By Elizabeth Willoughby on
Actor Mark Ruffalo's recent article in the Huffington Post brings to light some uncomfortable facts on natural gas drilling, legal loopholes and potential consequences to America’s drinking water.
The gas, which is buried in pockets deep in shale, requires blasting the rock with a high-pressured water and chemical mixture. Ruffalo is concerned about the drilling process because it is exempt from regulation in the Safe Drinking water Act.
“Companies aren’t even legally obliged to tell us the names or formulas of the nearly 590 chemicals that have been identified by experts as being used in their wells,” he says in the article. “I don’t know when America got to the point where someone can pour 590 chemicals into the ground with impunity.”
In what he calls the natural-gas gold rush, Ruffalo says, “local communities are learning that when something goes wrong, neither the energy companies nor the government regulators offer much help. […] We have to demand they stand up and say: ‘We need to know what energy companies are putting in our water. We need to protect our farmland. We need to invest in renewable energy that don’t carry these risks.’”
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