North Carolina's Challenges - Energy versus Clean Water

In my last post, I talked about what alternatives we might have to using rain gardens to control and clean water runoff from storm events.  These challenges concerning water quality have come about because of the vast popularity of our state to retirees, families looking for a good quality of life environments to raise their children and those looking to become employed in one of our higher tech companies among other groups.

More people means more need for water that is drinkable.  And our state is creating and expanding it's already large urban areas.  This translates to more roof tops, more sidewalks and pavement, none of which absorb rainwater and and call for the creation of systems to channel and control the rainwater runoff.

At the same time, we as a state face higher unemployment because of global competition for jobs.  Our new Governor mentions several approaches to strenghtening our states economy: expand agricultural exports, unleash our energy resources, harness new technology in education to compete globally, among several others.

The approach I am most worried about and that I want to bring up today is 'unleashing our energy resources'.  In Governor McCrory's campaign speeches he continually mentioned the opportunity of 'Fracking' to harvest large quantities of natural gas locked in shale deposits in many parts of our state.  Have you ever seen the site of a Fracking operation?  Google it and look at what would become a part of the landscape. A fracking site requires many acres of land to hold large containers filled with the chemicals injected into the ground,  acres for the semi tractor-trailer rigs to deliver the chemicals and water needed for the injections,  very large lined pools to hold the chemical laden water that comes back up after it has shattered the shale, storage tanks for the gas extracted and let's not forget the roadway that must be built to access this new site.  Did I mention the equipment needed to force the water into the ground and extract the gas?  That equipment is a minuscule portion of the operation.

Our state has large beautiful natural areas for everyone to enjoy and a still considerable amount of land used for agriculture.

What happens to tourism when these fracking sites begin popping up all over?  Will you have to angle your camera so that you get a picture of the rolling hills in the Appalachians but not the large scar in the land of the fracking site?  If things go bloody wrong and ground water is contaminated from chemical laden fracking solutions, is the contamination reversible ??? and at what cost? to the people who must now buy bottled or trucked in water for their every need, to the loss of tourism, to the actual remediation needed to decontaminate the ground water if it's even possible, to the environment as a whole?

I hope that more people start asking these questions, doing their homework and making their voices heard.  There are more energy resources we can 'unleash' that are not as physically harmful to our land and all creatures that dwell on it.