PLEASE EMAIL ME [email protected], IF YOU WISH TO CO-SIGN THIS LETTER. THANK YOU.
Email to Swanage Town Councillors to be sent 21/7 (There is a town council meeting 25/7 at 7 pm)CC: All the lawyers and scientist and co-signing campaigners and Swanage residents
Dear councillor,
We have communicated many times before since 2013 when a few of us met at the Swanage Town Council meeting to explain our concerns about Infrastrata’s plans for Swanage. We believe, there is now a government who will push even harder for fracking in the UK, to support an industry whose ‘gas’ mainly represents high investment and subsidised exploration and processing whilst reaping potentially irreversible damage to our wonderful environment, who have time and again run off leaving taxpayers and local government to pick up the pieces.
GET CRACKING ON FRACKING Theresa May could create jobs, slash bills and boost our post-Brexit economy if she gets fracking
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14710…
We are a group of residents and campaigners from the UK, Dorset, Swanage and the rest of the world. Some of us will be claimants in legal actions and all of us work with the best of our abilities to protect our environment.
Firstly we would like to emphasise that we see you and us as being FOR our local community, FOR protecting our health, FOR our worldwide-known and much-loved environment and FOR the protection of our future clean water aquifers which ourselves, all our children and our grandchildren depend on.
In Lancashire the Councillors received support from both Barrister Dr Ashley Bowes and also from legal experts and Friends Of the Earth, and this enabled them to say NO. We wish to offer you the same support. All our campaigning skills and resources, 6 lawyers, 25 experts, 35 reports (also from the UK) – all of this is on your side.
We’d now like to quote 3 experts:
“Frack fluid migrate up, among other things through faults and old wells.By drilling, casing, cementing, you pollute groundwater with frack fluid and methane emissions.To casket a hole is the problem. There is large pressure and 10.000 holes and the gas escapes. Hardened cement paste is used, it’s not a good material, not flexible, not impermeable, it ages badly, and certainty a significant percentage of all gas wells are leaking and will leak. This will never be solved. Since 2010 5-10% of gas wells are leaking in Pennsylvania, there are 1,000 wells leaking into drinking water in Pennsylvania, 100 families have lost access to water.” (Anthony R Ingraffea)
“I’ve worked on more well sites and drilling sites than I care to mention. It’s a very inexact science. There is NO 100% sure way to protect a water table sitting above a well. Once the casing is in, it’s in. It’s not like you can remove it and change it every 10 years! Forget visual impacts on the environment – as unpleasant as that is – it’s water table contamination that is the major issue and there is no 100% safe protection method.” (Contact in USA)
“I’ve worked in the Seismology & Geophysical industries, so have a reasonably good idea of how all the technology works. And interestingly enough was introduced to a person who shall remain nameless, that was employed by a government department in Whitehall to, as he put it ‘write letters to concerned members of the public, explaining that Fracking was quite safe’ it was the first job he’d had since leaving uni, where he had studied on a creative arts course, he had no idea of what he was writing, it was all scripted, and admitted that there was a whole department of people – just as unqualified as him – to do this on a large scale. When I informed him of my interest and professional experience he avoided me like the plague for the rest of the evening.” (Dave Sadler)
If Infrastrata had substantiated their promise ‘not to’ frack, as printed in Bournemouth Echo, we may have taken a different approach. However the Irish, who Infrastrata has just left, tell us Infrastrata introduced heavy private policing and high fences. There is no way of controlling or even knowing what goes on once an exploratory drilling project has been allowed to establish itself.It is important to point out that although the aquifers from which we get our fresh water are situated only a few miles away from the planned rig site, with the inherent assumption being is that it’s safe to drill down (and ‘possibly’ test frack), there is a very real threat of IRREVERSIBLE pollution into our Freshwater supply and fragile Ecosystem.
We would like you to study our illustration (above) of our unpredictable subterrain. Infrastrata admitted to Elizabeth Thomsen and Jason Haiselden that their own illustrations were not accurate. They told us that they’d simplified them to make them clearer. We said their illustrations were seriously misguiding people as a result.
