FrackMountain.com
March 15, 2010
Much of Pennsylvania sits atop an ocean of “natural” gas trapped within a humongous layer of shale. It is called the Marcellus formation and lies more than a mile below the surface. To extract such entombed “resources”, big oil will fracture and pulverize the shale beneath us to free the gas. This is not popping a bubble, this is boring and exploding tunnels beneath you.
I live in an area called the Back Mountain. It is upland northwest of a large and populated valley. The Back Mountain comprises over 100 square miles and is home to approximately 27,000 humans. It is a verdant and pastoral quilt of relatively thriving communities and two small university campuses. Everything that happens here drains to the Susquehanna River then into the Chesapeake Bay.
Recently, EnCana Corporation was given permission to drill three “exploratory” natural gas wells here.
There are many disadvantages and dangers associated with this activity. There is one advantage. Money. Gas companies are offering thousands of dollars per acre for landowners to lease their rights over to the drillers. Then, if there are operating wells on your property you also get a royalty. In these hard times, it seems a godsend to over taxed and forgotten farmers and land owners. I heard of one man who signed a lease because he needed a new roof on his house. Most do so in ignorance of the real consequences and potential risks.
Here is a partial list of our concerns: endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, radioactive mud, hydrocarbons, massive truck traffic, lower property values, higher crime rates, spills, violations, fish kills, pipelines, spoiled wells, ill neighbors, and on and on it seems to go.
In early February I became involved in a movement to stop (or at least contain) this usery. We are organizing. One initiative was to establish a web presence with links to information. Therefore, I started the blog FrackMountain.com.
This is the reason I am rarely here at qazse.
Thanks, Herb
the moon! is your logo…not McDonalds
August 5, 2009
there is no place
quite like the other
each valley
each plain
each mountain
each plateau
each
with its own
land forms
life forms
weather
and light
encased in a shared
halo of air
we are binding this earth in asphalt.
binding
and branding
we block the night sky
with our signs.
from
above
we look
like fire
2006
This and That – More Shit than Anticipated
October 28, 2008
Why is the far right the keepers of who is “American” and who is
not? I would leave that to the Native Americans.
To my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters: Go ahead and vote on one
issue. But remember, your votes put George W. Bush in office. Therefore, you share in the responsibility for making this world a geometrically nastier and more impoverished place in which to birth a child. (Thereby, ironically, increasing the probability of an already overwhelmed pregnant mother choosing abortion) You are so preoccupied with the unborn that you have allowed the born to be doomed to the cesspools of the ever expanding slums of this earth.
Always remember, it was the Bush administration who dismissed the warnings about bin Laden from the Clinton people. Bush was such a myopic fool.
I believe the neo-cons half wanted something to happen. They wanted an excuse to invade Iraq; a Gulf of Tonkin, a “remember the Maine”. They got more shit than they ever anticipated on September 11. Just as they got more shit than anticipated when they invaded Iraq. Did they suppose their “enemies” were like those in a Bond movie: diabolical but relatively impotent and easily defeated? I can see Bush, Chaney and Rove consulting the library (a bible and 3,000 DVDs) to review how James Bond escaped the bad guys by sledding down a ski slope in a cello case. They surely drooled on their ties.
Is the bloody saga of the white man’s displacement, erasure, and
marginalization of Native Americans a model for Christian relations with Muslims? Or Muslim’s with Christians? Convert or hurt! Only madmen would think that, you say.
Energy Exploration?????
October 25, 2008
Look up in the freaking sky!!!!!
the Bush Lecture Tour:
August 10, 2008
Dick Cheney’s Picture Book of Energy – page 6
July 17, 2008
Scars give Mother Earth more character!
Dick Cheney’s Picture Book of Energy – Page 5
July 16, 2008
This is a round table discussion where I listen to the needs of others. They are called lobbyists. They are usually white men in good suits. My kind of people.
Dick Cheney’s Picture Book of Energy page 4
July 11, 2008
This picture makes me hot happy.
Dick Cheney’s Picture Book of Energy – Page 3
July 10, 2008
Here I am at a secret meeting. We are making energy policy.
qazse 