Discover Magazine stated that Ms.Tracy Bank, a geo-chemist n Buffalo New York, studies how water interacts with underground rock layers. Buffalo, NY sits on the edge of the largest reservoir of natural gas in America, a geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale. The 95,000-square-mile slab, which lies under West Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, could contain up to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - yet only enough to meet the nation’s natural gas needs for a dismal two years. Because of this barely-worth-it bounty, the areas above the shale are now in an gas-drilling boom town effect.
The gas is extracted using a method called FRACKING, hydraulic fracturing. This experimental technique involves pumping millions of gallons of precious water (of which purity and amounts become rarer daily) laced with toxic chemicals deep underground.
These terrible blasts open the shale and release not only the gas trapped inside - but deadly toxins such as uranium and its toxic radiation contamination. This cancer-causing uranium radiation continually changes, morphing uncontrollably to haunt human existence for generations.
Fracking has already drawn some (but not nearly enough) scrutiny from environmental groups, unhappy homeowners, and teams of lawyers who blame the drilling method for polluting pristine rivers, turning bucolic farmlands into noisy industrial zones, and leaking enough methane to make ordinary tap water as flammable as lighter fluid.
Bank’s research shows that high-pressure toxic chemical mix (gold mining used to use cyanide for its mining process, also) striking the shale dislodges the naturally occurring radioactive uranium and strontium. This dangerously contaminates groundwater that newborns and children must then drink from their faucets which then spew out the radiated toxin more commonly known as “tap water.”
Force the EPA to BAN FRACKING and oil drilling exploitation of our earth. Encourage and develop solar and wind energy to stop this nightmare exploitation of nature, called resources and progress.
