While I believe Fracking is an important environmental issue, its not the most pressing in our little hamlet despite its hot button topic appeal.
I agree with Larry Rosso, to sign the lease opens up a can of liability worms the township is better off not taking part in.
Water use is about 1millionGPD for the average mine of this sort. Full disclosure of chemicals used is protected by claims of trade secrets. So good luck with that.
Its nice that citizens are concerned about environmental issues, but I wish that they would be more concerned with more serious and wide spread impacts that can be addressed TODAY and make a difference.
Lets look at the medians along Sashabaw. Currently water will run off (if we ever get rain again) and will carry with it any fertilizer or pesticide that's been sprayed on those lovely little non salt tolerate trees and maintenance requiring turf.
Installing a concave median that would receive the storm water flow from sashabaw would have been a nice "green infrastructure" move. Those medians could then have the very simple native plant no mow zones to treat rainwater naturally. OR, there could have been any number of passive treatements installed, such as modular wetlands. Plus, anything that is stormwater forward is available for funding opportunities and partnering. Lots of college students out there looking for a good project to team with...
Fracking is definitely a concern, I don't want to discourage anyone from being active, primarily given the vast waste of water as a resource in the process.
But I also want to encourage citizens to take an active interest in how we manage stormwater as a community. There are limited actions that Linda Richardson can take as the manager of the program. She must rely on our board and trustees to make stormwater friendly development decisions. We need to all encourage forward thinking in our council and board members. Please consider this in deciding who you will vote for. Ask questions, discover motives and perspectives. Vote for whoever is willing to protect the environment while saving money through green infrastructure, not outdated methods that are widely understood to be part of the "problem".
Learn more by looking up the SEMCOG LID manual. Great stuff. We should be using it here.
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re: Township to look at drilling in park
