---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: East BoCo United <eastbocounited@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 11:00 AM
Subject: From The Colorado Movement to the Sierra Club Executive Board
To:

To The Sierra Club On Banning Hydraulic Fracturing

To Whom It May Concern:

We would like to take this opportunity to address a recent petition calling for the Sierra Club to take a leading position on banning the process of hydraulic fracturing. The petition and supporting documentation around it spoke very closely to our daily experience of this tragic topic. We believe that the effort and its request reflect the quality and passion of your membership, as well as the growing national awareness of the profoundly destructive impacts of hydraulic fracturing,

Our group, East Boulder County United, is comprised mainly of residents of Lafayette, Louisville and Gunbarrel Colorado, all which sit on the Wattenberg Shale. We live our lives, raise our families and educate our children and value our environment and community highly, and it has been only recently and entirely against our will that we have been forced to enter the fight against fracking. We were not aware that our community, with its hospitals, homes, and elementary schools sits 8000’ above a layer of shale that spells potentially massive corporate profits.

Like so many populations around the world we have seen the growing political tensions and corruption that are required by industries seeking enrichment at the cost of our environment and public health. We live daily with this reality and struggle to find our way forward despite a government that has capitulated entirely to the gas and oil companies. We lead lives of growing desperation and fear as one well after another is plugged into our aquifers, our community space, and our common air.

We think about the immediate toxicological effects to our children, neighbors, and loved ones. We wonder if the air will give us cancer. We wonder if the nose bleeds of our children signal neurotoxicity. Beyond all of this, we fret over the looming threat of global warming and the massive destabilizing impacts that the fossil fuel industry produces for our species for inherently short-term personal enrichment.

Our group is a small community’s attempt to fight against an industry and government that does not care about our future. We have had our successes and are growing. But we can never hope to possess the power, national visibility and resources of groups like your own. We are a desperate, secondary attempt to fill the void that the larger environmental groups have created by not confronting the realities of hydraulic fracturing directly.

It does not need to be like this. The Sierra Club and other national organizations can take the lead on fighting the environmental and political devastation that the fossil fuel industry continues to force upon us. To this end we would in the strongest sense request that you lead a national ban on the process of hydraulic fracturing. It is the only responsible position to take, and would go so far to address the growing destruction this industry is creating. Please contact us at your nearest convenience, and thank you for your time. We await your response.

Sincerely,

East Boulder County United

EastBoCoUnited@gmail.com

Eastbocounited.org

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Paul Wilson
Sierra Club
504 Jefferson Ave
Charles Town, WV 25414-1130
Phone: 304-725-4360
Cell: 304-279-1361

"There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle