Earth Day activists rallied on Main Street to protest against the practice of fracking in natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania, though others were completely opposed to any drilling in Marcellus Shale regions of the state.
Late Thursday afternoon, about three dozen Green Party of Pennsylvania members held up signs to ban fracking and protect water and other natural resources as they stood outside the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) office building and around the corner of Main and Swede streets.
Fracking is short for hydro-fracturing, a process where water, sand and chemicals are injected into the earth at high pressure to fracture rock formations deep underground in an attempt to bring natural gas to the surface, according to the watchdog group, Frack Action (frackaction.org). Critics of fracking claim the practice is contaminating water supplies.
Ed Bonsell, who lives in Hatfield, said natural gas is falsely touted as being clean source of energy. “They say it is cleaner than coal, but it’s not,” he said.
Companies drilling for natural gas in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation are yielding other gases, such as methane, and other pollutants that are endangering the environment, he said. “They’re going to poison the water supply for a generation,” Bonsell said. “We got to get off the fossil fuel.”