Letter to Elected Member:

To the Anti-Fracking Community:

Please help promote our cause by signing and sending the letter shown below to Members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Buffs Against Fracking wants to show this committee that fracking is not an issue that they can brush under the carpet, but one that they must take a strong stance on by acknowledging the dangers at hand.

Dear Members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works,

I am sending you this letter as an anti-fracking activist, urging you to protect the citizens of our state. We, as in the anti-fracking community, want more members of congress, specifically in your committee to acknowledge the environmental harms that fracking has and continues to cause such as, earthquakes, contaminated water and land, and release of harmful chemicals.

Along with recognizing the environmental harms, we also want to encourage you to prioritize anti-fracking legislation, which would eventually lead to an overall ban of fracking in the United States. Studies have found that there is a strong correlation between poverty, and fracking, specifically in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania (Bienkowski, 2015). This region also affects parts of West Virginia and Ohio.

Fracking occurs in people’s backyards all across the nation, and you, the committee, must stand up to big oil and natural gas companies and put an end to this practice. This connection between poverty and fracking is not fair. These citizens have less access to information, so they may not know the harms of fracking. They also may not be able to afford to rebuild their homes if they are hit by an earthquake, or pay for medical assistance that may be needed due to the exposure to chemicals that fracking emits into the air. A ban on fracking is necessary, and the environmental injustice that these citizens are experiencing needs to be solved.

We also feel as though anti-fracking legislation needs to be pushed on more party platforms and ballots. It was not included in the Democratic Party Platform, and an anti-fracking bill did not make it on the ballot in our home state of Colorado. We need your help to advance the anti-fracking agenda in the Democratic Party.

Overall, we feel what is going on to prevent fracking in Colorado is not effective. We need to push for more regulation on our cause and more laws to prevent this from happening. The impact is already hurting our families and communities and needs to be stopped. With your help, we can put an end to hydraulic fracking in our backyards.

University of Colorado Students