Food for Thought Hands off our Fresh Water https://www.change.org/p/hands-off-our-fresh-water "To be human it takes water" Water is of major importance to all living things; in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. And there's not a lot of it go around . Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields. Three Strikes? It takes 3 barrels of freshwater just to make one barrel of crude from the Alberta tarsands Three years after the Mount Polley mine disaster, there are still concerns over the adequacy of regulation and oversight in the mining industry. In 2014, the mine's tailings dam broke sending 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into nearby lakes and rivers. Bev Sellars, former chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation — in whose territory the tailings pond released an estimated 25 million cubic metres of mining waste into Quesnel Lake — filed a private prosecution against Mount Polley on August 4, 2017, the final day charges could be laid. Sellars made the case that Mount Polley has violated 15 rules under B.C.’s environmental and mining laws. She brought the private prosecution into play with the hope the province would take over the charges. But this week B.C.’s Crown Prosecution Service quashed the case, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed. Sellars said the news came as a shock. “I don’t understand how they can say there wasn’t enough evidence,” Sellars said. “Anyone can go out there or look online and see there was a spill. And there were consequences of the spill.” The tailings pond collapse caused a spill that lasted over 12 hours. The massive deposit of mine waste that entered Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water for residents of Likely, B.C., contained mercury, arsenic, selenium, copper and other heavy metals and remains settled on the lake's floor to this day. Quesnel Lake is one of the deepest fjord lakes in the world and is home to a quarter of the province's sockeye salmon population. The long-term effects of the spill and its contamination of fish habitat is still uncertain. While the time limit has run out for criminal charges to be brought in B.C., federal charges under the Fisheries Act can still be laid for another 18 months. However, Sellars is worried federal charges won’t be laid. “If there are no federal charges, then it’s just a free for all. Go out and pollute. So what if you have breaches of your tailings ponds? There’s nothing anyone can do,” she said. “This is setting a dangerous precedent.” BC LNG ? ( Strike 3 your out ).. Obviously only you can prevent faucet fires and Frackquakes with your publicly elected corporate dictates. Ive tr-yd to see things your way, but it's time to call the product of this industry what it truly is: Most of the "conventional" natural gas in BC, accessed by drilling straight down into gas pockets, is gone. From here on, BC's methane will come from "tight gas," trapped deep within shale beds. This gas is accessed by horizontal directional drilling from a vertical shaft. The methane (and other substances) are released from the shale beds by means of hydraulic fracturing - the injection, under pressure, of water, chemicals, and sand - to crack open the shale. Each fracking well requires between 4 million and 30 million litres of water per frack. One frack in BC required 77 million litres of water. Wells have been fracked up to 18 times. More than 600 additives have been identified in fracking fluids. Many of these substances are toxic. They do not naturally occur in freshwater. Some of the fracking fluid is extracted from wells and is captured for re-use. The rest of it is lost in the process or is pumped into pits where the volatile organic compounds evaporate, posing an immediate risk to wildlife and human health, and a longterm risk to the environment. When a well is abandoned, any remaining fracking fluid is pumped back under. The only things preventing its escape into aquifers are the durability of the welds and the concrete seals employed. In BC, no baseline data is required to compare the before-and-after effects of fracking on freshwater. Fracking companies are only required to disclose the amounts and the names of the chemicals used after the completion of each well. This is considered "transparent" reporting. The BC Oil and Gas Commission, the agency that regulates fracking is also the agency that issues water permits to the industry. Fracking requires sand in huge quantities. Because of the relative remoteness of the Horn River, Montney, and Liard gas fields in BC, the trucking cost of frac sand makes up about 80 percent of its cost at the well head. One company has already staked multiple sand mine claims in northeastern BC, with the aim of creating open pit mines closer to the action. One of these mines is proposed for near Bear Lake, just north of Prince George. Sand mines create 6 tonnes of tailings for each 4 tonnes of sand produced, and are a major source of airborne silica - a carcinogen that creates a risk to human health, downwind. Fracking is an industry heavily reliant on trucking. Each frack of each well requires, at a minimum, 900 round trips of eighteen-wheelers just for the water needs. The diesel inputs required to produce fracked gas must be included when appraising the environmental footprint of the industry. Fracking is a highly industrial process, fraught with the perils of massive freshwater use and contamination, large blow-offs of carbon dioxide and volatile gases, induced seismic activity (earthquakes), and the storage and handling of large quantities of toxic liquids. It leaves the environment in a much worse condition than beforehand, and poses longterm environmental and human health risks. It is not a "natural" process that produces a "natural" product, and it is not sustainable. It's time to call the product of this industry what it truly is: BC's methane is not "natural" gas; it's fracked gas. "Fracking is no friend of mine , you can only shove that Frack-Water so far down before it bubbles back up as radioactive waste." I've spent 7 years advocating for our right to clean water to be legally recognized ...Our Right to Water that when water is a human right it creates three obligations for a nation: the obligation to respect, the obligation to protect and the obligation to fulfill.