Ways to Stop Fracking, by Britt & Ramya

July 16, 2020

This month geologist Shalon Valak of Portland State University has finally come up with viable alternative to fracking. Hydraulic fracturing is the fracturing of rock by a pressurized liquid. Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. Fracking is dangerous: it has created earthquakes and puts billions of tons of chemicals into the air. Why do we still do it? We do it because a lot of the easy-to-get gas and oil is gone, and we are still greedy for more, so we result to fracking. Luckily, though, there are some solutions to our hunger for the energy, without using fracking. The relatively new company Stop The Fracking is helping people affected by fracking as well as campaigning to stop fracking. Just this month their scientists have come up with some clean energy solutions and effective inventions to stop the destruction. The challenge even now with these new solutions is to get the big oil billionaires to realize that clean energy will save the planet we are living in.


To the right is a photograph of the destruction after the Onraya Earthquake six months ago in the Gulf of Mexico. In this day in age, we need some things powered by energy, but fracking is taking it too far. Do we really want to wreck the planet we live in? We have known, proven green energy options. Fracking has caused many disasters, such as the Earthquake Onraya, which was due to a fracking job in Texas by the company Frack Drilling Inc. Earthquakes are the most often thing caused by fracking, and they happen a lot, but his was the worst ever. People even to this day are still recovering from the damage of Onraya. Fourteen tons of toxic chemicals were released into the air and over 140 million gallons of local drinking water was poisoned. Things like this tragedy are not going to get better, they're only going to get much worse unless we stop. Right now in the U.S. alone, there are 500,000 fracking sites that altogether use 72 trillion gallons of water and 360 billion gallons of chemicals. Worse yet, they use 600 different kinds of chemicals, toxins, and carcinogens. After reviewing these facts and the damage of Onraya, Congress is once again renewing talks of new green energy inventions.

As mentioned earlier, there are solutions. A new group dedicated to fighting fracking is called Stop The Fracking. It helps places that have been affected by natural disasters caused by fracking. It also comes up with more energy efficient objects. One of these inventions is the new Water-Powered Submarine Energy Station. It uses no artificial energy, only water. At the front of the Submarine Energy Station is a big compartment that water flows into, while inside the compartment is a turbine that turns the water into energy. That energy is transferred along cables to land-based electricity transfer stations, which sends it out to cities. The submarine is powered without a drop of gas or oil. Stop the Fracking scientists have claimed that by next spring, the entire state of Texas will utilize this new water-powered energy production system to produce its energy needs. With more creativity like that from Stop the Fracking, we can head towards a fracking-free world.