Letters to the Editor Policy

Bachmann Condemns

On this proposition, I would stake my life. However much I did, indeed, impugn President Obama’s lack of political intestinal fortitude, I always believed in his innate personal decency. The proposition being, the man abominates how fresh and powerful partisan advantage came the way of his presidency.

The near-fatal shooting of Representative Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords changed drastically this country’s political atmospherics. How drastically do I mean? Nobody should be surprised, when Gabby’s congressional colleague and Tea Party sweetheart, namely, Michelle Bachmann condemns those by-now infamous cross-hairs.

Had Central Casting of Hollywood lore been called upon to select for martyrdom the best fit for the liberal-center style of politics, Gabby would’ve fit the bill. According to the good people at Cosmopolitan, that woman was at the apex of sensual magnetism.

Already the current administration is benefiting. House Speaker Boehner has had to postpone the vote by his Republican cohorts to repeal “Obamacare.” If the postponement lasts long enough, the vote for repeal will become impossible. The call for repeal will be replaced by the call for “tweak.” That will be a victory for Obama. That will make it harder for Senate Minority Leader “Mitch” to limit President Barack Hussein Obama junior to only one term. And there’s more.

Consequently, the Republicans and their Tea Party allies will have broken a very significant promise to those special interests that anonymously bankrolled the former’s campaign to take the House. Disappointed donors tend to become reluctant to donate a second time, say, generously so.

Sincerely,

A Alexander Stella

Susquehanna, PA

We Strongly Agree

Last week the AP ran a story regarding the disposal of water produced from Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale wells. In their response to this story, the PA Department of Environmental Protection stated they were “appalled” by the premise of the article and they emphasized that “every drop of tap water that was publicly treated is required to meet the safe drinking water standard.” As a Marcellus Shale exploration and production company operating in the Commonwealth, we strongly agree with the PADEP and confirm our commitment to continued advances in new technology to reduce and reuse our produced water.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (Cabot) was a company mentioned by name in the AP story. The story alleged that Cabot dumped its produced water into the Neshaminy Creek in Hatfield, PA. This is entirely inaccurate, misleading, and does a disservice to Cabot. More importantly, this misstatement of the facts does a disservice to the residents of Hatfield. For the record, Cabot follows detailed water management plans and procedures that specify where the Company obtains its water, how it is handled, and how it is recycled or disposed. Cabot hires qualified firms to pre-treat and properly dispose of the waste water. In the case mentioned in the AP story, Cabot contracted with the firm PSC Industrial to handle a portion of the Company’s produced water. Cabot expected PSC to properly treat and dispose of the water; Cabot did not direct or authorize PSC to dispose of any water into the Neshaminy Creek. Once Cabot learned of this action, we put an immediate stop to the practice and stopped using PSC for wastewater pre-treatment and disposal. Cabot regrets that any water found its way into Neshaminy Creek. However, all of your readers should note that the water in question had been treated before it was released by the contractor.

Since the spring of 2010, Cabot has recycled 100 percent of the produced water from its energy exploration operations. As part of its industry-leading waste water management program, Cabot is striving to eliminate any impact to the waters of the Commonwealth. Cabot’s water management program is just one element of our commitment to being a good neighbor, good corporate citizen and an outstanding environmental steward.

Sincerely,

George Stark

Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation

We Recognize Our Board Members

If someone asked you to take an unpaid position, devote an average of 20 hours a month to that job, and learn about things that may be out of your comfort zone like multi-million dollar budgets, textbooks, and bus schedules would you take the position? Few people would, but thankfully we have nine dedicated members of our community who do just that - the Blue Ridge School Board.

These elected volunteers are your voice in your school district. They are your friends, neighbors, community leaders, parents at your school and engaged senior citizens who make difficult decisions on budgets and finance, curriculum and paths to student achievement in your local school. They make sure your concerns are heard and the unique challenges, values, culture and circumstances of the community are reflected in how your children are educated.

Through the efforts of these individuals, public schools are taking flight to new levels and greater achievement. Along with the teachers, school administrators and staff, board members are just some of the individuals working hard everyday to make sure students are properly educated in preparation for life.

This month, local communities are encouraged to honor the contributions of their local school board members. Too often we neglect to recognize the commitment and hard work of these men and women who serve as advocates for our schools. The staff and students of the Blue Ridge School District are asking all members of the community to take a moment and tell a school board member: “Thanks for caring about our children.”

The Blue Ridge School District applauds our board members, Laurie Bonner, Christina Cosmello, Harold Empett, Priscinda Gaughan, Alan Hall, John Ketchur, Shane Rumage, Joel Whitehead and Christina Whitney, for their vision and voice to help shape a better tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Blue Ridge School District

Cain Killed Able

The shootings in Tucson has brought the right of Americans to keep and bear arms once again to the forefront. Opponents of this right are charging that inflammatory rhetoric on the part of Conservatives contributed to the shootings. There has been absolutely no evidence to support the contention. Nevertheless, the charge continues. Why? The obvious answer is that the Progressives oppose the 2nd amendment just as they scorn many features of our Constitution. It also seems that they scorn the 1st amendment as well as they move to control speech if they can get away with it.

