This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Gillian Graber considers herself an “accidental activist,” a stay-at-home mom who learned in 2014 that a gas company wanted to drill wells 2,400 feet from her house on the eastern outskirts of Pittsburgh and had a vague notion that fracking that close would be dangerous for her two young children.
She started reading everything she could find about the boom in harvesting gas from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale. She soon concluded that she was concerned not just about the drilling itself but also about its toxic byproducts. In the fracking process, millions of gallons of water are tainted first by chemicals used to extract the gas and then by potentially dangerous substances that had been safely sequestered in the shale for millions of years until drillers washed them up. Add to that tons of solid waste that can also be toxic. Wells can produce wastewater for decades.
“Holy ... Read more
