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Fracking Debate Prompts EPA Hearing

Catz Part Deux

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Fracking debate prompts EPA hearing in New York on gas drilling - CSMonitor.com

Fracking opponents carried signs saying "Kids can't drink gas" and "Protect our water. Stop fracking America." Supporters, including union workers eager for jobs, carried signs that said "Yes to science, no to paranoia" and chanted "Pass gas now!"

Hundreds of people on both sides gathered Monday for what are expected to be contentious public hearings on a federal environmental study of a natural gas drilling technique aimed at tapping a rich formation beneath much of the Northeast.

The Environmental Protection Agency is holding four-hour hearings in Binghamton beginning at noon and again at 6 p.m. Two more sessions are scheduled for Wednesday.

The EPA is considering how broadly to construct its study of fracking, ordered last year by Congress after the agency's 2004 study that declared the technology safe was widely criticized as flawed. That study had enabled passage of 2005 energy legislation exempting fracking from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The drilling technique involves blasting millions of gallons of chemical-laced water mixed with sand into the ground and then horizontally to release natural gas from rock formations thousands of feet underground. Opponents say the process can poison drinking water but the industry, strongly opposed to federal regulation, contends there's no proof that fracking chemicals have contaminated drinking water.

The hearings come as a gas rush barely two years old is under way in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, with drilling companies tapping into the vast and lucrative Marcellus Shale region underlying those states, New York and Ohio. Some geologists estimate the Marcellus might contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, of which 50 trillion cubic feet might be recoverable by fracking — enough to supply the entire East Coast for 50 years.

The proximity of the gas stores to the large East Coast energy market makes it particularly valuable. But its location brings drilling to a densely populated region and fears of water contamination of the Delaware River watershed that provides drinking water for 17 million people from Philadelphia to New York City.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of world we're going to leave for our kids in our unadulterated zeal for cheap energy and profits.
 
The system has been used on hundreds of thousands of wells and to hold it up as being possibly dangerous at this point is only helping to hold prices at higher levels.

As many of us have said we have the wherewithal to put technology to work and create safe clean energy if the environmentally ill would just sit down and shut the hell up.

Hell I don't know anyone that would not love to drive a new Tesla. The damn thing will keep up with or out run all but maybe one or two piston engines card on the road today with a 0 to 60 of 3.9 sec.

Mass production of new technology would drive down the prices and with clean energy used for charging it's the best thing that could happen.

We need to demand whole sale changes and remove the oil Co. control of so many in congress to make it possible, and at the same time go after the phony environmental road blocks.
 
Fracturing--AKA fracing--is the use of high pressure fluids to fracture rock formations to allow gas and oil to flow into the production tubing.

The silliness of the protests against fracing, is that if the frac fluids can make it into the ground water, the oil and gas can make it into the gorund water and the ground water is too contaminated to drink, anyway.

Tree huggers need to learn more about their enemy.
 
I agree, every time we stop going after affordable, good sources of energy because of paranoid fears we harm our children.

Global warming studies = proof positive
Fracking natural gas studies = flawed

:confused:
 
I don't use any natural gas. I find it to be way more dangerous than electricity.
 
Global warming studies = proof positive
Fracking natural gas studies = flawed

:confused:

And using your logic:

Fracking natural gas studies = proof positive
Global warming studies = flawed
 
And using your logic:

Fracking natural gas studies = proof positive
Global warming studies = flawed

The folks who use the logic that fracing is dangerous to the environment, also belive in global wamring and that 9/11 was an inside job.
 
The folks who use the logic that fracing is dangerous to the environment, also belive in global wamring and that 9/11 was an inside job.

Hey, you're the one who thinks that the earth is flat, so whose really the bigger conspiracy nut?
 
Hey, you're the one who thinks that the earth is flat, so whose really the bigger conspiracy nut?

Care to give us a link where I have ever said that? We'll be waiting.
 
A similar procedure is being fought against in Canada right now. I have read some of the studies done on it and to be honest right now I haven't made up my mind. There is a lot of suggestion that fracturing introduces pollutants into the ground water and some communities in Quebec launched complaints about it after their water had to be shut off due to fuel contents in the water. But the problems were corrected, or so they say.

We have been told for a long time that natural gas exploration is far less detrimental to the environment but there is growing evidence that it may be just as bad. In any case, I know that any number of studies saying it's not healthy will not stop the exploration. My uncle works for an oil company in the tar sands and I hear all about the mentality of the companies there. Seriously... you cannot meet a more greed-driven bunch. They will stop at nothing.
 
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