Is "natural" gas to become the new "clean" coal or "safe" nuclear energy?
I think before anyone should have been allowed to make an executive decision about the benefits of more drilling for so-called "natural" gas in Idaho, he or she should have been obliged to watch last year's Oscar-nominated documentary "Gasland."
It is a shocking and vivid expose of the collateral damage associated with "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing. For those unfamiliar with the term, this is a process in which water is mixed with sand and more than five hundred assorted chemicals, many of them toxic (and which the drilling companies refuse, for obvious reasons, to name).
The mixture is pumped at high pressure deep into the earth to fracture rock and shale and release the trapped gas. There is little oversight, few rules, and no apparent concern for the consequences of this procedure—something many of the unfortunate people living near existing wells have learned to their cost.
"Gasland" showed one resident holding up a glass of water as dark and murky as oil from his once pristine well. Another put a match to his kitchen tap—and actually set the water on fire. We saw families having to rely on bottled and trucked-in water, dead and dying landscapes, and fish floating belly-up in ponds where once children swam and played. Idaho sits above one of the great aquifers of the Pacific Northwest. Do we really want to risk endangering this most precious of resources?
Instead of rushing for quick profits and the latest dirty energy solution, may I suggest an instant, free, long-term alternative? Why doesn't every single patriotic American simply pledge to cut back on the amount of energy he or she consumes?
We know we all leave lights on, make three trips in the car when one would do, over-heat and over-cool our houses, and use unnecessary gizmos like leaf blowers and electric carving knives. Together we could make such a huge difference if instead of permitting "fracking," we decided to turn "conservation" into the new, cool, thing to do.
DIANA FASSINO
Ketchum
