LTE on Drilling and People’s Rights
Posted on December 12, 2014 on mlawd.org
Letter to the Editor from MLAWD member George C. Williston, Hastings
A couple of years ago, a few people brought their concerns over the public health dangers of fracking and “injection” wells to the Barry County Board of Commissioners. With two minutes each, people asked that commissioners do something preventive about those dangers. As far as I know, the board didn’t do anything. Now we are told that further pleas to the county board are a waste of time since the board can’t do anything, and furthermore the effort is “futile” (Hastings Banner Nov. 27). Of course, these requests ask for prevention of future harm to life in the area.
It is a good thing that men on Lexington Green and at Concord Bridge under Col. Prescott facing British Regiments on the 19th of April 1775 didn’t slink away seeing their hope for freedom as futile. We might still be British had they done that. Many times over in the history of this country, people have faced great odds to get and keep the rights they have, and didn’t give up and melt away in hopelessness.
Actually, the rights of local people and even the rights of property owners are being snuffed out by Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, laws, courts, and the Michigan Legislature in the matters of fracking and injection wells. People trying to prevent drilling on public land in Barry and Allegan counties were turned away by the courts in both counties. Recently, an oil well was permitted by the MDEQ near Ann Arbor in Scio Township, I believe, over the protest of local people and their elected local organizations. The DEQ permitter said the well was not within 600 feet of a house. Would anyone in their right mind want an oil well clanging, banging, and lighted up 24 hours a day 600 feet from their house? Or drilling on public land? The DEQ operates in the interest of oil companies, and not in the long-term public interest of life in Michigan.
The options of the county board may have been narrowed by the party in power in the Michigan Legislature. That right remains to be challenged by commissioners who have a commitment to the public health of people living here now and in the future. To represent the long-term interest of people of Barry County, the board has to work to find ways to challenge existing limits and not be put down by any perception of the opposition, whether it includes loyalties to the political party in power in Lansing and/or the governor. There is a long-term danger to public health from modern slick water, high‑pressure fracking and the injection wells which can be further explained to those commissioners willing to listen.
