"Will Dryden Go Dry?"

Photo: Put a brick in it - a brick in your toilet tank reduces water needed for flush. That is a good thing when you have to pour water into the tank for each flush, when your well goes dry.

“Will Dryden Go Dry?" That's a good question. It is being asked by a Dryden-based pro-fracking group, in terms of the Dryden Town Board voting for a zoning ordinance that would ban gas drilling in the Town of Dryden (August 2 is the likely date for the vote).

I am wondering the same thing, but in terms of Dryden's WATER WELLS going dry, due to this devastatingly dry summer.

How about it, Dryden residents - do we have water to spare from our creeks to use for fracking, at 5 million gallons of freshwater per frac?

When cows drink 50 gallons of water a day and more when being milked, aren't we already down to the dry creek bed in many places, and aren't many of you having to truck in water for cisterns and dry wells? This is the story I heard from friends in Lansing and Caroline last night, and I doubt it is different in Dryden.

Pro-frackers state that we have "spare, extra" water falling down out of the sky that we can use for fracking, and no one will notice its loss. Who are they kidding?

Farmers are smart, surely they won't fall for this nonsense. Right now, the creeks and our famous waterfalls are down to a trickle. Climate predictions state that the "new normal" has arrived in the form of extreme weather patterns such as last winter's deep cold and the spring mega-rains, followed by an extended, deep dry season. We do not have any water to spare, not one drop, for fracking!

Our climate will, it is projected (by the Union of Concerned Scientists), shift toward that of Georgia's today, by the year 2100. I don't want to think about Georgia's 2100 climate, but the Southeastern states seem to think that climate change is a commie plot and won't listen, anyway.
Meanwhile, I am dealing with my own domestic well going dry, and learning that many folks on (unfiltered) wells around here have to deal with water shortages every summer. They pay to have water trucked in to cisterns planted in their yards, and they go to the lakes and creeks for their baths and the laundromats for their laundry. That is the summer pattern here -- always has been; and is going to worsen as the "new normal" climate takes hold.

"Will Dryden Go Dry?" It already is dry -- and it will be parched and barren if fracking is allowed.