Poisoned wells, illegally dumped waste, and poor enforcement of environmental standards have become the norm in Pennsylvania's fracking fields. Photo: Shutterstock.com
Mothers Out Front and Conservation Law Foundation sent the following in response to the Boston Globe’s continued misuse of its editorial page as a mouthpiece for the fracked gas industry. While the Boston Globe refused to print our response to set the record straight, we are making it available for all of you here. Please read, share, and tell the Boston Globe to stop pushing for outdated and dangerous fossil fuels that are bad for our economy, our health, and our communities.
For the ninth time in less than a year, the Boston Globe has urged legislation to impose more gas pipelines on an unwilling public, at public expense, most recently in an editorial decrying the environmental impacts of a liquified natural gas (LNG) operation in Trinidad and Tobago (“How gas demand from Boston changed a faraway island,” Dec. 30, 2018).
If only the Globe showed the same concern for communities in the fracking fields of Pennsylvania – the major source of pipeline fracked gas that the authors would like us to depend on more and more.
In those communities, poisoned wells, illegally dumped waste, and poor enforcement of environmental standards have become the norm. The number and pervasiveness of health complaints linked to gas operations there are as alarming as, and more numerous than, those in the far-flung locales of concern to the Globe. And the devastation of the landscape there has been at least as great.
Whether it’s at home or abroad, whether its domestic fracked gas or foreign LNG, gas production and distribution leave a footprint of pollution, ill health, danger, and disrupted communities. One need look no further than the recent gas explosions in the Merrimack Valley for that lesson.
With cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives to fracked gas and LNG available today, we can do without another sop to the fossil fuel industry.
Brad Campbell is president of the Conservation Law Foundation and previously served as Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the six-state region that includes Pennsylvania. Kelsey Wirth is Co-Founder and Chair of Mothers out Front.
