I said that the instance reported has been completely disproved and a fraud. Plenty of confirmation in the more respectable papers and online such as:
Fracking will cause your tap water to catch fire.The movie, Gasland, set this rumor ablaze. One particular scene shows a man lighting the water pouring from his kitchen faucet. The fact is tap water could be lit on fire long before fracking came about due to naturally occurring methane pockets in the ground. If your water comes from a well and the drilling was done poorly, you stand a chance of having flammable water. Investigators later
checked the man’s house and found the methane in his water was due to the way his well was drilled, fracking played no role. Additionally, when the filmmaker was confronted by the director of the pro-fracking film
FrackNation about why he failed to mention the fact that tap water could be lit on fire regardless of fracking, he claimed the information “wasn’t relevant.”
There is lots of stuff under the earth which seeps up quite naturally, radon gas in Dartmoor for example which is slightly radioactive and can collect under buildings. Methane commonly reaches the surface in various parts of the world and can be ignited where it emerges. The Orcacle at Delphi was emitting inflammable methane from the water back in ancient times but I doubt if the Greeks went in for fracking very much in those days.
There was an article in one of the more accurate newspapers recently giving a more balanced view of the process. On one hand we have people saying the process is perfectly safe and then there is the mass hysteria predicting the end of the world being put out by the meeja and tabloids. Rumour is being quoted as fact and the whole thing is out of hand.
I live just 35 minutes drive from Balcombe where the rent-a- mob is currently in residence and I can report that we have experienced no earthquakes whatsoever so far. Anyway, the company is drilling for oil not fracking and we have a number of small oil wells over the South of England, particularly in Dorset, which have been going for years with no noticeable environmental impact.
I'm afraid it just irritates me when people credulously repeat things without doing a bit of checking the facts.
I'm sure there are risks associated with fracking and they need to be assessed and managed but the quality of debate on here is not going to help very much in that respect.
Colin