Fracking Produces Annual Toxic Waste Water Enough to Flood Washington DC

CLIMATE PROGRESS, By Jessica Goad, Guest Blogger on October 21, 2013 at 11:17 am

GEORGE WASHINGTON NATIONAL FOREST, VIRGINA — Standing at the top of the Staunton Dam in Virginia’s million-acre George Washington National Forest, Nancy Sorrells describes herself as the “fourth generation not to be born here, but to wind up here.” Looking out at the sun pouring through the reds and rusts of oaks and maples that have just begun to turn, next to clumps of light purple asters rocking in the balmy breeze, it’s easy to see why she says “there are beautiful places in the world, but this forest is one of the most beautiful.”

But underneath its postcard views and undeveloped backcountry sits a natural gas deposit that is now believed to underlie approximately half of the national forest. An extension of the Marcellus Shale, which has fueled a massive gas boom in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, the George Washington’s gas reserves are the subject of a contentious debate about whether there should be limits on where the fossil fuel industry is allowed to drill. This debate will come to a head in the coming weeks, as the U.S. Forest Service decides whether or not to allow horizontal drilling (and the accompanying hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’) within the forest’s boundaries...

MORE INFORMATION HERE