Letter To the Editor:
There has been a huge investment made by hundreds of farmers who work 24/7, 365 days of the year here in Athens County and southeast Ohio. We all benefit every day from the food they produce. My husband and I support the Athens Farmers Market, food stores, restaurants, local food festivals and community gardens that are abundant here.
And if we added up all these farmers' experience, all they know about creating this sustainable food economy that we have right here, there would be thousands of years of experience that has been poured into earth of southeast Ohio. It has taken decades and decades of dedication to make this happen.
Horizontal hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) for oil and gas is absolutely incompatible with the precious food economy in this region. It inherently brings pollutions of all kinds and extensive habitat destruction. Drilling fragments the countryside because it consists of multiple sites requiring acres and acres of land for drill pads, wastewater ponds and compressor stations, and all these are connected by miles and miles of clear-cut pipeline routes that then connect to interstate pipeline routes.
All these acres are wasteland, scraped clean of all habitats, all trees for decades. Southeast Ohio counties will be pockmarked with land devoid of life.
I'm not saying I don't want Americans to have jobs, but I do not believe drilling here is as important as what is already going on here. The farmers in this region are already producing something much more precious than oil and gas; they are creating our HOMELAND FOOD SECURITY.
Southeast Ohio should be protected from oil and gas drilling so the important work of sustainable food production can continue and expand without this environmental threat.
Together we must ban fracking now in southeast Ohio.
Celia Wetzel
Albany
The Athens News
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