STOP FRACKING BRITISH COLUMBIA
by
BCTWA.org
Many of North America’s ancient aquifer systems are the source of domestic waters for human and animal (wild, domestic) uses. The B.C. Tap Water Alliance has also come on board (as of February 22, 2010) to help advocate the end of impairing and poisoning North America’s and the Earth’s fresh water aquifers by the oil & gas industry complex through a process nicknamed “fracking”/“fracing” (hydraulic ‘frac’turing) which involves the use of toxic chemicals, and to ban fracking.
First, and foremost, this means that here in Canada, and specifically in B.C., our legislations must undergo immediate and serious revisions by our legislators, the public’s representatives, to remove and ban the use of these chemical poisons (some which are still unidentified through company patents) from the fracking process, and to ban fracking methodologies which fracture the integrity of underground aquifer structures.
BC’s Drinking Water Protection Act must be immediately revised to prohibit the fracking use of toxics, chemical poisons mixed with fresh water injected deep into the earth, disturbing, cracking and compromising sealed aquifers. BC’s Water Act, about to be revised since the late 1800s, must also incorporate this concern.
Related environmental and mining Acts and Regulations must also be co-ordinately revised to compliment and harmonize these necessary revisions, and to ban fracking. Enough reports have been written in the United States that address the technical and environmental ruin and lasting harm to aquifers, reports and documented accounts which our legislators and government administrators may investigate, rely and act upon.
The BC government also needs to hire many more field officers to stringently, conscientiously police and effectively monitor the oil and gas industry in BC’s northeast energy sector. Such provisions, in addition to new legislation, will help stimulate and initiate the highest international standards applied to protect the earth’s aquifer sources.
It is irrelevant how much tax revenue may be generated to aid government coffers as the oil and gas industry always harps upon, and which some elected administrators partner preach as a necessary economic tradeoff: this is literally where “the buck stops”, because absolutely no one should tolerate the use and application of chemical poisons into fresh water systems!
After many frustrating years of hardship to mostly rural residents, a large inter-State movement was eventually formed in the United States in September 2009 to help address and remedy the poisoning of the Nation’s groundwaters through fracking (see petition).
Evidently, since 2001, former vice-president Dick Cheney is attributed as the primary culprit in leading private industry (through his secretive Energy Task Force) to counter Court instructions to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by withholding new regulations and restrictions (nicknamed the ‘Halliburton Loophole’) to be implemented under the Nation’s Safe Drinking Water Act, thereby also setting up an international precedent. This corrupt loophole tragedy permitted private industry to escalate exploration drilling and to reap enormous profits (including Cheney’s large oil and gas service industry company, Halliburton) while escaping penalties and prosecution from indiscriminately disturbing acquifer integrity and poisoning numerous aquifer sources, people, domestic animals, and wildlife and the ecology.
There are dozens of websites, hundreds of newspaper articles, videos, testimonial accounts and investigations devoted to uncovering the disgusting secrets and effects of this vexing issue which has been brewing throughout the U.S. One of these troubling issues relates to the raging battle over New York City’s water supply, threatened by fracking (i.e., provided in our compilation of ProPublica feature news articles), in many ways responsible for igniting the national movement.
Overall, BC, Canada, and the globe desperately requires new “clean” and “wise” governance, strict legislations, and ethical leadership to overcome the “failed” governance problems that are continuing to plague our fresh waters.
The big questions for North America, and the world remain: Had the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act incorporated measures just over ten years ago to restrict fracking permits and uses, how many permits issued to frack since that day would not have been issued, and how severely would that critical precedent have changed the fracking business in Canada and in British Columbia?
