FRACKING: Energy at high price

If you are not familiar with a popular way to obtain natural gas, it’s the process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” Drilling and then injecting fluid into the ground at high pressure to fracture shale rock, where natural gas is, to obtain the natural gas in a well. The fracking fluid is water mixed with sand and chemicals like hydrochloric acid and ethylene glycol. Approximately 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per fracturing and about 600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid.

Only 30 percent to 50 percent of the fracking fluid is recovered and is placed in an open pit in the ground and left to evaporate into the air we breathe. The rest stays in the ground contaminating the water and causing health problems such as sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage when drunk and bathed in. Which many families are forced to do. There are over 1,000 cases of water contamination due to fracking. It’s not worth it. Natural gas is not worth our children and our children’s children’s safety and wellbeing. The way they are destroying this world and hurting innocent people for money that you can’t take you with you die, is incredibility sickening.

I read a lot about Flint Michigan and fracking is not mentioned hardly at all, when Michigan is popular for fracking because of the amount of shale underground there. Towns are dying, people are getting sick. We all need to educate ourselves and then stand up for what is right. End Fracking!

ALISHA MOORE

Coeur d’Alene