It was brought up in my Torts and Personal Injury class, but there is a court case beginning in North Dakota concerning the regulation of fracking. The case could cost $1 million to fight the Environmental Protection Agency concerning regulation.
Really??? They want to fight the EPA so that they can frack to their heart’s content?
We just finished reading A Civil Action in my Torts class, which is a book chronicling the court case of dozens of civilians from Woburn, MA who sued two large corporations because they poisoned their water wells. Every single person in the action got leukemia or some other carcinogenic disease. Many died from it before the case was even tried. Then there’s always the example of Erin Brockovich’s case, made famous due to a film made on it. Everything needs water to live. When you risk lives by polluting water just to make money, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with you.
Just in Pennsylvania, since 2009, there have been reported cases of water being poisoned and highly toxic levels of chemicals in the air due to fracking in the area. That’s just Pennsylvania. I have provided a link to a site below with several more instances of toxicity and illness associated with this oil-obtaining process. There are known toxins being used in this process and still the fracking continues.
Are people so desperate for oil that they would risk an essential element for life? I am shocked and astounded by the lack of forward thinking. There is a careless disregard for the lives around the fracking sites, a reckless disregard for the immediate future of thousands of people, and a wonton disregard for generations to come. The EPA is in place for a reason: to protect the environment in which we live as well as to protect us. Apparently, it’s now become a job to protect us from ourselves and our foolish decisions.
Newspaper Article:
Hazards of Fracking:
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