Should your kitchen faucet catch on fire?

In the picture “Sherry Vargson, who leased the mineral rights under her Pennsylvania farm to an energy company, demonstrates that methane has leached into her well by lighting the water in her kitchen sink on fire.” Thus the American Medical News for September 3, 2012.

Energy companies in Pennsylvania and New York states, and elsewhere in the US use a process called “fracking" (induced hydraulic fracturing) to drill for natural gas.

Fracking is a delicate operation. One drills down and down to about 9000 feet to where the gas is in the shale. Then the operators pump a mixture of saline water and other chemicals down under high pressure. These chemicals the drillers treat as proprietary and therefore hide what they are. The water and chemicals break up (“fracture”) the shale, the gas comes up the pipe. But so does the water pumped down earlier, which the gas company then must dispose of safely.

That's problem number 1. How to dispose of large quantities of unhealthy water without injuring natural resources or human beings.

Problem number 2 is a really big one: is fracking safe? The industry says that, yes, of course it is a perfectly safe method for making more natural gas available. But many critics tell stories of private wells being polluted by chemicals. The drillers allege that contamination of drinking water occurs only where the drilling goes wrong in some way. For the person sickened by polluted water that is cold comfort.

Physicians report cases from different parts of the country of patients with serious skin rashes and bleeding sores, kidney failure, low platelet levels, and other serious illnesses. The patients often have their own wells located near natural gas drilling sites and their symptoms disappear—in some cases—when they stop drinking from their wells. And then there is Sherry Vargson whose drinking water will catch fire if you hold a match to it.

It does not seem unreasonable to suspect that the drillers are not speaking the truth when they claim that fracking is clean and safe. There are enough cases that suggest that fracking pollutes drinking water.

Problem number 3.  Energy companies are planning to use fracking to drill for natural gas near the Delaware River, which supplies half of all the drinking water for New York City and all of it for Philadelphia. If fracking pollutes private wells, is it safe for the clean water supplies of New York City and Philadelphia?

            Problem number 4. Drillers are secretive about the chemicals they use. That is a serious problem for the physician trying to treat patients sicked by fracking because the drillers refuse to tell them what chemicals are involved in the patients' problem.

Some states have passed laws making it mandatory for drillers to tell what chemicals are involved to the physician treating a fracking victim. But before the physicians receive this information, they need to sign a confidentiality agreement. If they need to consult with another specialist about a case, they cannot share the information they received from the drillers. (American Medical News for September 3, 2012.)

Problem number 5. Fracking is a new technique involving multiple substances whose long term health effects are unknown.

Should we, perhaps, go slow and check it all out first? Should we, perhaps, use the resources involved in fracking and in curing its victims to find ways of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels?

Should we perhaps stop and think about what we are doing?

As long as the free-market enthusiasts are on the loose, there is no chance of that. Pity our children and grandchildren.

WikiLeaks

WikiLeak

The 90-odd thousand military reports from the troops in Afghanistan leaked to the press do not contain any startling revelations. They suggest, but not definitively, that the Taliban may have more sophisticated weapons than had heretofore been thought. It confirms what was previously only a strong suspicion that the Pakistani Secret Service (ISI), the original sponsors of the Taliban in Afghanistan, still have cordial and supportive relations with them.

Most startling to me was the news that civilian casualties due to military action were much higher and more frequent than we heard in official reports. Some people in the know, moreover, found that some of the killings of civilians they knew about were not even mentioned in the WikiLeak papers. The problems of killed civilians is not only significantly greater than we are being told but also than reported by the troops on the ground. No one knows how much suffering we are inflicting every day.

This is terrible news for a number of reasons:

It is terrible news for the people of Afghanistan who have suffered immeasurably for decades.

It makes the question of what we are doing in Afghanistan more pressing. Osama bin Laden has long since left. Al Quaida training camps have moved to the Arabian Peninsula. Ostensibly we are trying to defeat the Taliban in order to leave a more peaceful Afghanistan behind. We are trying to protect, we say, the Afghan population. But if they are dying regularly due to our military actions, what sort of protection is that? We can understand why they are wanting us to leave.

The high civilian death toll puts the US strategy of trying to win “the hearts and minds” of the population in question. Our soldiers are told to take special care not to injure civilians even in situations where they feel that this restraint endangers their own lives. But if restraint is not working, if the death toll of men, women, and children, young and old remains unacceptably high, is there any chance that we might win over the Afghan population to our side? From the recent news it looks like a forlorn hope.

And finally, there are grave implications for our democracy. “Democracy” the textbook tells us, means that “the people rule.” But what if the people do not know what is going on? If their government sends armies into the field without consulting the people and then keeps facts about the progress of the war secret, how can the people have an opinion and make good decisions? If, as in the Iraq war, the government goes to war and lies to the people about the justification, how can the people make good decisions?

If we learn anything from WikiLeak it is that we must redouble our efforts to end this terrible war.