Is fracking worth the price?

Dear Editor:

Marcellus Shale. Those words are enough to start fist fights in some quarters, and for good reasons. Just ask farmers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere about how gas well drilling and fracking has permanently polluted their streams and wells with lethal chemicals, killed their livestock, poisoned their fields so they will now no longer sustain crops, decimated their wood lots and ruined their properties and property values to the point that when put up for sale, there are no buyers.

The small amount of money the gas companies pay for property owners’ mineral rights cannot even begin to pay for the cleanup required after this destruction. Worse, the contamination of the water bearing rock strata is permanent and can never be repaired at any price. This should immediately ring a bell for everyone.

What about the Springs? What’s wrong with this picture? Can you imagine the spring park closed due to the fire hazard caused by natural gas bubbling up with the water?

Now we have a report, dated January 23, from the U.S. Geological Survey that indicates the Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves estimate had to be downgraded by 66%. Bloomberg states, “The estimated Marcellus reserves would meet U.S. gas demand for about six years, using 2010 consumption data, according to the Energy Department, down from 17 years in the previous outlook.”

Obviously, previous industry estimates that Marcellus Shale natural gas would supply the country’s needs for 100 years were optimistic at best and mere propaganda at worst.

Marcellus Shale natural gas promoters talk about jobs and boost to the economy. They claim fracking is a safe, clean way to obtain America’s energy, but experience at actual drilling sites has proven that there are serious negative side effects caused by fracking. We have to ask ourselves if getting only six years of gas supplies is worth the destruction of “Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia.”

John Sutton
Berkeley Springs