By Judith Ferster, OCG Conservation Chair

We are following the possibility of fracking in Chatham, Lee, and other counties, paying special attention to people attending the meetings of the Mining and Energy Commission as it writes the regulations that will guide it.  The NC General Assembly went back on its word to refrain from lifting the ban on fracking until all the rules were written.  They lifted the ban before the rules were complete, but some think rules could never be strong enough to guarantee that groundwater could not be contaminated.  The vulnerable points of the operation such as the cement casing around the vertical pipes may always be vulnerable to failure. 

There seem to be two competing possibilities for fracking in our area:  the amount of harvestable shale gas is too low for the fossil fuel companies to bother with, or the companies will come in no matter how little shale gas there is in order to prepare the way for their larger target, offshore drilling for oil.  The Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy policy, in opening the south Atlantic coast to oil drilling, has contradicted its own initiative, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.  In order to be serious about fighting global warming, the NC Chapter’s work on the Clean Power Plan includes opposing both fracking and offshore drilling. 

Get involved by attending the afternoon and evening forum on offshore drilling sponsored by Natural Resources Defense Council, Southern Environmental Law Center, North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, North Carolina Conservation Network, and OCEANA.  Free.  Read about it and register here:

http://reg.attendeenet.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x30222272

If you go, tell us what you learned.