A crowd of Baltimore voters came to Notre Dame College on Thursday, March 8th to learn about major energy bills facing lawmakers in Annapolis this session. Specifically, attendees and panelists discussed ongoing efforts to pass offshore wind power legislation, and ways to regulate the controversial practice of “fracking” for natural gas in Western Maryland.
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A full house of Montgomery County voters came to Rockville Tuesday, March 6, to learn what lawmakers in Annapolis are doing to pass offshore wind power legislation while regulating the controversial practice of “fracking” for natural gas in Western Maryland.
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Last week I took my first trip out to Western Maryland with our fabulous fellow Emily Saari. The drive was long but really beautiful- and much more relaxing than driving around the city.
We arrived to quite the welcoming party- a group of really incredible women working to protect their homes and communities from dangerous fracking practices. Over lunch we discussed the latest in fracking news and all the issues it creates. It is overwhelming to keep track of everything: drinking water contamination, traffic on small roads, land value decreasing, harm to wildlife, methane leaks Continue reading
It seems the news just keeps getting worse these days for those in the Marcellus Shale gas-fracking business. First there was the damning new Cornell University study which revealed the worse-than-coal climate impacts of the natural gas drilling procedure. Then, the Chesapeake Energy Corporation experienced the mother of all bad press days when one of its Pennsylvania wells experienced a massive blowout, spewing thousands of gallons of frack fluid into a nearby stream. In a poetic touch, the blow-out occurred on the one-year anniversary of the gulf oil spill.
While nowhere near the scale of the BP blowout, the Chesapeake Energy frack-up certainly echoed the massive gulf disaster in terms of the outrageous incompetence and recklessness of the well’s owners.
According to a Pro-Publica article it took the company a full 13 hours to respond to the accident. The reason for the egregious delay: despite widespread fracking activity in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale, the state did not have a single team of specially trained fracking accident responders, and instead had to fly in workers from Texas. In the end, thanks to the holdup, it took no less than two days from the time of the accident before workers managed to cap the spill. Continue reading