Please visit our preliminary website (and we will advise you when the final website is online):https://ravenseyemedia.com/fracking. Here you will find our 44 page long summary of the development of anti-fracking communities, legal initiatives and scientific studies and reports from the UK and worldwide, that corroborate the uncertain outcomes and irreversible nature of environmental damage caused by this drilling.
James Wharton, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said 14.6.2016, “When a planning permission is granted….including shale gas, there should be no unacceptable adverse impacts on the natural and historic environment or on human health. “
Unfortunately there are. A great big list.
We see from the Medact Report available online (attached here), representing 450 peer-reviewed publications , delivered to all MPs 25.4.2016, and later on to a good number of councillors, that health is indeed impacted and that in addition, the process is still too risky and unknown. These health professionals are calling for a fairer, safer & better world for the common good. “Fracking threatens to perpetuate our reliance on fossil fuel and make it more difficult to meet our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, as the methane, which escapes in massive quantities in the fracking process, is over 60 times more damaging to our climate than CO2. Instead we must embark upon a policy of encouraging faster development of clean energy and reduce energy consumption and ecological damage.”
Several countries have banned fracking and there have been lawsuits in Pennsylvania, California and Oklahoma.
Soil depletion, water pollution and loss of habitat threaten instability and conflict. Methane is now being released in huge and damaging quantities as we struggle to limit emissions. Frighteningly, there has been a spike in methane emissions largely attributed to the US shale & gas boom.
As planners please help our local youngsters realise you, and all of us, are concerned for their well-being on a habitable planet.
Thomas Midgley, unwittingly, nearly single-handedly wiped out our ozone layer. Luckily the British Antarctic Survey (but not NASA who ignored the data) were paying attention so eventually the world agreed action; Montreal Protocol 1987. We ALL need to help to preserve a habitable atmosphere. Especially in this country with its industrial legacy.
It is wrong that we have been mis-sold WMD fossil fuels since 8.2. 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson warned Congress of atmospheric impacts. Luckily heroes like Elon Musk, Jo Warren, Dale Vince and others are seriously addressing our collective ignorance with brilliant solutions.
Westminster needs to understand that for the same price as conventional buildings, our homes can be built to feed-in clean energy to the grid as well as being cheap to run, warm and safe (University of Cardiff).
There are of course local impacts for residents from fracking; heavy traffic, noise, night-time disturbance, light, effect on wildlife and agriculture, groundwater pollution and earthquakes. The latter happened in Lancashire in 2011 and cracked people’s homes in the process. There are house insurance implications & house prices: 7% reduction in value if you live within a mile of an extraction site according to DEFRA. Who will compensate these homeowners?
There’s also an effect on jobs, tourism, waste disposal and industrial negativity impacting on other occupations eg when rural tranquillity is undermined. Poor old Swanage. Infrastrata’s horrible toxic waste will go right down our country lanes. Very uncaring for the poor local community.
The release of 750+ commercially protected chemicals (exactly which poisons are they?) as well as radioactivity into our precious water courses is deeply unacceptable. Health impacts include respiratory damage, birth defects, organ damage, nervous system & blood disorders. One researcher said,”fracking is spewing cancer- causing chemicals into the air.” Breast Cancer Action says, “Don’t frack with our health. “Endocrine disruptors & cancer-causing chemicals are really not wanted. They note that one drill rig was pink-ribboned in an exercise in pinkwashing!
Fracking is dirty and dangerous. Fossil fuels, best before 1950, are now well past their sell-by date. Please help us stop this horrible, anachronistic, life-unfriendly project. And the strange economics that prioritises a dirty, short-lived business at the expense of plant, animal and human health.
Please respond to reassure us that you have read the Medact Report, which is attached to this email. Thankyou.
Please choose clean energy and energy and environmental conservation; the planting of fruit, nut and medicinal trees and plants that we’ll need in a world short of harvests (only 60 global harvests left although we in the UK have 100 apparently!). Investing in kind-hearted 21st century planet-aware businesses could provide the solutions and the educational awareness the good folk of Swanage deserve for their well-being and hopefully long-term safe survival .
We are going to send a similar letter to Dorset County Councillors, and we hope that some of you will join us addressing this serious matter, for the sake of Swanage and our children’s future.
