Need to get fracking facts right

Need to get fracking facts right by Gareth Hughes, August 20, 2012, The Gizborne Herald
In Taranaki we have seen groundwater contamination and consents being breached. In Southland we’ve seen waste fracking water dumped in the local river. In Waikato a fracking operation by Solid Energy was undertaken without consent. Now the industry has its sights on Gisborne, with Canadian companies Tag Oil and Apache having recently been granted consents to begin the process of oil and gas exploration in the district. The consents were not publicly notified so the public did not get a chance to have a say. … Where fracking is occurring, damaging effects are too, and governments and regional authorities around the world are waking up to this. New Zealand is on the cusp of a large expansion of the fracking industry with permits that allow it currently covering 4.4 million hectares of land, with another 3 million ha being considered by the Government. In the past year we have seen a 170 percent increase in the rate of new wells, compared with the average rate for the previous 18 years.