Dear Michiganders,
The infrastructure of Michigan roads is in the news and everyone knows they are terrible. This has resulted due to a lack of concern and many years of neglect. Citizens of Michigan will potentially have to pay an additional gas tax says “Michigan’s Governor Snyder.” Stuck between a bad economy and higher costs to live we must now make repairs. If this is any indication of how Michigan legislators have dealt with road maintenance then what do you believe will be gas companies intentions when old and non profitable well pads are abandoned. Left behind to obscure the land site, reeking with remnants of carcinogens.
We have seen first hand what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico and BP’s small investment to clean up what can’t be cleaned up. Once water is contaminated with carcinogens money can’t cure the damage only prevailing time will. In that time possibly two century’s will have to pass before earth can repair the damage done, a continued death rate and sickness will ravage the earth. Do you want to take the risk that this is not true? Many harmful incidents have already occurred and media has not shown the concern nor has government made any substantial efforts to stop extraction of natural gas by unconventional means (hydraulic fracturing).
Barack Obama is receiving accolades from liberal environmentalists for saying progressive-sounding things about global warming in his fifth State of the Union Address (SOTUA) last Tuesday. The reason for this praise is not mysterious. The President made some minimally decent comments about the leading issue of our or any time. Read more about Barack Obama and the politics involving the proposed XL Pipe line and Hydraulic Fracturing article written by Paul Street and re-posted from ZNet by Jeff Smith (GRIID) Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy.
Clean Water Action, Sierra Club Michigan and WMEAC supports a moratorium on fracking which I agree is a step in the right direction. Notably, one group, Food and Water Watch, has endorsed both a national ban and the Michigan bills, suggests that there isn’t as big a difference between the positions as some might suggest.
The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan and the grassroots group Committee to Ban Michigan Fracking are currently circulating petitions to ban horizontal hydraulic fracturing, http://www.letsbanfracking.org/ an effort that would not increase regulations on other types of fracking, and can easily be confused with the much more exhaustive fracking ban recently enacted in Vermont. The group claims that if it gathers enough signatures by election day in November, the issue will appear on the ballot in 2014.
We need to follow in Vermont‘s foot steps to ban fracking! Different from Vermont where natural gas is not abundant and not profitable; Michigan has a geological watershed that can not support such adverse activity. http://www.egr.msu.edu/igw/GWIM%20Figure%20Webpage/Webpages%20-%20Links/Wetlands.htm
The notion of a moratorium is a great idea but it lacks real substance as reports of death and health problems circulate daily in 32 states. Influencing work alongside regulators to help increase protections and influencing where wells can and can’t be located is irrelevant and is unacceptable verbiage.
Michigan’s few continue to auction off drilling leases for state-owned lands, including recreational areas and state parks. I will not endorse regulatory action alone. What other states have not done and particularly Pennsylvania is incomprehensible. Michigan is a water basin of life, natural in nature, a magnificent beauty found no where else on earth and above all this is my home and I want it safe! Michiganders love Michigan!
And so it is today that we must educate, we must demonstrate, and we must participate, and then we can re-create an environment free of possible destruction by the few who don’t seem to care.
Please repost this article and Recruit volunteers and spread the word using Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan promotional video:
Respectively,
Douglas A. DeVoid
Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan | Novi, MI 48375
