Alpine Township was a busy place Monday night as over 80 people attended a meeting at the Township Hall sponsored by the Michigan Farm Bureau and Michigan State University Extension Service. What brought so many people out to the meeting was the topic: Oil and Gas Leasing and Hydraulic Fracturing. Presenters made the audience aware of the dos and don'ts of leasing and explained hydraulic fracturing. Many formations in Michigan could not produce economically viable volumes of natural gas without the use of hydraulic fracturing, according to information provided by the Michigan Oil and Gas Producers Educational Foundation.
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Jason Jaekel, West Regional Representative for the Michigan Farm Bureau introduces Mike Shelton (on the right), a Geologist with the Kalamazoo District Office of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) |
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| Attendance was high as was the interest of the audience |
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Less than half a mile away, area Fire Chiefs were meeting at the Alpine Township Fire Station #1 for their monthly meeting. |
The meeting last night was horrible. There were several people from the oil and gas companies "planted" in the audience, as many as one per table, pretending like they own land in the area and pressuring our neighbors to give up there land to this detrimental process.
ReplyDeleteThe presentation by the DEQ seemed to almost intentionally leave out decision making information. Not only that they flat out lied and skewed many of the facts that they say on their own website such as
"The withdrawal of water for oil and gas operations is currently exempt from the requirements of
Michigan's water withdrawal statute (Part 327)."
Here is an example of a permit with
listed chemicals:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/Hubell_MSDS2011-11-17_368902_7.pdf
note that most of the chemicals are not listed because their identity is protected by the federal government
There are already people in the Irish Hills in Brooklyn, Michigan area who have signed contracts that are upset that they ever did.
Alpine Township neither sponsored nor endorsed this event. It was sponsored by Farm Bureau. Comments regarding the content of this program should probably be directed to the Michigan Farm Bureau.
ReplyDelete