People are going to kill people. Cain killed Able. Gun, knife, bat or bare hands, it is a fact of life. But gun control only advances the agenda of the totalitarian minded. Look at history - the first thing that an aspiring dictator does is to confiscate the weapons that could be used against him. To wit: Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and all others without exception. Our Founders inserted the 2nd amendment into our Constitution for two reasons. First was to allow the people to protect themselves from criminals. The second was to allow the people to protect themselves from the government. How smart they were. How dumb of us if we don’t see that. Every right has unintended consequences. There will always be Tucsons. They are not a valid reason to attack the 2nd.

On TV, I watched President Obama in Tucson on the 12th. I was very impressed and moved by his memorial speech. It was strangely interrupted by student applause many times but I determined for myself that the applause was meant as strong student support for the slain and wounded. I thought to myself - would not that he was on the side of our Founders. I find that I very much can like the man but I cannot embrace his message. I can only imagine what he could accomplish for good and the future with a different ideology.

Sincerely,

Joe McCann

Elk Lake, PA

Firearms Do Not Kill

You personally know that the tragedy in Arizona, is not the gun’s fault, don't you? That needs to be said, and read. The gun is not the problem and we should be able to buy them if we want them. I taught 4-Her's for years, firearm safety, certified and I along with hundreds of 4-H leaders taught hundreds of 4-H kids how to safely handle and shoot firearms. The term is "firearms," and how to use a "fire arm;" that’s what they are called, not "weapons."

Firearms do not kill anyone - rifles, pistols, automatics don't either, unless something terrible happens to the thinking of the "user" (except accidental).

I am an avid hunter, as are millions across our country. I am teaching my grandchildren how to safely handle a firearm and how to fire one. I intend to continue and teach anyone who cares enough to carry on the sport. I was asked by one grandson, he is 7, do I have to hunt and kill deer? I told him the sport of hunting would not care if you go hunting with anyone and if you don't want to shoot or kill any legal game, you don't have to. You can do whatever you want and if you don't enjoy going with poppy you don't have to. He then asked, can I still go hunting; yes, I told him with a gentle hug, yes of course, and you meet me at the rifle range anytime.

The safe handling of firearms is a lifetime of learning, not just one or two classes. I am sure each of us learn to enjoy the safe use of a firearm forever.

See, the gun does not do the killing! The gun has the potential to kill, yes, and once that trigger is pulled you can't pull that bullet back! However, let that point be pondered.

Each child I teach to handle a firearm, knows to point a gun in a safe direction no matter if the firearm is loaded or not.

I do feel that large clips or certain amounts of ammunition should be red flagged by gun salesmen, but please don't stop selling and blaming the guns.

If they out law guns, the outlaws would still have them! The definition of an outlaw is anyone who does an act that is outside the law.

Sincerely,

Peter A. Seman

Thompson, PA

DEP vs. Issues With Water?

Now that the DEP has made the decision not to be involved in the water troubles in Dimock, I think I can mention something about the DEP, and the water issues that remain unsolved, without anyone thinking I'm just a curmudgeon.

The DEP has big water problems with the aqueduct system that supplies drinking water to NYC. They have been running studies on this problem for decades. They have spent $300 Million dollars, studying. They want to break ground for it in 2013, and will have the by-pass built by 2019. The budget? $1.2 billion. That does not include the supplemental costs that will incur while they fix it. Please add in an additional $900 Million. The aqueduct presently leaks an estimated 15 to 35 million gallons of water a day. Those figures vary due to the amount of demand, or water in the system. The DEP has been monitoring the leak since the 1990's. Apply this real time numbers to the Dimock problem, and one can see why a reasonable person would not want the help coming from the DEP. If indeed it comes.

I now appreciate the young Chinese man who stated, the difference between the American and the Chinese is that the Chinese just do it. There are not years and untold money spent on thinking. That statement can go either way.

Maybe we are too arrogant to think water would be a fire-starter in a rural area, while the big city just takes and wastes. Kind of makes me wonder just what would be the outcome, had sensible people not acted.

All these facts are easy to research. I read mine in the Hard Hat News, because I wonder who the well positioned contractor will be.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Allen

Summersville, PA

In Order To Create A More Perfect Union

For decades Socialism has been demoralizing our sacred image and likeness in marriage and the human family. Their plan is written into the present national health care plan, abortion on demand; on demand, fully funded, world wide. Their goal, our entry into a global world order of financing crisis management and the rationing of everything.

Since Roe v. Wade over 45 million Americans have lost their lives by surgical removal from their mothers’ womb. Add all the family members traumatized to one extent or another by this evil, the near total sum of our population has been victimized.

