Fracturing Our Shenandoah Drinking Water?
Shenandoah Valley residents have every reason to be alarmed about their drinking water. A Texas Gas Company owned by Carrizo Marcellus LLC wants to frack his first well in Bergton in the Marcellus Shale region located at the Headwaters of the Shenandoah River. Already 13,000 acres of land have been leased to gas companies to drill for natural gas. Due to the alarming pattern of water contamination in and around these wells across the county we need to thoroughly examine the evidence and risks before we allow this controversial drilling practice to take place or at all. When a well is fracked they use a horizontal drilling technique that goes a mile or more down into the earth pumping a fluid at high pressures that cause the rock to crack, sometimes even causing mini earthquakes that release the trapped gas for extraction. The pumping fluid is a mixture of sand, 596 undisclosed chemicals, and several million gallons of water. Currently gas companies refused to disclose those chemic