By Liam Comerford
Contributing writer
With the economy still weak and job opportunities at a minimum, many are searching for ways to earn stable income. Many businesses call for a college degree. However, there are openings in hydraulic fracturing, where a degree is not required. Many are joining the field since you only have to complete a training course.
Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is becoming a worldwide method for the production of natural gas. This may seem like a breakthrough process, but it is not as useful as it may appear. As a country, we want alternative ways for energy. Fracking may be the answer, but it comes with a cost.
It pollutes our drinking water and destroys the environment.
When drillers finish their work, the land is much more damaged than when it was found. We have long resorted to less-destructive ways of extracting natural gas, but now this has changed. We have found ourselves in the era of fracking.
I experienced the world of fracking firsthand back in my hometown of Scranton, Pa. Since Pennsylvania is one of the most bountiful states for acquiring natural gas, drillers from all over, mostly from the South, have relocated to parts of my town just for the business. The state has more than 6,000 active wells, according to the StateImpact website. Pennsylvania, along with Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and West Virginia, are frontrunners in the fracking boom.
It may seem like a practical process, but there are many dangers that people may not know about.
The procedure extracts natural gas and releases large quantities of dangerous chemicals into the public water supply. For all you know, the water supply in your own home may be polluted due to this process, and the polluted water is actually flammable. If you were to light a match under a running faucet, the gas molecules could ignite. Imagine all the harm this could do to our bodies.
Methane gas is known to be released by this process, and the chemicals used in fracking have also been traced to the development of cancer. We should not be victims of the dangers of gas drilling, in any way. As a nation, we need to take a stand against its harmful route, but we can only do this by forewarning those who are uninformed of its threat to the world.
Fracking is slowly becoming more commonplace in the United States, as state governments continue to give permission to drillers. According to StateImpact, Pennsylvania passed a law that would only regulate fracking by placing a fee on development in the Marcellus shale, the sedimentary rock located in the northeastern United States.
Soon, fracking will expand across the country and pollute freshwater nationwide. Our freshwater supply does not deserve to be contaminated. There are other ways to obtain natural gas, and fracking is undeniably a hazard to the health of future generations.
comerfl13@bonaventure.edu
