Wunderground- 4/22/13, Angela Fritz
A note from Angela:
"Fracking," or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of fracturing layers of rocks beneath the surface of the earth, using water and other chemicals and fluids, for the purpose of extracting natural gas that would otherwise be impossible to drill. For Earth Day, I wanted to surface the experience of one of our long-time true-blue Weather Underground community members. Skyepony has seen the front lines of the fracking industry from her family's tree farm in Mississippi, and she urges you to learn more about the fracking process and what it does to our environment, our health, and our families on this Earth Day.
This all started last spring when my family got together for a trip to check on the tree farm in southern Mississippi and to visit with relatives. En route to my uncle's farm, we gathered at a seafood restaurant and walked into an unexpected scene. A group of neighbors had gathered to join us, and boy, did they have news.
The oil companies were coming back.
Our neighbors told us the oil companies could recover the resources we all knew were lurking beneath the surface of the farm. They told us they could make our "dry holes" pay, which were drilled and capped back in the 1950s-1970s. Our neighbors and distant cousins were on a mission, and you could feel their intensity. This was a group of people who watch over the tree farm, and our family cemetery, every day. The neighbors and family who actually live there were bearing down for confirmation that we, too, would sign on the dotted line. If that happened, we could all cash in.
For more on this story please see Wunderground.com
