By Tom Shortell
Don Miles, chairman of the local Sierra Club, said hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," will pollute wells and rivers in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and New Jersey if it's allowed to continue unchecked.
"The Marcellus natural gas drilling boom is the greatest natural threat to Pennsylvania in the last 50 years," Miles said to a classroom of mostly senior citizens at Northampton Community College on Tuesday morning.
Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas by drilling a well and pumping it full of highly pressurized liquid. The liquid causes rock to fracture, releasing natural gas for companies to collect. The practice has been commonplace for years in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and other western states.
In the past few years, companies have focused on the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation spanning from West Virginia to New York. Experts estimate it could hold as much as $1 trillion worth of natural gas.
Environmental advocates claim the pressurized liquid contains carcinogens. Pumping it underground to break rock formations could allow natural gas and cancer-causing agents to mix with drinking water, Miles said. On top of that, the Marcellus Shale has radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element, Miller said. He cited a New York Times article that found radioactive fracking waste in the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to roughly 800,000.
While the Marcellus Shale does not extend into Lehigh or Northampton counties, Miles said, the Delaware and Lehigh rivers extend into those areas and face possible pollution. Those rivers provide the drinking water for much of the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia, he said.
However, officials in the natural gas industry insist there is no documented case of fracking causing ground water contamination....
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