New York Times Keeps Unemployment High By Lying About Fracking

Fracking is a new method of recovering natural gas that can lower energy costs and employ tens of thousands. So of course the New York Times is opposed:

The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas.

But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

Scared yet? Ready to call your State Representative and demand they halt fracking in your state? Geared up to protest in front of the schools of an extraction executive's children? Exactly the response the Times is hoping for with this scare story.

But like many a spooky bedtime tale, this one too is utterly, 100% false, as reported by the Times' spiritual sister, the Washington Post:

Tests of water in Pennsylvania downriver from sewage treatment plants that handle wastewater from natural gas drilling raised no red flags for radioactivity, the state Department of Environmental Protection said Monday.

All of the samples, taken in November and December, showed levels at or below the normal naturally occurring background levels of radioactivity, the agency said. All samples also showed levels below the federal drinking water standard for Radium 226 and 228, it said.

The department said it installed the sampling stations last fall to monitor the impact of Marcellus Shale gas drilling on water quality. The fast-growing industry in Pennsylvania....

So the reference to tainted waters in Pennsylvania is completely, 100% untrue. No correction has been issued by the Times, nor is one expected to be forthcoming, as the paper has reduced itself to a propaganda outfit for the liberal agenda, and no serious thinkers expect anything resembling "the truth" from it anymore.

Interesting that fracking is now the fastest growing industry in Pennsylvania. Interesting too that New York's Governor Cuomo Jr. has just appointed one Joe Martens as state environmental head, a man who has come out as anti-fracking on a number of occasions.

With thousands of new fracking applications pending in Pennsylvania, it looks as if even more j0bs and tax revenue will be flowing to the Keystone state, making New York's politicians look increasingly short-sighted and stupider than usual. Is the Times trying to pre-empt such a realization by the public by printing bald-faced lies about the process? Or are they so devoted to a carless, high-speed-rail-to-nowhere future for America that they are willing to tell whatever falsehoods are necessary to enact it?

Either way, Pennsylvania does not appear to be listening. Which seems to be the case for much of the mainstream media, as their leftist hysterics are tuned out by a population increasingly concerned about seeing and hearing realistic solutions for their future.

I don't think lying about about basic facts is going to help the media reverse that trend...