How I Became an Environmentalist Overnight!

Oneday, I was a housewife raising six kids in the tourist friendly village of Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania and when I found out that our planners wanted to permit a chemical plant in a wetland, and suddenly I became a fervent environmentalist! I never dreamed that our planners would be so indifferent to our environment and clean water source. So my mission was to let everyone know what they were intending to do. I called the media and had a reporter interview me and we talked about lack of containment and how these chemicals would have the potential to contaminate a very large area and could and would pollute many peoples ground wells.

After rallying and trying to get more people involved I realized that I needed to create a not for profit advocacy group who's intention was to raise environmental awareness. I used the organization's name to get our message across, and it proved to be an very important part of fighting back! Many people would tell me that I didn't have a chance to stop this terrible intrusion, because our little town didn't have zoning! But the anger was so deep and real that I used that to propel me continuously! So after almost two years of active fighting, writing hundreds of letters and realizing that I needed to connect myself with well known groups out there for moral support, we were successful in making them change their minds. They decided to relocate somewhere else, preferably in an industrial park!

One of the reason we were successful, was because the Clean Water Act in the 90's was a very strong act and the Clinton Adminstration with the likes of V.P.Al Gore, a great environmentalist, himself, encouraged this train of thought that wetlands and our watersheds should be protected. But as the administrations changed from Democratic to Republican, we saw a reversal of this mindset, and thus what we have today is a Clean Water Act that was weakend so much so, that we literally don't have a fighting mechanism against incursions of this sort, especially with the infamous gas drilling that is going on in several states, like Pennsylvania and soon to be New York State!

What these gas companies have done is lure residents with their wealth and monetary leases, but what they forgot to tell residents is that you cannot have both, a gas well in your backyard and clean water! Impossible! What is even worse, you can equate one well head with a small chemical plant, because in order to develop this well head to completion, the workers must inject millions of gallons of volitile chemicals into the ground while they drill one mile deep or more suppassing the underground aquifer, your water supply, to reach the methane gas. Once they are done, the left over polluted water is now put into huge lined pits, to be evaporated into the atmosphere or better yet, be reabsorped into your ground water! These gas companies have had a record of not properly linning these pools of polluted water and they tried to put the contaminated water into the sewer plants, but this water is not bio-degradeable, so D.E.P. refused their requests.

Those chemicals were and are kept as trade secrets and until recently the film documentary "Gaslands" produced by Josh Fox, revealed what V.O.C.'s they use to drill these wells! So each well drilled could be equated as a small chemical plant because so many volitile chemicals as benzene, toluene and anti-freeze to name a few, are so poisonous to our ground water that without a doubt, when the wells are dug, your water is fully contaminated and undrinkable. Not only is your water totally decimated, the methane gas that they are drilling for, ends up migrating to the surface into your home leaving a potentially very explosive and unsafe situation!

Furthermore, if the 30,000 permits that the PA Dept of Environmental Protection gave to these gas companies are drilled, we might as well pack our bags and leave this once beautiful state to find another safer place to inhabit! It's time for you to fight back! You can fight back by joining an environmental organization and visit your Legistlators and Senators and insit they strenghten the environmental law's that were once put in place to protect us! But the future looks grim now, because the economy is so slow and many people are unemployed and looking for ways for new income.

Remember, what your forefathers taught you about our lands and streams!Without them, we have nothing but vast desert lands that create death to all life! We must stop them today! Write letters if you cannot donate,rally for a stonger Clean Water Act! There is a new bill going through the Legistlator in Washington,D.C., but is not being pushed because of the lobbyist from the Gas companies realizing it could throw a monkey wrench in their operations and President Obama won't review it until 2013. Maybe, now since the Gulf of Mexico's oil rig explosion, he may be easier to convince to review it today! It's called the "Frack Act". Insist that he reviews it today! Don't give up until the job is done! Afterall, it's your water and everyones clean water! It belongs to you and our wildlife, not the gas companies to potentially pollute nationwide! Send your donations to Pocono Environmental Coalition and Wildlife Society, Inc. RR5, Box 5570F Saylorsburg, PA 18353