TAXES, JUST TAXES when the skinheads and rhetoric were joined by blatantly racist flags and signage? Do you remember?

How to handle it

There's a suggestion out there of how to handle it when some of those 'open carry' types bring their assault rifles into the restaurant where you're trying to have dinner. Not knowing whether they are 'good guys with guns' or 'bad guys with guns,' just don't engage, simply get up and leave. It just doesn't pay to pretend that some of them aren't hoping for an excuse to demonstrate the effectiveness of their weapons, and sticking around to find out would be, at the very least, a waste of time that could be more productively spent elsewhere.

Good advice. And the same tactic works with some discussion threads.

On C-span today . . .

Caught the tail end of the House stuff on C-span. A Democrat was objecting to someone's suggestion about putting Obama in handcuffs? Did anyone see/hear the remark he was referencing, who said it, etc.? The speaker pro tem cut him off and gavelled them into vacation, then the channel started replaying something else.

Anybody?

And thanks.

Benched