One problem of modern living is a direct function of the rapid progress of science. In self-defense we need to educate ourselves about new medicines, foods, electronic equipment, pesticides and even whole new industries. Unfortunately, major corporate money supports every listed item and politicians are under heavy pressure to bend to industry’s best interests. The rest of us at least have to raise related issues of personal safety and environmental degradation.

So it is now with an issue that will affect the entire Appalachian Mountain range, an issue being identified with the single word, fracking. Fracking is an abbreviation for hydraulic fracturing of rock deep under the ground to release natural gas. This is accomplished by pumping water, sand and chemicals into that rock.

The process evidently has been used widely in the West, but it has now suddenly been found to be commercially applicable—a. k. a. money-making—to the Marcellus Shale of the Appalachians.

Many states are involved, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency has asked our New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to look into the matter. In its transmittal letter to the state, the EPA wrote that it “has serious reservations about whether gas drilling in the New York City watershed is consistent with the vision of long-term maintenance of a high quality unfiltered water supply.”

Speaking for one side is Kathleen Sgamma, director of governmental affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, who claims that over 60 years 1 million such wells have been dug without a single problem. When her opponents cite one that occurred at Dunkard Creek of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she dismisses it as coal mine discharge unrelated to the fracking process.

I looked into that Dunkard Creek episode. It took just 20 days last September for the creek to turn from what Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes as “one of the most ecologically diverse streams in both states” into an environmental disaster area.

There is a mine water treatment facility nearby, but the Dunkard pollution is upstream from it and the water has been found to contain impurities related to the fracking process.

Operator-caused turbidity also occurred in 2007 at a well near Syracuse. The operator had to close down the operation, provide drinking water and install water treatment systems for nearby residents. Fortunately over a period of months the problem abated.

Our legislators will have trouble seeing beyond the projected state tax income and landowner leasing revenue to what I consider the near certainty of down-the-road problems related to our fragile water supply.