YP Letters: Time for the truth about fracking risks

ANALYSIS published in the journal Environmental Science 
& Technology, and reported on the BBC, revealed an astonishingly high number of chemical spills related to fracking in the US.

The report highlighted 
6,648 spills in just four states alone — Colorado, New 
Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

The researchers determined that up to 16 percent of fracked oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, fracking fluids and other potentially harmful substances.

We know that in this country Third Energy want to frack up to 950 wells, something that was stated openly by Third’s operations director John Dewar in the Houses of Parliament and another fracking firm INEOS want to drill just as many wells all across the North of England. The latter has been recently exposed for trying to survey for gas under playgrounds, parks and even a war memorial in the Midlands.

Now just imagine if 16 per 
cent of Third Energy’s 950 wells spill their toxic cocktail of fracking fluid – the result of this could be disastrous for 
Yorkshire.

It’s about time Third 
Energy, INEOS and the army 
of PR firms they employ start to be truthful about the true 
risks associated with the 
fracking instead of trying to persuade us that our hugely underfunded and inexperienced regulators can control this highly risky and dangerous fracking industry.

From: Michael Farman, Willow Grove, Beverley.

I WRITE in support of the letters from Christopher Pickles, 
Wendy Cross and Jarvis Browning that set out some of 
the many reasons to oppose fracking (The Yorkshire Post, February 23).

The BBC recently featured a new peer-reviewed scientific paper concluding that across the USA, 16 per cent of fracking wells with their associated equipment leaked within their first year of operation.

Here in the UK, the industry itself states that at least 1,500 fracking wells in the North of England would be required to produce enough shale gas to make it economically worthwhile.

Many of those wells would be drilled through the aquifiers that supply our drinking water.

Now my maths is a bit rusty, but my calculator tells me that 16 per cent of 1,500 is 240.

Yes, 240 leaking wells. Perhaps some of those leaks would be minor and containable, but what of the rest?

Should we be risking our precious water supplies to enable the fracking industry to make a profit?

From: David Cragg-James, Stonegrave, York.

SO Francis Egan of Cuadrilla maintains it would be madness to import gas when gas can be fracked here in the UK (The Yorkshire Post, February 22). Well, as Mandy Rice-Davies once remarked of a gentleman who claimed not to have met her, “He would, wouldn’t he? A useful rule of thumb when evaluating such advice is “Cui bono?” Who stands to gain?

From: Frank Colenso, Hovingham.

TWO hundred fracking wells across Ryedale will destroy, not support, our local economy never mind the predicted 2,000!

Comments that opposition to shale gas is not backed by science is scurrilous to say the least. I would urge everyone, as so many have, to research both sides of the argument.

Not just diesel to take blame

From: DS Boyes, Upper Rodley Lane, Leeds.

THE twin problems of congestion and air quality raise some complex questions (Andrew Vine, The Yorkshire Post, February 21).

The causes are obvious – too many people, too many vehicles and too much human, commercial and leisure activity in central Leeds, now 24/7? Not just diesel cars.

For when any vehicle complies with current legal requirements of the Road Traffic Acts etc set by Parliament, especially on exhaust emissions, how can these be legitimately discriminated against?

Maybe the best way forward would be to ban all vehicles from the centre of Leeds, except public transport, and restrict deliveries to specific time periods of morning or evening.

Higher cost of education

From: Arthur Quarmby, Mill Moor Road, Meltham.

YOU recently reported how teenagers, particularly from less-affluent homes, are shunning universities.

Now I know how the elderly tend to look back on their youth as a golden age, but in the 1950s I was able to enter higher education and obtain my qualification as an architect, without paying any fees. Similarly my brother-in-law took medicine at Leeds University (free of course) and became a distinguished physician. (I inherited his “digs” in Headingley – bed, breakfast and evening meal, a fiver a week).

Young people today incur huge debts from their further education.

As so often with a seemingly-brilliant idea – university education for all – has unforeseen consequences, in this instances a substantial increase in the inability to get on the housing ladder.

And then, of course, we have the ranking of universities, and the proliferation of so-called Mickey Mouse degrees.

Where is our post office?

From: Mr S Moore, Halifax.

I STILL can’t believe that Halifax town centre doesn’t have a proper Post Office any more.

I went into the one in WH Smith looking for a single heavy duty envelope for some important paperwork and ended up being forced to pay £6-ish for five plastic ones instead.