Grasping For Straws, They Never Give Up

For some very odd reason, this story made the front page of the Los Angeles Times today:

One year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency finished testing drinking water in Dimock, PA, after years of complaints by residents who suspected that nearby natural gas production had fouled their wells. The EPA said that for nearly all the 64 homes whose wells it sampled, the water was safe to drink.

Yet as the regulator moved to close its investigation, the staff at the mid-Atlantic EPA office in Philadelphia, which had been sampling the Dimock water, argued for continuing the assessment.

The article then goes on to summarize three cases (Dimock, PA; Wyoming; and, Texas) -- all of which were closed by the EPA. 

So, what gives?

"Someone" refuses to let these stories die. If the story was about UFOs, these would be considered "conspiracy theory stories" and written off as "junk science."

But folks are not wasting their time with "conspiracy theories" and "junk science" when it comes to fracking. Something else is needed to explain this.

My hunch: there is some big money behind this movement (conspiracy theory, yes, I know; LOL). Most likely: big money in the form of campaign contributions for politicians and/or political movements. Some speaker who gets $50,000/speech needed an "LA Times" story to give some credibility to his speeches; some rationale for his speaking fee. In the case of researchers, they need federal grant money to survive. My hunch is this article will be attached to the boiler plate application Mr Jackson will use to request more federal money for more "research." It would not surprise me at all if this front page story began as a press release. The whole story does not ring true.

But this is the good news:

• after literally decades of drilling and fracking, and tens of thousands of fracked wells, the conspiracty theorists can only come up with three "controversial" wells, and two of them are non-stories; the EPA officially closed all three
• even if there was an iota of truth, it sounds like the ppm is so low as to be unmeasurable, and perhaps less than what nature puts there (don't quote me out of context)
• so many untruths (the biggest of course when it is stated that methane does not naturally occur in water -- it does)
• not one of these three wells was in the Bakken or the Eagle Ford
• every alledged "problem" was actually a drilling/casing problem and NOT a fracking problem; folks are confusing drilling with fracking.

Literally grasping at straws.

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I need a bit of music to rest my soul --

Yellow River, Christie