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Finally Take Action

We’re now entering the fifth month of debating a fracking waste ban ordinance for the Town of Madison. At the public hearing on March 26 ,one citizen suggested that this ordinance unjustly singled out the fracked oil industry. Does it?

Hydraulic fracking is the process of injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure to fracture the rock formations where oil and natural gas is trapped. It’s been in use since 1947. What many don’t realize, though, is its precipitous growth. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that natural gas production from fracked wells now makes up about 67 percent of the total U.S. market, up from seven in 2000.

The by-product of this upsurge in horizontal fracking is billions of tons of toxic and radioactive liquid wastes, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of solid wastes. Pennsylvania, where more than 10,000 fracked wells are pumping, now ships fracking waste to at least eight states. It’s not unlikely that oil and gas producers would want to ship fracked wastes to Connecticut.

I urge Madison’s Board of Selectmen to finally take action to protect its citizens and pass the ordinance to ban fracked waste. Studies from Yale, Duke, Columbia, among others, attest to its potential toxicity. Let’s join 42 other Connecticut towns and avoid unnecessary future costs, whether in terms of remediation or irreversible harm to our waters or our health, and pass the ordinance at the next Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday, April 9.

Lynne Charles

Madison