This page was last updated on May 23, 2011.
Stop drilling now; Roger Cooling; Beaver County Times; May 19, 2011. Though posted on the Times website on May 19th, this letter didn’t appear in the print edition until May 22nd.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“Marcellus shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania must be stopped immediately.”
[RWC] Mr. Cooling wrote a letter (“The risk is real”) to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on this topic during July 2010. In that letter, though, Mr. Cooling didn’t mention the Ambridge Reservoir angle.
“Our state will become a land of pollution after the drillers are finished with us.
“Raccoon and Independence townships in Beaver County have been granted more than 150 permits to start drilling for natural gas.”
[RWC] Mr. Cooling didn’t tell us where he got the “150 permits” info, but, according to the PA DEP website, DEP issued only nine Marcellus drilling permits for all of Beaver County from January 2009 through April 2011 and a total of 12 permits for both oil and gas. I don’t know the specific locations of the permitted sites. Since the DEP website data only goes back to January 2009, I guess it’s possible the other 141 Marcellus permits were issued prior to 2009, but I wouldn’t bet my lunch on it.
“These sites stand directly in line to Ambridge Water Authority’s water reservoir, a water source that serves the water needs of more than 70,000 people. It takes only one error by the interloping drillers to permanently pollute this wondereful [sic] water supply.”
[RWC] “Interloping drillers?” That takes nerve coming from someone whose water source is located in another municipality. In any case, the decision lies with the property owners, not the drilling companies. Why doesn’t Mr. Cooling attack the property owners?
“We citizens must take back our commonwealth and our precious water supplies before Gov. Tom Corbett and all the other state politicians who openly endorse the drilling devastation being done in our state.”
[RWC] I missed anyone endorsing “drilling devastation.” I suspect Mr. Cooling believes anyone who doesn’t oppose drilling endorses “drilling devastation.”
As I’ve written previously, companies harvesting our natural resources must do so in a responsible manner and must have the financial and technological wherewithal to handle worst-case scenarios. It is government’s responsibility to enforce these rules and to make sure everyone involved [businesses and government (local, state, federal)] is prepared (via drills, for example) to execute disaster plans. In the very, very unlikely case we can’t do this while providing a commercially-viable energy source, there should be no drilling until we can.
“Not only will water supplies be impacted by this, but also secondary and tertiary markets such as farming, cattle, milk supplies, and so on it goes.”
[RWC] Knowing the manmade global warming myth increasingly falls on deaf ears, followers of this faith try to use safety, water quality, etc. as backdoors to stop drilling and production of Marcellus natural gas. You can find examples here, here, here, here, and here. I don’t know if that is the case for Mr. Cooling.
“Come on, everyone, wake up!”
[RWC] Mr. Cooling might have more credibility if he got his facts straight and didn’t engage in hyperbole.
Mr. Cooling likes to say “wake up.” In the aforementioned letter to the PG, Mr. Cooling wrote, “Come on, people, wake up!”
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