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Help rein in a fracking industry run amok
Frances Beinecke President Natural Resources Defense Council
The fracking boom has already taken a devastating toll on communities across America, leaving toxic pollution and plummeting property values in its wake.
Now, the oil and gas industry has set its sights on our national forests, wildlife refuges -- even lands within view of national parks.
Instead of protecting our natural heritage and its clean water supplies, the Obama Administration is preparing to step aside and let fracking run roughshod over them.
Tell President Obama to rein in Big Oil & Gas by imposing a fracking moratorium on all federal lands -- one that will last until he keeps his promise to protect us from the excesses of the oil and gas industry.
Here’s what’s at stake: wild places from Virginia to California ... clean drinking water for millions of Americans ... and backyards across the country where the government controls the oil and gas rights beneath private property.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- charged with safeguarding our public lands from the worst abuses of fracking -- has just proposed a shocking set of rules that reads like an industry wish list.
Those rules would not stop energy companies from fracking next to national parks, inside national forests, and across millions more acres of treasured lands. Nor would they stop the frackers from drilling alongside drinking water supplies on public lands.
Here are just a few of the places where the BLM is essentially preparing to hang out a sign that says “Open for Drilling:” Virginia’s George Washington National Forest ... Ohio’s Wayne National Forest ... Colorado’s White River National Forest ... California’s Los Padres National Forest. Not to mention lands outside Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks!
Plus: the BLM controls the drilling rights to some 57 million acres of private property -- a vast area as big as Georgia.
So for many Americans, BLM has the power to green light fracking operations literally in their own backyards. Do you think an agency that has cozied up to the oil and gas lobby should decide the fate of vulnerable citizens from coast to coast?
Please help us hold President Obama to his word and protect the American people from an oil and gas industry that is running amok.
Urge the President to impose a fracking moratorium on our public lands right now. With one stroke of his pen he can safeguard our natural heritage, protect our drinking water and shield communities from California to Virginia that sit near public oil and gas reserves.
And call on him to move America beyond all fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, toward a future powered by 100% clean energy. We must do no less if we want to stave off catastrophic climate change.
Thank you for standing with us against the onslaught of fracking.
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council