Lafayette needs a fracking moratorium...NOW!

[This was a letter to the editor I submitted to the Colorado Daily, Daily Camera, Boulder Weekly and Denver Post, Aug 7, 2012, as well as the Lafayette City Council.]

Dear Lafayette City Council members,

As a Lafayette resident, I have observed with growing alarm that fracking is getting closer and closer to our town. A new five well drill site was started this week, just a few miles north of us, near Hi 52 and Niwot Road, by the infamous Encana.

You can see pictures of this new drilling activity at http://www.facebook.com/groups/151428164981130.

Due to the great uncertainty surrounding the short-term risks of air and water pollution from fracking, and the longer term implications for the overallocation of our precious water supplies in Colorado, the placement of poisonous and carcinogen fluids deep into the earth from their disposal wells, and the placement of more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, I would like to see the Lafayette City Council pass a moratorium on any new fracking wells in our town.

We should show support for our neighboring town, Longmont, that has courageously stood up to the COGCC (Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission), in seeking to protect their residents from the effects of having wells fracked within their city limits. The COGCC is failing to fulfill its own charter, to seek "balanced" development, and to "protect the environment", while it allows the oil and gas industry to proceed, nearly completely unimpeded, while self-regulating its own operations. The COGCC is too pro-industry, and too lacking in heeding the calls of citizens for more accountability for the negative effects of this dangerous technology.

This is unacceptable. Until the state legislature can muster to backbone to change the laws that created the COGCC, the citizens of the Front Range, and Lafayette, need to fight back any way we can to slow down this mad rush of the gas companies to make a quick buck. We should refuse to have our water table ruined forever, our air made too noxious to breathe, or allow the local ecosystem to be starved for water, just because some giant gas company wants to get their way.

Sincerely,

Rick Casey

Lafayette, CO

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