Letter to the editor: Frackers are wasting our water

Late last month, state Sen. Kim Ward sent an email to her mailing list, urging her constituents to conserve water.

“The Department of Environmental Protection declared a statewide drought watch, and is encouraging residents and businesses to voluntarily conserve water by reducing nonessential water use,” wrote Ward.

One “nonessential use” of water is fracking. As our board member Darlene Leslie noted in her op-ed “In drought, water should be for people, not profit” (June 27, TribLIVE), a single company’s fracking operations in Penn Township consume 107,100,000 gallons of water annually: 63% as much water as all 7,788 households in the township combined.

Unlike water used by residences, the water consumed in fracking is single-use: it cannot be safely recycled or repurposed after it is contaminated. That water is gone forever. A single company responsible for almost two-thirds as much water consumption as all the families that actually live here put together.

If Ward is actually concerned about “non-essential use” of water, why is she silent on this? Politicians should stop putting the responsibility for drought on ordinary people, and look instead to industry. Maybe the reason why Ward hasn’t done this has something to do with the sources of her campaign donations.

Ward should go after the biggest source of waste, instead of scolding families with vegetable gardens.

Ryan Graber

Trafford

The writer is a board member of Protect PT.