As a resident of Poland and having grown up in Youngstown [Boardman], I am writing to add my voice to what needs to be a loud roar in the face of the broadening disaster that the natural-gas fracturing [fracking] activities of the natural-gas extraction companies are visiting upon the communities in our part of the world.
Youngstown rarely had earthquakes until this past year, and they were almost undetectable. But the quake on New Year’s Eve was a shock.
Just the practice of depositing the poisoned waste water in bedrock near Youngstown is disconcerting, but the disastrous effects of the actual mining and all the risks that go with it to our environment —water, noise and air pollution — will impact the whole community. Many people in Poland have well water. What will they drink when that is tainted?
I am all for extracting cheap energy, as long as the peripheral costs are directly borne by the exploiters. They are not. Allowing drilling because it is not proven to be harmful is like allowing smoking to be peddled as “healthy” because there was no ‘‘proof’’ that smoking caused cancer.
The fallout of the last blight in Youngstown, the steel industry, that caused cancer in many thousands, and then poverty and destitution after it ended, to all those that were low-level workers in it, is still present.
vindy.com
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