After the gulf oil spill last spring, I did some research on hydraulic fracturing. What I learned was horrifying so I wrote several letters to newspaper editors.
I must have struck a nerve because the big oil guns, including a D.C. lobbyist, wrote letters to counter my claims. For these busy oil folks to waste their lucrative time on this little ol’ lady only convinced me that my claims were not unfounded.
Now, North Dakota is joining Texas, Pennsylvania and more than 30 other states in environmental pollution and destruction of wildlife and their habitats all caused by fracturing. There is one ugly heartbreaking spill in North Dakota and elsewhere after the other. This dirty business will leave the involved states with dead zones and property values tanking.
The only people profiting from fracking are the oil companies, businesses in the Bakken such as motels and grocery stores and those receiving royalty payments, often from free homesteaded land. Many of these people don’t even live in North Dakota.
Now our Legislature has passed a monolithic bill to fix roads in the oil patch. This money comes out of our pockets, such as those among us working two minimum wage jobs to support ourselves and living from paycheck to paycheck. The fair thing to do is to make the oil companies and royalty recipients pick up the tab for what they’ve destroyed.
Once our state and other states are ruined these folks will take the money and run if they haven’t already.
Roberta D. Nelson, Bismarck
Tags: opinion, letter, letter, fracturing
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