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Coal Bed Methane Extraction: "Don't Worry. It's Not Fracking”\"
The Wheeler Review is itself a response by the previous NDP government to the outcry about fracking, and to the clear lack of confidence in the government's in house review. One way that lack of confidence manifests has been the unwillingness of anyone to take the fracking wastes held in 'temporary' storage ponds since the fracking nearly six years ago.
The Department of Environment has repeatedly assured everyone about the safety of the processing of fracking waste waters that have been in Kennetcook, and now Debert. But those assurances have been rejected by Colchester County and the Town of Windsor, who have refused to have the wastes discharged into their sewage treatment plants.
Coal bed methane extraction is a technology closely associated with shale bed fracking. While there have long been leases in Nova Scotia for exploration, the very first that was heard about actual plans was in a news release from the new provincial government early in November.
Natural gas exploration in Pictou County is getting underway, under strict regulations from the departments of Energy and Environment.
“East Coast Energy has all of the necessary permits in place to begin exploring for local and cleaner sources of natural gas,” said Energy Minister Andrew Younger.
The permits do not allow the use of hydraulic fracturing.
East Coast Ventures went to even greater lengths to distance their project from fracking.
“It's not fracking.” But coal bed methane extraction produces waste water in similar volumes, and with the same potential for “naturally occuring” toxins- the same toxins whose presence in the Kennetcook fracking wastes has produced the impasse that has stranded them in 'temporary' waste ponds. |Read more|