Local Communities Should Have the Right to Protect Themselves from Fracking

It's unusual for the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post to run the same news stories or even agree on the top story. However, this morning they both headline the same study and link to the same Los Angles Times story: Man-made earthquakes increasing in central and eastern U.S., study finds.

What's the story about? The USGS has mapped earthquakes that apparently are caused by fracking for oil and gas and injecting millions of gallons of the spent water (and noxious chemicals) back into the earth. (Be sure to look at the map and the charts in the story.)

In spite of the growing data that fracking (or, more probably, injection wells) cause earthquakes, cities such as Denton, Texas may be denied the right to protect themselves from this dangerous technology. As posted yesterday, HB 40 is racing through the legislature of Texas, the state sponsored by the oil and gas industry. HB 40 would ban banning and take the right of local communities to protect themselves away and give it to the Texas Railroad Commission - the cronies of the oil and gas industry.

Texas prides itself as a state that enshrines the right of anyone to bear arms and to use those arms to protect life and property. Yet, the right of citizens to protect themselves against the greed of the oil and gas industry is disallowed.

With fracturing trumping democracy and corporations slurping up water from local communities, one wonders how long it will be until those rifles come off the racks of pick-up trucks and den rooms.