The coverage of the BP disaster is pretty much non stop but what we have not heard is that it may not be possible to stop it. But there is another potential toxic invasion.
This month has not been a quiet one for the booming Marcellus Shale
natural gas well drilling industry, and the commotion has the attention
of Debbie Borowiec of Upper Burrell, where two gas wells are planned
near 67 homes on Chapeldale Drive.The industry noise began with a “blowout” on June 3 at a Marcellus
Shale well outside Penfield in rural Clearfield County. That well,
adjacent to the Moshannon State Forest, spewed natural gas and drilling
wastewater contaminated with toxic chemicals into the air for 16 hours.On Monday, drillers hit a pocket of methane in an inactive deep mine,
causing an explosion and fire that flared 50-feet high for four days,
destroyed a drilling rig and burned all seven workers on the well pad,
located in a farm field near Moundsville in West Virginia’s northern
panhandle.“We’re horrified by the possibilities of that happening here,” Ms.
Borowiec said about Marcellus Shale wells planned for a pad 1,500 feet
from homes in Upper Burrell. “The more research we do the more horrific
it is, and I don’t think a lot of people know what’s going on.”
Our lust for carbon fuel endangers our drinking water, our food sources and yes, even our lives. And this is a bipartisan problem. Both Democrats and Republicans have been purchased by big energy. The problem goes back 40 years or more. Big energy has always had lots of money and money buys both politicians and favorable editorial coverage in the corporate media. The result was little research on alternate energy, inadequate fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, resistance to mass transit and the encouragement of still more urban sprawl. And then there are the wars – would we be fighting hopeless battles in the middle east if it weren’t for oil? Someday the Cheney Energy Task Force documentation will be made public and the world will know that the invasion of Iraq was all about oil.
We are addicted to carbon fuels and the pushers are just as nefarious as the pusher of crack cocaine. Both make lots of money as long as your addiction continues. They have something else in common – the addiction will eventually kill us. Perhaps not us personally but our children and grandchildren.