MDN alerted you yesterday that some businesses on the periphery of the shale drilling industry in West Virginia may be affected by the recent coal-related chemical spill in that state that shut off water to some 300,000 residents (see Bumpy Ride for GreenHunter Because of WV Coal Chemical Spill?). Apparently anti-drilling Democrats in the state aren’t stopping at the periphery of the industry–why not use this unrelated chemical spill tragedy to falsely paint the entire shale drilling industry too? Yeah! What a great idea! (Rahm Emanuel: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”)
And so is born one of the most confusingly false and fact-challenged articles we’ve read in a long time–and that’s saying something. A Huntington News reporter was apparently so wowed by has-been WV politician Charlotte Pritt (who once ran for governor in WV and lost), that he accepted her spoon-fed pablum that the recent coal-related chemical spill “has ties” to the fracking industry. The reporter confusingly cites studies going back years from trustworthy sources like (*cough*) Politico, and sprinkles in liberal doses of liberal dogma like “Halliburton loophole,” and apparently expects you to understand what he and Queen Charlotte are trying to say: frackin’s bad for ya man…
