Let the whoring out of Mother Earth begin.

Governor Cuomo, his Big Oil and Gas business friends, select “playing ball” local governments, and even some individual profit-sharing homeowners are set soon to risk our drinking water on high-volume hydrofracking. Low-volume has been legal all along and now the traveling inner circle of big circus-like hydrofracking crews will soon be invading a small town near you.

Traveling through Pennsylvania and Ohio, I hear and see from those locals who have been invaded by the locust-like swarms of drillers. Dont take my word for it…Google yourself for some of the testimonials. They say it’s all new science and promise us all it’s safe. Then I have to ask: Why are the leftover towns saying otherwise? They promise us all more new jobs and regional economic bounties. Then why do the leftover towns say and see otherwise?

A few local people will defend it all passionately saying, they wouldn’t risk it all and their own if they didn’t believe it was safe. Most of us don’t and won’t have the short-term fiscal payoff to move elsewhere if the gamble goes wrong. What and how do we fix it once the damage is irreparably done? I don’t know the answers and I am not the professional scientist or environmental expert. I, like you and hopefully our elected officials, can only read what the pros have said—that it’s still a risk.

Why gamble then? Have we forgotten about the Valdez and the Gulf of Mexico environmental and community tragedies? Have we not heard about the gas explosions and well-water contanimatons? It’s not just your 15-acre payoff, it’s water tables that can extend for miles. And most of us cant just move to Florida once the damage is done.

And again: What can a community do if the oil and gas companies make a mistake? What recourse do we have written down legally that will clean the water?

Too many unanswered questions and far too many factual examples of corporate and political greed for most of us to trust our precious Mother Earth’s water to those who play ball. with our community paying the price and only being allowed three minutes to comment and being subject to only spectating. Please call your local officials and Governor Cuomo and plead with them to not whore out Mother Earth.

> Frank Kolbmann, Holland

Thank you for keeping attention on the fracking issue, as part of energy and climate concerns. Two things I see as bookends to this discussion: First, we should not be putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. A few more summers like the present and the rest of the human race may start catching on. Second, frack gas and tar sands oil are still fossil fuels. Whatever the prices, supply, pollution, this is an end game. Natural gas as a “bridge fuel”? We are on the bridge already, and it’s looking like a bridge to nowhere. Come on, folks, let’s look up and build a sustainable future.

> David Gaeddert, Buffalo

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