Berea Is Burning: Fracking, Fires and the Grassroots Action That’s Inflamed Kentucky

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/02/07/berea-burning-fracking-fires-grassroots-action-thats-inflamed-kentucky/

I work at a restaurant in downtown Berea and deal with the smell on a consistent basis. The fire was discovered on the property of CSX railroad, which issued no comment about efforts to stop the fire. CSX’s latest Facebook updates have consisted mostly of greenwash propaganda about the company’s high environmental standards. Ironic to say the least.

Residents living in the immediate vicinity of the shale fire report that firefighters and CSX made no real effort to stop it or to notify citizens of the extent of the disaster until mid-January. As a result, the shale fire has become one more sobering reminder to citizens still considering leasing their mineral rights to fracking companies. The same shale oil that ABARTA and Chesapeake want to devour has already degraded the air quality in Berea, and they’re not even fracking… yet.

In the wake of the town’s shale fire, the arrival of hundreds of land men into Madison County, and the hushed fracking exploration going on at leased test sites, many Berea residents have now taken up door-to-door campaigning. Members of KEF and other local grassroots organizations are warning neighbors about the repercussions of signing any lease that would allow oil or gas exploration on their property.

While small fracking operations have existed in Kentucky since the 1960s, nothing as deep as the Rogersville Shale has ever been fracked, and the possible environmental consequences of it happening are dire. The millions of gallons of water used in the proposed shale drilling would strain water resources all around Kentucky – water that’s already damaged by decades of coal extraction. KEF also found that nearly 600 hazardous chemicals would be used in the Rogersville frack, findings they presented to the Madison Fiscal Court and the Richmond City Commission in late January.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. But one thing certain is that this town won’t take more corporate abuse lying down.

[MelissaB]

1. I live just north of this beautiful little town.

How could I not have know this? I don't recall seeing it in the local paper, but it could have been there and I missed it.