what happens when industries engage in technologies named after battlestar gallactica swear words...

Fracking is not a new technology. It was first put into commercial use in 1949 by Halliburton, and that company has made billions from employing the extraction method. But it really wasn't until 2004 that fracking really took off, the year that the EPA declared that fracking "posed little or no threat" to drinking water. Weston Wilson, a scientist and 30-year veteran of the agency, who sought whistleblower protection, emphatically disagreed, saying that the agency's official conclusions were "unsupportable" and that five of seven members of the review panel that made the decision had conflicts of interest. (Wilson has continued to work at the EPA, and continues to be publicly critical of fracking.)

A year later, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act with a "Halliburton loophole," a clause inserted at the request of Dick Cheney, who had been Halliburton's CEO before becoming vice president. The loophole specifically exempts fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the CLEAR Act, and from regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency, and it unleashed the largest and most extensive drilling program in history, according to Josh Fox, the creator of the film Gasland.

- from Fracking with our food: how gas drilling affects farming.

Fracking was approved back in 2004. Since then drillers have set up fracking operations throughout the United states. There are countless reports (here, here, here, here and hereto name just a few) of contaminated drinking water and foul air near drill sites--evenflammable faucets. And more disturbingly, no one knows how long these sites will remain toxic and how wide an area the toxic plumes effect. There is a possibility that the aquifers that supply drinking water to the most populated regions across the country are already contaminated, or slowly becoming so. In North Texas, home to some 3 million people, water is in high demand and droughts are common in the hot summers. Any amount of contamination would devastate the already dwindling supply. If we think there's a water problem now just wait a few years.

And now we know that the fracking process can stimulate earthquakes. It not only has been happening in Arkansas, but in Texas as well.

- from Fuck Fracking.

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