The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I been thinking about this fracking stuff lately, digging wells down into sediment, then opening up fissures to get to the oil layers.  Down here on the South End we got wells at different levels of aquifer.  You pump too much water, you pull salt from the Sound.  If I’m on that aquifer, well, I get salt too.

My neighbors who have a water association decided they had some illegal hook-ups on their water system, despite my assertions that the original developer had taken the folks’ money for a watershare and deposited it in his account without registering it with the state, so naturally they closed a valve to their own homes, jacked up the pressure to the suspected water poachers and blew out their lines.   Not exactly  real friendly.

Not exactly real smart either, it turns out.  Unbeknownst to them, an underground supply line ruptured too, which meant a week or more of uninterrupted pumping until their water started to taste like the rim of a tequila glass.  I like to think it was Bad Karma, but they thought it was just Bad Luck.  The point is, we’re all in this together.  You screw it up, you screw it up for all of us.

This fracking, well, I figure you got thousands of wildcat drillers hungry for cash.  Probably safe, for the most part, although there are enough stories about water taps shooting flames that it would worry me to see fracking drill trucks come rolling in next door.  Course, I’m a natural born worrier.  Especially when the folks doing the reassuring are the same folks making the money.

My neighbors might be figuring a few fractures down below their basements might help them hit a new water vein.  One that doesn’t taste like my tears.  And if it doesn’t, maybe they’ll get enough money to pay for bottled water deliveries the rest of their lives.  Me, I’m going to sit pat.  My water isn’t on their aquifer and I sure don’t want a fracture putting us together.  To paraphrase Robert Frost:  good aquifers make good neighbors.  I’d like to keep a little distance between my drinking water and theirs.  Especially when they decide I might not be legally entitled….

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2013 at 4:31 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.