The burning faucet

Sometimes things get so terrible, it’s hard not to laugh. In the Western U.S., journalists have been warning of the  horrors of coalbed methane “fracking” for years and years. Now that this drilling process — which stuffs sand, water and a whole bunch of evil chemicals down a bore hole to crack rock so natural gas can escape from it — has gone East, the sorry results are getting fairly big play in the major media. ProPublica has done some of the best recent work on fracking, and now the investigative site tells of the first peer-reviewed journal article to show that fracking near water wells leads to methane levels in drinking water so high that … that faucets can be lit on fire! I’m waiting for the Fox News take on this, maybe O’Reilly saying, “Now look at these liberal academics, spending all sorts of money — some of it probably taxpayer money, your money — to complain about people getting free natural gas delivered to their homes.”