No “Fracking” Way!
As I said in my auto-bio before, I live in the Ithaca area of upstate NY. There is a major protest happening here as big business is yet again trying to destroy a community and the environment surrounding it.
Here’s the gist of it: Where we live, there is a chunk in the Earth’s crust called the Marcellus Shale Formation. It holds tons and tons of Natural Gas, but there is no way to retrieve the gas without severely harming the environment. The process used to get Natural Gas from such a thing as pure rock is called Hydraulic Fracturing. This is accomplished by drilling down through the Earth’s layers and through the rock shattering it, then using hydro-power to separate the natural gas from the rock and water. Sounds eco-friendly enough, I mean they’re using water to drill with right? WRONG! What’s happening is when that rock is shattered natural gas comes out, but so does everything else. Part of “everything else” includes radioactive waste material! If that radioactive waste is released, it will affect so much more than people understand. This will affect all our ground water, the Finger Lakes, our state parks, the Finger Lakes National Forest, our vineyards, our agriculture, our gorges, our wildlife, our human-life, our colleges, our restaurants, our entire community and all those smaller ones surrounding. Let’s take down an entire region just to suck every last drop of blood from the veins of Earth. I am not a “hippy activist.” I am a realist and this is our reality.
Maybe some of you wonder how all those elements of our area will be affected by hydro-fracking. This is how: When radioactive waste seeps into Cayuga Lake, it will kill the fish and all flora and fauna surrounding. No more swimming in the lake, or boating, or fishing, or kayaking. Might as well close all the camps and childhood enrichment programs. And the Floating Classroom. That lake water also feeds a major canal that distributes water to farms and town families for miles. Bad water. Poisonous water. The affected ground water supplies our beautiful and infamous vineyards, no more picturesque Finger Lakes Wine Trail. There goes a huge hit on our economy. Cornell and all it’s research, the agricultural school, even the historic crew race way…poisoned. All the restaurants and musical venues stationed around the lake…closed. “Ithaca is Gorges” will be a dead phrase, as our gorges will be sizzling in radioactive waste. Our Native American history, and remarkable geological history- gone.
Last but not least. It is illegal in NY state to dispose of radioactive waste. So? So, we have to ship it across the country to states like Utah and Idaho, so it can be “disposed of.” How do you dispose of radioactive waste? There is no way to dispose of it. All we do it spread it around and fill up man made deposits for the junk. “Here Utah a killer of a gift for you. Love, NY. “ Pleasant thought huh? So what I am getting at is that this drilling does not just affect us in NY, it affects people everywhere, the entire world. Imagine the people it would affect just in this country if there were a spill on it’s journey out west? Nothing good can come of this. This is a result of a 5 year plan. Fuel enough for the country, yeah, but not for very long. Can’t we rise above this? Can’t we just give in to nature instead of fighting her constantly. The sad part is, we are all nature and some people refuse to believe it. WE ARE NATURE! The CEO of Exxon is nature. Sam Walton was nature. George W. Bush is nature. We have derived from the earth whether you are religious, spiritual, or atheist. Did we not start out only eating what the earth provided? For centuries, we didn’t eat unless we grew our own food from the Earth, drank the ground and steam water, depended on the earth to provide us with warmth and shelter, by using trees, mud, and clay for shelter. Animals and plants to make our clothing and even medicine.
Just because we can buy our clothes now and our food, and we never have to touch the soil beneath our feet, we still come from it. We are all animals and we need our Earth, because realistically, nobody is moving to Mars in this lifetime, and there will be no Earth left to keep us alive if this destruction does NOT cease!
Do not drill here Gov. Patterson.
NO FRACKING WAY!
For further explanation here’s an interesting “tid-bit” to listen to.
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