Fracking the North Fork
Dear Editor:
Here in the North Fork Valley we just had meetings with the BLM where citizens were not allowed to comment — we have never had a forum with them where we could — and the leases go up for sale in less than three weeks, on Valentine's Day; how appropriate is that?! Another one of their "in your face" intimidation tactics, subtle to some, but not to me.
You see, I love this place on the planet and feel we should be improving our little pieces of it, not destroying them.
In my letters of protest to the BLM, etc., I included a huge concern I have. In addition to the risks to our aquifer, river and irrigation water, our air and our land, how about the risk to our coal mines? Once they "frack" all these sites, they have no control over where the chemicals go, or what they cause to open up, and it could END coal mining in the North Fork Valley if the mines are contaminated or made more unstable.
And yet, in the Montrose paper the front page had comments from the BLM saying that the danger to coal mining comes from NOT selling and developing the leases on 20,000 acres surrounding and within our communities.
Really?!
This is a lie!
I dread to think of the health consequences to our communities, and the economic impacts to all of our mines and our organic family farms and vineyards. It is too big a risk, and I think the BLM has made clear by their response, they really don't care. Their lack of stewardship should bring them shame, and will bring them legal action.
Many thanks to all those who are protesting in whatever way they can, and especially to those who have gone to Washington twice to speak with the BLM officials there!
Between this and the massacre of wolves, etc., I am sick to death of Salazar, a person I sadly did not know enough about when he came into office.
This mad rush of the fossil fuel industries is not to benefit us; it will benefit a very few already rich individuals and companies, and the gas and oil will be shipped to other nations as they sell it all to the highest bidder! Climate change is ignored yet again in this process, and we are accelerating it with all this fossil fuel development! We will be left with a hot and unstable planet, terrible winters, and nothing but foul water, land and air . . . weather out of control and earthquakes rampant. Way to go, and go we will, just like the dinosaurs.
Linda Johnson-Rubick,RN
Hotchkiss