WHAT THE FRACK?!

Posted by Michaela Prell in English 1 - Dunn on

​

Hello, my name is Michaela. I am in 9th grade, and for my English class I'm doing a project to improve our world. Everyone in my class is doing this, and we are each just trying to do some good through writing a blog, and going out to do something we think will help our topic. I have chosen the topic of fracking.

Screen Shot 2012-11-27 at 7.05.47 PM
{Fracking site from a birds-eye view
         To see the colection I got this from go here}

First of all fracking is just a nickname, the real name is Hydraulic Fracturing, but that is a mouthful, so people have shortened it down. Fracking is a very important subject, that affects many peoples lives and health, for those of you who are not familiar with it, let me introduce the two of you. Fracking is the process of drilling into the ground to extract natural gas. Natural gas is grate! Why? well because it is cheaper, and comes from U.S. so we don't have to rely on other countries for our gas. Sowhat's the problem? fracking is good, not bad... silly Michaela. NOT TRUE. I haven't even gotten started yet.
Fracking is not our friend because the the only way to extract the natural gas is to send lots of stuff down there to get it. What sort of stuff? Terrible stuff. 600 different chemicals to be exact, one of which is known to cause cancer, but we don’t now most of them because the Gorge Bush let the companies bypass the clean water act, and they don’t have t tell us what they are pumping into the ground. And not only are these toxic chemicals being put into the ground, but 40,000 gallons worth of chemicals are being put into the ground. After the chemicals are forced into the ground, they supposedly don’t do anything to affect peoples tap water, but yet it lights on fire.
Screen Shot 2012-11-27 at 6.05.05 PM                Screen Shot 2012-11-27 at 6.08.24 PM
{These are pictures I took, from videos of people lighting thee tap water}

Now these chemicals don’t go down by themselves, they have sand and 1-8 million gallons of water accompany them so that the well can be properly fracked. All these materials don’t just appear at the fracking wells, they are transported by trucks or tanks. It takes 400 tanks to transport all of the materials to the fracking sites. So that is 600 chemicals, 1-8 million gallons of water, and 400 tanks, for each time a well is racked, and each well can be freaked 18 times. Not to mention the tons of wells all over the U.S.

I think I have made it obvious that Fracking is an enemy to the environment, but let me tell you how fracking is affecting people. All the chemicals from fracking get into peoples water wells, and is unhealthy to drink. Some people have even been told that they can’t use their water for anything at all because of how dangerous it is.Even worse than this is that the companies won't acknowledge any of this as a cause of fracking. They say that it is just natural methane wells that are leaking, even though people have had no problem with their water before. And people are having lots of health problems from drinking the water, thinking it is perfectly healthy, and breathing the toxic gas that is given off by fracking.
 So that is fracking. I don’t really know what else to tell you. to give you some hope if all this brings you down, there are people protesting fracking, organisations doing what they can to spread awareness, and politicians doing the best to ban it. And then there is you and me. I have already stated that I am going to do what I can, not just for a grade, but for the environment, the health of those living in areas of fracking, and future generations to come.

To see my annotated bibliography click here
To see some pros and cons, and take a poll of what you think, you can go here

Comments (3)

Ava Olsen (Student 2016)
Ava Olsen

I think this is an interesting topic, and it's a good choice to provide pictures that will scare people. I would find it terrifying if I could light my tap water on fire. It was a good visual to provide those pictures. I also understand fracking a little big more than I did before. I think it's cool that you took your role in engineering a little bit farther and created this as your service project! :) Good job! ~Ava~