Dear Geauga County Tea Party,
Recently you had a correspondence with
Jessica Schaner, with whom I am acquainted through a mutual concern
with shale gas development. She shared with me your email exchange
and I offered to respond. Not that I'm an expert at anything in
particular, but I have done a fair amount of reading since first
learning about “fracking” shortly after my wife and I moved our
family (two young daughters) here two years ago.
Keep in mind that the initial concerns
with fracking came not from activists, or documentary film makers, or
scientists but rather from the mostly rural people living near the
new type of wells (deep and horizontal) as they were established in
the early 2000's, first in Texas and then in the Rocky Mountain and
southern states, then in Pennsylvania beginning less than a decade
ago.
To me the anecdotes are compelling
because they stretch back to the early days of this type of drilling
(the early 2000s) and they follow the development of new shale plays.
The people claiming harm from drilling activities have been of no
particular political persuasion – this is a non-partisan concern at
the local level. They are often farmers or ranchers or otherwise
hard-working Americans from “main street” of small town America.
I have no motivation to doubt their reports. Still, these reports are
anecdotes.
I am happy to have read in your email
that you, as do I, demand factual and verifiable information. I'm an
incurable skeptic. I have a science background and I tend to value
peer-reviewed papers publishing analyzed data. I also demand
journalism that rigorously cites its sources. So I would like to
provide you with two links I find quite compelling.
First is Propublica, an independent
journalism organization that has been following the fracking story
since 2008. What I like about it is the fact that their (freely
accessed) articles contain many live links to primary publications
and reports from other science, government, and journalism
organizations. Scroll down to the clickable titles of their 100
articles:
(I'll note there are other fine sources
of journalism to visit as well – if you'd like me to offer more let
me know)
Second is a link to links of 17
scientific papers looking into the potential or real health and
environmental impacts of unconventional gas drilling. Science is
playing catch-up here. It's a slow process and unfortunately is
following up on the anecdotal reports (rather than preceding and
maybe preventing possible problems), so there isn't much to see yet.
Still, the papers linked provide ample reason for me to demand
precaution from my elected officials.
Here is the link:
http://www.grassrootsinfo.org/frackingdigest.html
My motivation in this is to protect the
health of my family, especially two young, developing girls, and to
protect my and my wife's emotional, psychological and financial
investment in rural Geauga – a place we very much chose to move to
from our previous urban existence.
I have never been politically active
before this issue became my issue, and through my involvement I have
thought a lot about government accountability, money in politics, the
role of misinformation in political and economic discourse, and the
erosion of representative democracy. I don't claim to know much about
the Tea Party but it seems that some of these issues are Tea Party
issues.
(See this report on gas industry money
in politics:
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=7868571)
Please check out the information I've
sent and consider whether the Tea Party of Geauga County might want
to take a tough stance on the changes happening in and to our
community.
If you'd like me to come present my
case at one of your meetings, I'd be happy to.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Steven Corso
Establishing farmer, part-time high
school teacher, biologist, father of two (in no particular order)
Claridon Township, Geauga County
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