Witch Hunt: NRDC Goes Looking for Enviro Apostates at EPA
Predictable. MDN told you about a sham story that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times. The reporter claims to have a PowerPoint slide (which the Times calls a “report”) from the EPA that some people inside the EPA really do think fracking caused water problems in Dimock, PA after all, and the LA Times’ conclusion is that Godfather “big oil & gas” has “gotten” to the EPA and hushed them up (see LA Times Attempts New Hatchet Job on Fracking in Dimock).
Now that the mainstream media has done their job of lighting the fire with a new lie about Dimock, along comes fossil fuel-haters to pile on and accuse the Obama EPA–one of their own!–of being complicit in a nefarious plot to cover up “the truth” about fracking in Dimock–and while they’re at it, not just Dimock, but cover-ups in Wyoming, Texas…even the moon (if the moon had fracking). Prime example A is this missive from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC):
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Technically this is not a story about the Marcellus or Utica Shale, but it is a story about fracking in shale, and making a splash among anti-drillers, so it deserves our attention and consideration. Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) have just published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology titled, “An evaluation of water quality in private drinking water wells near natural gas extraction sites in the Barnett Shale Formation” (full copy embedded below for MDN subscribers). The study looks at 100 water wells in the Barnett Shale region of north Texas. UTA researchers used data from the 1990s–before horizontal drilling and fracking began in the region–and data from their own tests conducted in 2011.
This is truly rich. While anti-drillers prattle on about how a few gallons of chemicals a mile down in the earth will magically defy gravity and climb uphill through a mile of solid rock to contaminate water supplies (yeah, it NEVER happens), the scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have written a research paper that says shale is so secure, we ought to consider using it to dispose of spent nuclear waste–stuff that hangs around for millions of years!
Time to fly the flags at half staff. Why? It seems that freedom and liberty in New York State have died. Tyranny has slowly crept in and has now taken up residence in the Empire State. For five long years, landowners in New York have been denied their Constitutional property rights to allow shale drilling on and under their land, and frankly, there’s no end in sight to this travesty of justice. Oh, we New Yorkers have not given up! As Winston Churchill once famously said, NEVER!