Statement to EPA on Fracking

EPA Statement from Mel Packer, 7/22/2010,
Canonsburg EPA Hearing on Hydraulic Fracking

For the last few weeks, I have been astounded to hear from many of my fellow citizens who can no longer drink the water from their once clean wells, sleep at night due to the noise and light from drilling operations, let their children play on their own farms because of the danger of nearby frack ponds, and in some cases, not even able to live on their land now that drilling operations have started on neighbors land. 

I have also read and heard much testimony from the Marcellus Shale drilling companies that they are almost never responsible for any of this environmental degradation. According to the industry reps, there has NEVER been a single case proven of well water contamination due to drilling, even when drilling was near to those wells and even when those wells did not show this kind of contamination or methane buildup prior to drilling. If you believe the industry line, it's all co-incidental and not their fault.

Well, I have to admit that my momma may have not raised any geniuses, but she sure as hell didn't raise any fools and I recognize a scam when I hear one. And this is one big scam.

I live in the City of PIttsburgh, in a pretty decent neighborhood and some folks wonder why the hell I would be worried about Marcellus Shale drilling. Well, besides the issue of my moral responsibility to my fellow citizens, I happen to live next to a 200 acre wooded cemetery that abuts a 561 acre wooded city park, which belongs to a flat busted city that seeks revenue anywhere it can. I also enjoy kayaking on my rivers and streams, consume clean city water that comes from the Allegheny River and worry that my drinking water will be contaminated by fracking chemicals that could wash into the rivers.

I'm also scared to death that they're going to lease rights on some of that park land near me and I'm going to wake up someday seeing a tower of flame, toxins running down the hill behind my house and the park my family and neighbors enjoy so much turned into an industrial dump site. 

In addition, I'm a physician assistant in Emergency Medicine and know about the nurse in Colorado who almost died after taking care of a drilling worker covered with fracking chemicals.

Hell, I'm beginning to fell like dangers coming from every direction here. Maybe I need to call 911 every day! 

We've also become pretty aware that we can't count on the DEP of PA as that agency and almost the entire PA State Govt is in the hands of the energy companies which have spent $4.2 million on lobbying our legislators just since 2007.

You known, in most countries of the world, if a corporation hands a politician a check for $100,000, it's called bribery. Here, we call it lobbying, and I have yet to understand the difference.

So, c'mon EPA. You might be the last enforcement agency between us and the drillers. Do your job. Stop the fracking now.

Mel Packer, PA Green Party Candidate for US Senate