Quote:
Originally Posted by no kudzu
Not everything comes down to dollars. I'm not willing to bet the future of our environment and the health of our citizens.
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Money is a tool that can be used for evil or good. How the state spends the tax revenue that will spring from these operations is up to us and our representatives. Great good can come from this investment in our state, and yes, there could be corruption. But that already exists here in NC. I give you James "Jim" B. Black, Dan Blue, Mike Easley, just to name a recent few. It's up to us to stop that and vote out any who participate in such behavior.
There will be very little if any environmental damage. Very rarely are there any instances that aren't contained to a small foot print in the drilling process and that is cleaned to a pristine state. If anything, the areas will be cleaner once the well is done and the NGL is flowing through relatively small pipelines to a central distribution point. The production companies pay hefty fines for the smallest environmental damage and they aren't in the business of throwing away millions of dollars, nor do they cut corners. Great care is taken and environmental scientists from many disciplines and backgrounds help with the planning, regulation and supervision during and after construction, drilling and maintenance of these sites. Some work for the company itself, outside contractors, the federal and state governments and independent citizens. Nothing is overlooked.
Much has been made of not making public the mixture of chemicals and ingredients that are used in hydraulic fracturing. That's because it's proprietary. These companies don't want their competition to know how they are producing, in some cases, out producing their competitors in this very competitive business. Just as you don't know the eight herbs and spices in the Colonel's Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe, these recipes are also kept secret, and for the same reason; Competition.
The main complaint we ever get from neighbors near well sites was mostly from the noise of trucks coming and going during the drill process, but that doesn't last but a few months at most. After that, all you see is a pumping station that can be disguised to fit into the landscape and quiet as a mouse.
Show me proof of one, just one case where someone was harmed by hydraulic fracturing that wasn't working on the drill rig itself. or in some way working within the site itself. I know of none and have been in the business of dealing with landowners and nearby residents at pipeline and drill sites for years in NC, Texas and Wyoming.
All this propaganda coming from anti-capitalists is just that. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. It's mostly lies, fabricated or something attributed to the drilling that turns out later to be something else. The documentary "Gasland" has been proven in a court of law to have falsified almost everything in the film, most notably the "water on fire" phenomenon, which they staged by pumping propane from a small propane tank through a rubber hose into the water line. This does occur naturally though and has for centuries before the white man ever got to this continent. It comes from methane mixing in well water, a known natural phenomenon mostly seen where water wells are near fault lines and pockets of methane are ruptured in imperceptible earthquakes only detected by very sensitive equipment.
Fracturing will be a great boost for NC. Just investigate for yourself what it's done for North Dakota and Texas. In some areas of ND, MacDonald's pays over $20 an hour to start. Schools, homes, apartments and businesses are being built, creating thousands of construction jobs. Not to mention, restaurants, hotels, airports, machine shops, automobile dealerships and all the service jobs that grow up around the industry. This has happened everywhere I've worked, and only a few anti-capitalists communist complain, but they are always complaining.
All those states I mentioned are running surpluses in the states and local governments. NC could use some of that. We could hire and pay great teachers, build schools and invite the world to come see our beautiful state.
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