HERD ABOUT IT?

by Ana Grarian

A friend of mine came across this video of the effects of hydrofracking on traffic in rural towns. Once quiet streets where folks, their children and dogs could once safely cross the street are turned into industrial highways 24/7.
Now – I’m rather sensative to noise. I have become resigned to being woken at 4am on Monday mornings by the garbage and recycling trucks. Last night it was cool and my fan was on low, so it came no where near to whiting out that noise. And that shrill back up beeper? Give me a break. It’s 4am – there’s no one behind you!! I know – it’s required but jeesh, talking about lifting someone straight up out of their bed wondering what the emergency is.
Anyway. Watch the video. It speaks eloquently for itself.

This is one of the parts of drilling for un-natural gas they don’t tell you about nor depict in those pristine line drawings of hydrofracking.

Imagine how that kind of traffic impacts small towns without police departments, highway departments with a handful of employees and dependence on volunteer emergency services. Not to mention the health and sanity of folks who live along those once quiet streets.

When I watched this I kept thinking of my friend from CNY who live next door to a dairy that has grown to be the largest CAFO in NYS and I think the East Coast. She came to visit one day after dealing with the traffic and stench from the dairy emptying its manure lagoon.
Every 7 to 15 minutes a tanker truck filled with liquid manure would pass by her house with its 30,000 gallons (yes thirty THOUSAND gallons) of cow sh*t. They’d haul these manure encrusted things down the road, out into a field, spray the manure, and then come back for more.

 All day long.

And of course all the manure does not stay in the field or on the farm. Manure drips from the pipes, the tires and the body of the vehicle, onto the roadway where it dries. The continued traffic then grinds that manure into fine dust which travels through the air and is breathed in by everyone in its path. It enters home through windows opened to the breeze and coats interior surfaces. And this finely ground dust washes into road ditches, streams and water wells when the rains come.

A friend of mine who worked at a trucking company recalled how the trucks that came in from rural routes would be coated with this stuff and stink to high heaven, needing to be washed, even though they had traveled 30 miles or more since encountering those impacted roadways.

The industrialization of rural America is not a pretty nor a healthy sight.

I’m starting to believe that if we are going to insist we have to have the products of these kinds of operations then they should be in the middle of everyone’s neighborhood. Let’s start with the National Mall. If our legislators are going to back these enterprises – then let them walk by manure lagoons and waste water pits all day. Oh – and open those windows. They need to smell it too. Let Pennsylvania Ave run with fracking rigs and manure spreaders not just the rural towns of Pennsylvania (and others).

Wall St your next and every town where the 3 piece suit, limo riding financier lives. If your so sure it’s not that bad, then you live with it.