This man wants to stop America’s salad bowl from being fracked

[RiverLover]

This man wants to stop America’s salad bowl from being fracked

By Tara Lohan

Cross-posted from Faces of Fracking
26 Oct 2014 8:35 AM

"Many people may know of Monterey County not for it’s vegetables, but for it’s beaches, bays, and tiny towns. But it also contains the lesser visited but no less vital Salinas Valley. It’s the muse for numerous John Steinbeck novels and the likely source of most of your salad. Agriculture here yields more than $4 billion annually and 45,000 jobs.

Running through the valley is the Salinas River, which does a disappearing act during the dry summers, dipping and diving northwest for 170 miles before being swallowed by the gaping mouth of Monterey Bay.

Mitchell believes that fracking poses a risk to the county’s agricultural lands by threatening the watershed, including the Salinas River, its tributaries and reservoirs, and the underground aquifers on which most people depend on for water. A spill of fracking fluid or wastewater from the process could pollute surface water, or seep underground. And there is also the threat of groundwater being contaminated if fracking fluid, which can contain numerous toxic chemicals, seeps through cracks in the cement barrier at the well bore or move through fissures in underground layers of rock."

http://grist.org/climate-energy/this-man-wants-to-stop-americas-salad-bowl-from-being-fracked/

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

1. K & R, nt