To the Expositor:
At the recent Canadian Water Resources Association Annual Congress held in Hamilton, questions were asked regarding the possible dangers of allowing fracking to take place on the Manitoulin Island.
The Keynote Speaker was Dr. Ralph Pentland, co-author of the book entitled ‘Down the Drain: How We are Failing to Protect our Water Resources.’ Dr. Pentland has impressive credibility, which can easily be checked on Google. When asked whether or not he would be in favour of fracking in a limestone area such as the Manitoulin, Dr. Pentland said no—there is still too much to be learned regarding the damage to groundwater as a result of pumping chemicals into the ground to release pockets of natural gas.
Also presenting at the congress was Ms Nicole O’Brien, Ph.D candidate from Waterloo University, who outlined the protests over test-well fracking on First Nations’ land in New Brunswick. She concluded that probably the protests accomplished far more than would have been accomplished through merely having discussions with the company. Since the company felt that it had the legal right to test drill, it would have continued drilling if First Nations had merely expressed their objections verbally.
Evidently, deeper pockets of gas are larger and yield more gas than shallow pockets, such as those found on the Manitoulin. As a result of this, it seems less likely, but certainly not out of the question, that fracking will take place here in the near future. However, when asked what will happen when all the deep wells are exhausted, the experts felt that the companies will likely return to exploit the shallow wells, until all possible sources have been exhausted.
The obvious lesson from this is: Make sure that the province will never allow fracking on the Manitoulin Island, and do that sooner rather than later.
Mike Wilton Dominion Bay
