WILDERNESS COMMITTEE

I’m just back from a week up north and what I saw left me shaken. Fracking infrastructure blankets northeast British Columbia from the Alberta border to the Rocky Mountains. Gas plants,compressor stations, well pads, flare stacks,pipelines, wastewater ponds — it just goes on, and on, and on.

Meeting with local communities, I heard how fracking was suspending their lives. Families and neighbourhoods are torn apart when one land owner rejects gas development money only for fracking infrastructure to move in right next door. People who planned to live out their days in a quiet countryside move as it becomes an industrial wasteland. Treasured hunting grounds become unrecognizable. Doctors report strange incidences of cancers and lung disease. Meanwhile, resident sare afraid to speak out.

And it’s only going to get worse. Proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants on the coast would require tens of thousands of new fracking wells in the province’s northeast. Not only would this further carve up the landscape and deprive it of water, but it would also pump the highly potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.

Tens of thousands of sites dot the landscape and more will be on the way unless we put a stop to it. It’s long past time to ban fracking in British Columbia.

https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/our-work