Open Letter to Council
Dear Mayor Houston and City Council Members,
This afternoon I received the following email from Pat Popple, a lady from Chippewa Falls, WI, a small city in Chippewa County, located in a region of Wisconsin that has experienced lots of sand mining activity, including an array of negative repercussions. Pat is a lady who is EXTREMELY knowledgeable on the hydraulic fracturing industry, and especially the sand mining/washing/processing aspects of the industry. She has been TIRELESSLY educating people (from around the nation) for the past 11 years, to help the citizenry understand the risks this industry has been imposing on the public health and to the detriment of the environment.
In an earlier email to many friends in Kanab, I shared information from a public forum I attended (June 18) in Eau Claire, WI … “Particulate Air Quality Around Wisconsin Frac Sand Mines” … presented by Dr. Crispin Pierce, UWEC. In that forum I inquired of the chemical used in washing the sand, polyacrylamide. From that discussion Dr. Pierce offered a side comment that “the hydraulic fracturing industry has managed to gain protection, and to “keep secrets,” by their NOT having to disclose the array of chemicals used in the actual fracking process. I did not know this, and I was quite stunned/disturbed upon learning of such.
I had copied Pat in that email, and today she sent me this comment on polyacrylamide and acrylamide. There’s a lot to read in what she has shared, and attached herein.
My closing thoughts for each of you to ponder …
Being
gone from Kanab for a year now, I still observe from afar, from my
Wisconsin home. What I find most perplexing in what has been unfolding,
is this … “that the city fathers of Kanab, a community in the high
desert of America’s DRY southwest, a section of the nation likely to
have water shortages in coming decades, is not only jeopardizing the
potential shortage of that valuable, precious, and finite drinking
water, but the city fathers are doing so to promote a dirty and
polluting industry. Think about it … fresh water to expedite
pollution!! Further, I am watching these same city fathers adding
another element of risk … knowing that the washing (of the sand)
chemicals have the real potential to breakdown and leach toxins into the
soils and negatively affect the surrounding environment. How that
leaching would precipitate, propogate, and disseminate, I do not know,
but “within several radial miles” seems likely, and making its way into
nearby drinking sources, is feasible. if each of you pauses and
contemplates all the environmental possibilities, and all the known (and
unknown) risks, and being “the citizens guardians,” if you are willing
to give your “thumbs up” to SELLING KANAB’S WATER, then that makes you
culpable of risking the quality of LIFE (human and animals) within the
proximity.” If you do, it is clearly a Double Whammy you are imposing
on the people of this fine community!
I don’t live in Kanab anymore, and I have no skin in this game, but I know several hundred good people in Kanab. As such, my conscience is bothered if I remain silent. It is for those several hundred, and for all 7,600 of Kane County, that I implore you to stop this outrageous proposal. If SRS finds another solution, that is their right, but for the Kanab to be part of condoning this ugliness makes no sense whatsoever!
The ball is squarely in your court! Please take the high road!
Sincerely.
Steve Hogseth
Menomonie, WI