Fracking About

On Sunday morning, part way through writing chapter 2 of a new '4mph thriller', I abandoned Daphne Randall in the suburbs of south Manchester and set off for Hanley and a demonstration against fracking.  It was a miserable, drizzly morning and I would have been happier to stay indoors with the laptop, hot toast and another cuppa, but there are times when the right thing to do is to stand up for what you believe in - and to stand in the rain for it at that.  It's certainly what Daphne herself would do, though Daphne would have stayed longer and gone to the pub afterwards. 

Fracking - the extraction of fuel gases or oil from underground by the 'hydraulic fracturing' of rocks, particularly certain shales - is being promoted by its supporters as a route to energy security as North Sea gas supplies decline, with the added advantage of easier access to these on-shore underground reserves.  It's also promoted as relatively 'clean', though in comparison to coal, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.  On the downside, it's still a fossil fuel.  There's a risk of contamination of the water table from the chemicals used to 'frack' the gas out of the rocks and the liquid used for this is itself then toxic waste requiring safe disposal.  One speaker at today's event raised the unpleasant possibility of some of that being shipped all the way from the USA to Middleport for specialist treatment. 

Middleport is a district of Stoke-on-Trent still in the throes of regeneration, most famous right now for its pottery, location for the Great Pottery Throwdown and a pet project of HRH The Prince of Wales.  It is less famous as the place where my fictional heroine first sees her future home, chugging along the Trent and Mersey Canal in a decidedly rusty state, in this short story. Either way, it seems a particularly unsuitable location into which large quantities of hazardous chemicals could be transported.  A heavily-populated urban residential area sitting alongside one of the country's major Inland Waterways - what could possibly go wrong?

The proximity of the Trent and Mersey Canal to a zone through the Potteries earmarked for coal-bed methane extraction set me thinking about the potential impact on the canal network more generally.  Around here, I would have thought anything that further destabilized land honeycombed by disused mineshafts was a spectacularly bad idea.  Friends of the Earth's map shows licences covering areas including large stretches of the T&M, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Shroppie and Llangollen, as well as the Kennett & Avon further south.  I had a look for any public policy on fracking from the Canal and River Trust and the Inland Waterways Association but, disappointingly, there appears to be nothing from either body.  The Inland Waterways Association of Ireland appear to be a step ahead: this from 2012 -

 

"The threat of Fracking is causing the IWAI much concern; it is proving to be an a country wide issue.  The Government see it as a benefit to employment growth, together with the advantage of the development of a natural energy source, while the public see the harm and devastation that it has reputably caused in other parts of the world where this mining method has been used.  Paul Garland has been appointed as the “Fracking Liason Officer” for the Association, and will be responsible for developing a policy and designing a strategy to manage the IWAI’s interests."

- though there appears to be no sign of what happened next on the Internet!

So I appear to have some lobbying to do.  I also may have a good plot to work into a voyage across the Leeds and Liverpool Canal for our Daphne!