I figure the only reason these politicians are against it is because the gas companies haven’t made it worth their while yet.
My concerns are mainly about the water sources being polluted. It has happened, and will continue to happen. If the gas companies would actually address that, instead of telling people it’s really a non-issue, then I be thrilled to have fracking move forward.
I’ve spoken with a lot of other landowners about this, and they are split 50/50. The folks without land to lease are roughly the same mix - the ones that even know about it.
One other thing we are concerned with is the future value of land that is fracked, but non-productive. Same goes with a property that has no lease yet has a rig sitting right on it’s property line.
I know a woman who has 120 acres of beautiful rolling hills and light forest. She signed a gas lease. She leased all but an acre that her crappy little house sits on. Now she wants to sell her property and move out of state. No one will even look at it - they don’t want to buy land if they have no mineral rights, no benefit from this fracking, and have to deal with the noise, destruction, etc., for however long the gas company is there. Since the house sits right in the middle of that big parcel, it is unsalable. And she didn’t even get a good offer from the gas company. But she was greedy and jumped right on the first offer, and is now wailing about how screwed over she feels and how worthless her property has become.
Well it’s true that despite the jobs and economic boom you get from energy development, you can’t trust an oil/gas company executive as far as you can throw em.
I’m in the “trust but verify” group myself, especially with water quality.
Moratoriums to placate the sierra club is just bad policy and sends the wrong message though.
We don’t need more study, we need transparent oversight.
So we’re not so far apart on this issue :)