Opinion

I want to thank City Editor Melissa Flores for her front page article on the May 7 board of supervisors meeting and the issue of oil and gas fracking in this county. I wonder if the three supervisors who voted for the watered-down gas and oil well ordinance are aware of what is happening in the rest of the country where fracking deep into the earth to extract gas and oil has devastated the land, water and air. In North Dakota (Bakkan gas fields) and in Texas, where fracked wells have been producing fossil fuels for some time, the ranchers and farmers are finding their cattle no longer salable because of contamination, and the quality of their rural lives destroyed by huge trucks rolling up and down newly built gravel roads and creating noise pollution and air pollution that has increased asthma and other lung diseases in these areas. I wonder if these supervisors are aware that it takes one million gallons of water to sink one well? Where is that water to come from in these times of increasing drought? And why do the oil and gas corporations who finance these projects (with taxpayer subsidies among others) refuse to reveal the variety of chemicals that are used to open up the passages where this liquid gold will flow to their CEOs?