The Issue: The wisdom of fracking in New York and opposition to it by celebrities like Yoko Ono.
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James Panero appears to have done most of his research about the positive financial aspects of fracking, and dismisses any safety concerns out of hand (“Choking a Golden Goose,” PostOpinion, Aug. 6).
To be fair, it is true there is no irrefutable evidence that fracking contaminates groundwater. However, to call it safe, as he does, is extremely premature. There isn’t enough overall information on potential hazards.
He calls fracking “a safe, tested means of extracting a clean, local, naturally abundant resource.”
Local and naturally abundant are true. But we don’t really know if it’s safe, as the infrastructure to assess the effects of the process has not kept pace with the fracking industry’s expansion.
Also, many states don’t require companies to disclose exactly what chemicals they are using in the process.Theron Steiner
Jersey City, NJ
While doing some flood relief in Fort Plain, I could not help but notice the depths of poverty into which this once-prosperous area has descended.
I met a fellow volunteer who hailed from British Columbia, where they’ve been fracking for years.
According to him, “If you drive a car and use a computer, you have no right to complain about fracking.”
It poses minimal environmental threat, and the hydrocarbon used is a first cousin to the hydrocarbon with which Monsanto fertilizes its fields.
When I see poverty-stricken people sitting on a mountain of golden shale while wealthy, empty-headed elitists block fracking, I think: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Robert Reeg
Stony Point
Maybe the rich leftists like Yoko Ono want to have a perpetual underclass that will beg for morsels and vote Democratic.
Fracking has been proven effective and safe; it creates economic booms everywhere but here in New York.
New York politicians, headed by Gov. Cuomo, are cowards who are afraid of confronting the conservationists.
How will they face their children, or, better yet, their consciences?
Charlie Honadel
Staten Island