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Free Press Letter: Fracking not as safe as we think

In response to Ken Johnson’s fracking column last month:

Watch what happens when some people get the idea that they’re being prevented from making piles of money. The pro-fracking folks are the people to observe right now. They’ve been busy as of late with a campaign of telling Coloradoans how wonderful the fracking process is for our state. I kind of want to believe the lovely, high-paid actress in the TV commercials when she gushes about how much she adores that petroleum-production process.

Then we have our locals that claim they want to talk “facts,” but can only manage to regurgitate the same old drilling industry talking points, and conveniently omit certain bits of information that doesn’t portray fracking as the greatest thing ever. Their latest approach is to say the process has been “used for over 45 years.” Perhaps that is true, but that doesn’t mean that type of extraction has ever been environmentally safe for all those years. They also like to cite how the chemicals used in fracking only make up five percent of the pumping solution. That would mean that of a thousand gallons of water pumped into the ground, 50 gallons of that is a highly toxic concoction. Put a couple of drops those secret chemicals into a 32-ounce bottle of water and give it a shake, and I’ll bet you won’t like what you see and you sure wouldn’t want to drink it.



The “fracking is wonderful” folks like to point fingers, call people concerned about safe drinking water “green gangsters,” and portray them as “emotional” environmentalists, but take careful notice of how emotional and terribly upset the people supporting the drilling industry get if they believe anyone is standing in their way of making a fast buck off of this planet’s resources.

J.C. Winters



Grand Junction, Colo.


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