During the oil boom of the 1890s, there was a circuit-riding preacher who horse-backed on his rounds in the oil fields to exhort against it. “The Lord stored oil in the earth to fuel the fires of hell,” he warned. “To remove it is sinful and the world will feel his wrath.”

We’ve burned a lot of fossil fuel since then. Maybe this is pay-back time, with crazy storms, New Orleans under water and oil wars. And yet, as we exhaust these air-fouling fuels the carbon barons are driving to chew off mountaintops for their coal, plunder the Arctic and risk our beaches as they scrape the bottom of the barrel. They propose the environmentally dangerous technique of hydrofracking to tap the gas in the Marcellus Shale that underlies New York State.

This satanic deal offers to trade our drinking water for a few years of gas to make them richer. Hydrofracking Marcellus Shale requires driving a vertical well one to two miles down, and at depth boring sideways a thousand feet. One to three million gallons of water is then forced into the well to fracture the shale and release its gas.

This fracking water has diesel fuel, benzene, industrial solvents and other unknown chemicals added to it. On the way down aquifers are penetrated and in danger of contamination. The fracking water that returns to the surface is contaminated further by radioactive salt water from the depths. Supplying the tons of fresh water strains our supply of drinking water, but disposing of this unholy brew is the great risk.

Near some fracking sites people have set fire to gas-contaminated water as it pours from their taps. In nearby Bradford, Pa., gas well-drilling-contamination of water wells is forcing people from their homes. In West Virginia, Dunkard Creek was used to dispose of gas well fluids. Golden algae, which thrives on salt, bloomed, killing off most of the creek’s aquatic life.

Ten thousand well heads are expected in our Southern Tier, each of them taking up to five acres. They will require a tangle of roads and thousands of trucks to handle their water needs. New York State has declared a moratorium on hydrofracking and horizontal drilling until the Department of Environmental Conservation develops an acceptable system to regulate it, a Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement.

But the statement it has proposed will not adequately protect our water supply or our living space. Even, if somehow, close regulation could mitigate this blight, the DEC has only 17 men in its gas and oil division to cope with the impending gold rush of 10,000 applications.

Save our drinking water. Let the devil keep his sorry, sooty fuel. Let’s meet our energy needs by insulating our homes and powering them with solar and wind energy. Ask the governor to extend, indefinitely, the moratorium on hydrofracking and horizontal drilling.

Larry Beahan is secretary of the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club.