Published: June 15, 2009 07:35 am      

Letters for June 15, 2009

Many concerns about hydrofracking

I am writing to express my great concern about the health risks associated with chemicals being injected into the ground, and radioactive materials and toxic gases being released from the shale, as a result of the hydrofracking of gas wells.

As a nurse, I am shocked to think that benzene, toluene, diesel fuel and other dangerous and cancer-causing chemicals will be injected into our earth. I am afraid of radioactive materials becoming part of our environment here on the surface, when they belong deep below us under the rocks.

I know the companies give assurance, saying that the point at which they drill is far below the aquifer and they use concrete and steel around the well bores, but that still leaves me with questions:

What about all the water that is not recovered on the surface? What if the containment pits leak? What if animals drink from the pits? What if children played in or drank that water? Will these pits be breeding grounds for large numbers of mosquitoes, increasing the risk for cases of West Nile virus? What if there was another flood, or even just lots of heavy rain, and, all the water was washed out of those pits? Can benzene and toluene be filtered out of the water at one of our local wastewater treatment facilities? What if the concrete cracks?

When incidents of water contamination have occurred, what is it they test for before saying that the water is safe to drink or to fish in? Do they test for the hundreds of chemicals used in the industry or not?

Will it be possible to grow and eat locally grown organic vegetables if there is contamination? How will we know?

For information on the hazards of fracking chemicals, visit the website www.endocrinedisruption.com.

Delores Bennett

Unadilla

Leftists' morality puts terrorists first

Leftist critics of my May 13 letter charge me with endorsing torture. I didn't. Because they underscore my pastor/reverend titles, doubtless to exacerbate their charge, I reply, though their letters otherwise warrant no response.

Notwithstanding their venom, I'm unmoved; yeah, I prize every word I wrote. For waterboarding, qualified by strict guidelines and as applied at Gitmo, was declared lawful by the Bush 43 Justice Department. Fact is, waterboarding has, since its inception, been lawful, until the advent of our Marxian socialist President Obama, and torture has been unlawful.

Col. Ollie North, in a Hannity radio interview, said that he, as a special-ops instructor, waterboarded "hundreds" of trainees, under military guidelines, and that the 20- to 40-second procedure is not torture. The head is not underwater and no water enters the lungs.

Waterboarding was applied at Gitmo to three death-deserving terrorists of high-intelligence value. One was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, "the mastermind of 9/11, who also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl." Waterboarding and other lawful measures, asserted former VP Cheney, "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people." (New York Post, May 22, Pages 9, 30, 31.)

God ordained civil government to protect by the sword society from enemies without and within (Romans 13:3, 4). But my morally superior critics would have spared three villainous terrorists discomfort and heartlessly exposed thousands of innocent lives to violence and death. Some morality!

By that "morality" and their loud silence, these leftists, it seems, also heartlessly sanction torturous abortions, including the butcher of partial-birth abortion, and the flagitious abandonment of babies surviving abortion (infanticide). All that, while they would squander "compassion" on head-severing terrorists.

Until my leftist critics shed their perverse morality, their further effusions I'll style appropriately _ hypocritical.

The Rev. Mitch Wright

Stamford

Wright is pastor of Hope Presbyterian Church in Oneonta.