Serious, growing threat hitting close to home
A serious and growing environmental threat is hitting close to home. A new process for extracting natural gas, called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” literally shatters underground rock with millions of gallons of water and sand under high pressure. The cracks are then kept open with a soup of deadly chemicals as the gas is forced out.
What are these chemicals? The Energy Policy Act of 2005 made them legally protected “trade secrets.” The act also specifically exempts the industry from compliance with the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Superfund Act. They call this the “Halliburton loophole.” (Halliburton, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, invented the modern fracking process.) As a result of the new law, fracking is now ongoing or imminent in 34 states, including Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.
Get out your maps. Mark a red “X” between Twin Falls and Pocatello. Make another one in the southeast corner, south of Soda Springs. In Montana, make a big circle that includes Missoula, Bozeman, Great Falls and East Glacier Park. These are full of fracking sites. Your friends and relatives and their children are slowly getting sick and dying from poisoned well water and polluted air. Their tap water contains flammable methane gas. Their livestock — horses, cattle, sheep — their pets and a rich variety of wildlife are being killed. Their property has become worthless. The drillers are denying responsibility, and our government regulators are legally impotent.
Twin House and Senate bills — the FRAC Act — have just been introduced to repeal the Halliburton loophole, but they will face stubborn opposition. If the consequences of fracking do not serve the America you envision, please support these bills. But repealing the loophole would be just the beginning. The practice must be ended entirely. For more information, please see the documentary “Gasland” on HBO and visit http://gaslandthemovie.com.
CURTIS HEWSTON
Sandpoint