Forget the BLM, write the president

Dear Editor:

Everyone loved the "Lord of the Rings" movies when they came out — Tolkien's mythology for England which he wrote while watching war and horror sweep his beloved country. The ultimate good vs. evil story that seems relevant to all humans in any age of our history.

Those of you who read the books know that they left out the part where the hero-hobbits came home to find the Shire, their peaceful, idyllic safe haven, devastated by the ugly and destructive industry of the agents of Mardor. The explanation would be, of course, that they couldn't fit that part in — though perhaps, in truth, it was just a little too close to home for a national movie. But that is the visual that comes vividly to my mind when I contemplate the pending invasion of fracking gas wells into the North Fork Valley.

This valley is a sanctuary — a place of respite from the depressing reality of industrial polluting and deformity rapidly devouring our countryside. This valley is truly an unrecognized and unappreciated national treasure. But most of all, it is our home. There has been in-fighting among various factions of this community for years, yet nothing causes people to set their petty differences aside and come together like their own government threatening to take their land away. I had hoped the new administration was significantly more evolved than the previous ones and would not do this to us. Obama will not get my vote if he lets this happen.

We are being blithely told that this incursion will have "no negative impact" on us; they will just tiptoe in, crack open the earth, extract the gas and vanish without a trace. They back this fiction with bogus, outdated and non-existent studies (they promise to analyze the impact afterwards). Meanwhile, the multitude of horror stories and devastated towns that they leave in their wake are downplayed and conveniently absent from the airwaves. I hereby switch the burden of truth and challenge these companies to come up with significant examples of instances where they have actually done what they claim they can do — instances where they have fracked an area without poisoning people, animals and trees, destabilizing local economies and creating refugee populations.

We are being fed this line that natural gas will free us from our "dependence on foreign oil." Well golly gee, that sounds like a good idea. But at what cost? Hey, here's a thought, let's give up on our dependence on oil and gas altogether. We have the technology to make it work; all it would take is the decision to do so.

So what are we to do? Write those letters, folks. Forget the BLM — they are obviously ignoring us. Send them to the president — it is an election year, after all. Now is the time to band together and protect our homesteads. We need to write the "good ending" to our own story.

Dinah Lindarin

Paonia

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20500

www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submitquestions-and-comments

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