We can ignore God only so long. We definitely need to come together and learn to plead for help; our enemies are gaining. Let’s get involved, at least in prayer that is so important for Americans annual March for Life, Monday, January 24. Get in touch with Pennsylvanians for human life, join the march for freedom.

The God given rights of every human person is the fundamental issue of our day. The Constitution is founded upon the reality that human life is sacred and clearly defines it as such. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. Abortion, then, is the most serious violation of human rights, every one of them is a userpation of the Constitution of the United Sates. All reasoning that tolerates abortion is a denial of our responsibilities as citizens, to defend the image and likeness of God in all men. Male and female, He created them, from the moment of conception, as testified by the founding fathers as “self evident.” It is by this sacred union of God that we are endowed with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Obviously, in the light of innocent children we must confidently assert that they are the irrefutable gift of God, heirs with us in eternity.

Sincerely,

John Mann

Susquehanna, PA

Who Really Rules America?

The gas rep knew exactly what Ron Gulla wanted to hear. And that's what he told him. “When we're done,” he told Ron, “all you will see is something like a fire hydrant pumping gas for us and royalties for you.” What about the pipeline? “That will be landscaped over. You won't even be able to find it.” Will my well water be contaminated? “Almost impossible. We're fracking thousands of feet below the aquifer.”

Ron glanced at the lease. It was written in purposely obtuse legalize, long, and intimidating. He signed. But Ron neglected to read part 3, section 13, subsection 6, paragraph 9. But even if he had, chances are he would not have fully understood it.

As the years passed, Ron saw his property change from a farm to an industrial complex over which he had no control. “When I saw what was happening on my property, I couldn't believe it,” said Ron. “They totally misinformed us and misrepresented the lease.” So they did, Ron. But you signed the lease. And that made all the difference.

Ron decided to fight. He applied for a mortgage on his erstwhile farm to finance a lawsuit. The bank refused. The loan officer told him his land was worthless as a farm and the noise, fumes, and contaminated well water disqualified it as a saleable residence.

About thirty years ago Halliburton invented the technique of horizontal drilling. The lateral section was injected with a chemically-laced liquid at ultrahigh pressure to shatter rock. But the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 roadblocked this technology.

Then, in 2005, George Bush, in full accord with Vice President Dick Cheney, a former VP of Halliburton, exempted the oil and gas companies from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It also exempted the drillers from disclosing the 600 chemicals in fracking fluid that are pumped into the ground. These chemicals include benzene, toluene, ethyl-benzene, and xylene - a perfect cocktail for cancer; it lacks only an olive.

These same carcinogens are spewed into the air by evaporates which separate fracking fluid from methane, the so-called “natural” gas.

But Ron, like so many other leasees, was ill informed. Had he been more knowledgeable he would have questioned why the Bush/Cheney exemptions were necessary. If fracking fluids were safe, then exemptions would not be necessary. The very exemptions are mute witnesses to the inherent threats fracking fluids pose to groundwater.

Groundwater is generally thought of as a stagnant, subterranean reservoir. It is not. Groundwater is part of the hydrologic cycle of precipitation, surface water, underground water, transpiration, and evaporation. It is a dynamic interconnected system.

Precipitation and snowmelt runoff into surface water. This peculates down into groundwater. Groundwater, in turn, returns to surface water via springs to rivers, lakes, and flowing artesian wells. Trees uptake groundwater and transpire it back into the air together with surface evaporation where it eventually returns as precipitation.

Construction of roads, well pads, pipelines, storm water runoff, spills of drilling fluids and fracking chemicals, all infiltrate onto surface water and into groundwater. The surface water and groundwater are interconnected; either one can contaminate the other.

This is of particular concern in a rural state like Pennsylvania. Approximately 85 percent of the population depends on groundwater for consumption. This concern is magnified by the complexity of groundwater dynamics.

Even though groundwater in Pennsylvania has been extensively studied, major questions remain unanswered: What is the total volume of this vital resource? What percentage is unusable brine? How does it interact in the hydrologic cycle? What are the precise rates of discharge and recharge?

Nevertheless, Pennsylvania, like Ron, rushes heedlessly into granting permits for drilling pads, each with its complement of a dozen or more wells. Why?

We, the “small people,” as the president of BP called the average American, are not the big whale contributors to the politicians. It is the oil and gas industries that dole out hundreds of millions of dollars for the election and reelection of favored politicos. It makes for a mutually beneficial quid-pro-quo relationship.

Governor elect Tom Corbett fueled his successful campaign with a $900,000 “contribution” from the gas companies. Where will his sympathies lie?

And will the state legislature ever approve a New York style moratorium on gas drilling? “The legislature will never vote for a moratorium,” said Gov. Corbett implying where its sympathies lie.

This prompts a larger question: Who really rules America? Is it a democratic republic governed by the “small people,” or is it a monied oligarchy run by powerful CEOs and Big Government - a corpogracy?

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA

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