Boom Town

What have we done? Maggie, what have we done? - Pink Floyd

Minot, North Dakota.

In May 2013, I interviewed for an ESL job in Minot, ND. 

After doing some research about the "Kuwait on the Prarie," I withdrew my name from consideration because it sounded like hell on earth. If I wanted hell on earth, I would have stayed in Spain.

Here's a great NY Times article; ND Oil Boom

Fracking or hydraulic fracturingnounthe forcing open of fissures in subterranean rocks by introducing liquid at high pressure, esp. to extract oil or gas.  (from the American Oxford Dictionary)

Fracking: The Dangers

(from Cleanwateraction.org)

Fracking uses a toxic chemical cocktail known as fracking fluid.

• Companies using fracking fluid have resisted disclosing the contents of fracking fluid, claiming the information is proprietary. However, samples from well sites indicate that the fluid contains: formaldehyde, acetic acids, citric acids, and boric acids, among hundreds of other contaminants.
• It has recently come to light that, despite the illegality of the action, companies have been caught using diesel fuel in the fracking fluid.

Fracking removes millions of gallons of precious freshwater from the water cycle.

• Each well uses between two and five million gallons of locally-sourced freshwater which will be permanently contaminated by ground contaminants and toxic chemicals contained in the fracking fluid.
• About half of this water returns to the surface, where it is stored in steel containers until it can be injected deep underground in oil and gas waste wells.
• No one is entirely sure what happens to the other half of the water used in the process. Our best guess is that the water remains underground, though there are indications that at least some of this toxic cocktail makes its way back into the water supply.

Fracking causes a range of environmental problems.

• At least eight other states have reported surface, ground, and drinking water contamination due to fracking.
• In Pennsylvania, over 1,400 environmental violations have been attributed to deep gas wells utilizing fracking practices.
• Pollution from truck traffic, chemical contamination around storage tanks, and habitat fragmentation and damage from drilling to environmentally sensitive areas have are all related to fracking.

Also; (from Alternet.org)

Those who live along train routes aren't the only ones facing safety risks from the oil and gas industry. NPR reports that accidents among workers in the industry are on the rise—bigtime. From 2009 to 2012 the industry added 23 percent more workers but “the hiring spree has come with a terrible price: Last year, 138 workers were killed on the job — an increase of more than 100 percent since 2009,” wrote Andrew Schneider and Marilyn Geewax for NPR . “In fact, the fatality rate among oil and gas workers is now nearly eight times higher than the all-industry rate of  3.2 deaths for every 100,000 workers.”

 Not So Good for Your Health

Findings presented at a recent meeting of the American Economic Association by researchers from Princeton University, Columbia University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made headlines. The researchers “looked at Pennsylvania birth records from 2004 to 2011 to assess the health of infants born within a 2.5-kilometer radius of natural-gas fracking sites,” reports Mark Whitehouse for Bloomberg.

They found that proximity to fracking increased the likelihood of low birth weight by more than half, from about 5.6 percent to more than 9 percent,” writes Whitehouse. “The chances of a low Apgar score, a summary measure of the health of newborn children, roughly doubled, to more than 5 percent.”

It really does seem like hell.

We got a thousand points of light

For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin' in the free world
-Neil Young