Thursday, September 15, 2011

My well is back but frackers want my water - and my air, my land, and my quiet enjoyment of my property

My well ran dry for about a month this just-past summer. That uncomfortable period was followed by a second month of begging the plumber to come and figure out what was wrong with the PUMP.

After Tropical Storm Lee deluged my area and caused historic downstream flooding and suffering, the plumber finally got here, with an escort of two guys who were gonna pull the pump and replace it at astronomical cost.

Turned out that there was just grit in the pump from the dry weeks. That was flushed out, and I now have hot showers and all the joys of plentiful (but carefully conserved) water from a shallow well drilled into a jumble of glacial debris, where the water fills the crevices between the boulders and pebbles not too far beneath the house.

That was last week. This week, angry Anschutz Inc. of Denver Colorado has announced that they are suing the Town of Dryden NY, that's where my house is, to try and overturn the recently-passed zoning ordinance amendment that says that gas drilling and related activities are not in accord with the town's zoning ordinance or its general plan.

I would speculate (because that's the wording one uses when desirous of avoiding a lawsuit for libel, slander and generally having one's mouth shut by the power of the almighty dollar) that this lawsuit is closely tied to the Dryden NY GOP's plan to get a pro-fracking town supervisor elected in November in order to liberate Dryden from the shackles of environmental protection and burdensome regulation.

Why would these (alleged) doofuses aid and abet a company and industry that want to take away MY precious and very limited clean water supply, clean air, and the quiet enjoyment of my property? How do these (possibly) naive fools think they have the right to hold the door open to let in the gasaholics to destroy my land's value and uses?

One of these (apparent) idiots has written that we in Dryden will be constrained to a life of "genteel poverty" if we do not jump for the golden ring of gas development. And yet he said to me, with witnesses, that he himself does not have a lease on his land in Ellis Hollow and does not plan to obtain one. This publicly-revealed hypocrite is working on behalf of a candidate and a lawless industry, while hoping to keep the shit off his own shoes?

I am already living in genteel poverty. If this man's reckless, irresponsible actions lead to the destruction of my water, air, land and the quiet enjoyment of my property, what will I have left? Genteel poverty is all I've got, and he wants to let Aschutz take even that away from me.