Industrial Responcibility

To the Editor ( June 25 2011 )

Iv been reading about the natural gas industry and their desire to set up shop in NB. A lot of claims have been made that; 1, the process is very safe 2, that contamination of ground water has almost never been proven to be the fault of the gas industry.

The second claim is the most important because it speaks about responsibility. To say “there has never been a legal conviction of a company for contamination water”, is not the same as saying they did not cause such a problem.

Are scientists confident that the process is safe or are they confident that it will be nearly impossible to prove that a gas company is responsible for water contamination?

I have an idea that may help set the minds of citizens at ease. Let’s require the companies to sign a contract with the NB government before they begin work, stating that the company accepts full responsibility and will cover clean up costs of any water or soil contamination, which is not conclusively proven to be from another source. The point is to hold the industry to its claim that the process is safe, and give them no room to sneak away from helping the environment by saying “You can’t prove it’s our fault.”

Think about it.