From Maine to Monterey, Utah to Utica — big energy corporations like Halliburton are bribing your local officials for the right to pump “proprietary chemicals” into open fractures beneath the earth that flow into local water formations.

In the huge Marcellus Shale natural gas deposit, which stretches from New York to Tennessee, 5 million gallons of contaminated water are left behind for every well drilled.

It doesn’t matter how many glasses of hydraulic fracking fluid Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar wants to drink as a publicity stunt.  Does anyone really believe that chemicals used to fracture shale and release natural gas will present no danger to the people who have to live amidst the contamination long after the corporate looters are gone?

FDL wants to know if fracking is affecting your community.  Can you let us know by clicking here and telling us what you know about your area, whether it is impacted or not?

Are big energy corporations already using fracking in your area?  Do they want to?  Are they setting up astroturf groups to tell you how safe it is, or simply bribing your representatives to inflict misery on the rest of the country?

Many communities are affected by fracking contaminants in their drinking water supply, regardless of whether it is actually happening there.  Affected areas include the Delaware River supplies drinking water to 15 million people in New York City, Philadelphia and New Jersey as well as Delaware.  And now it’s at risk from fracking contamination, too.

There are plenty of people getting rich off of this, people who are spinning lies and bribing elected officials and destroying your community before you even know it.  These are the same people who bought an exemption for fracking chemicals from the 2005 Clean Air and Water Act, so you have no right to know what chemicals are being pumped into your drinking water.   They’re the ones who are trying to buy a permanent exemption right now.

FDL wants to rip the mask of anonymity from their faces, and expose them for what they are — craven handmaidens to an oligarchical class hell-bent on raping the the country and extracting every last nickel they can, indifferent to the blighted earth and human misery they leave in their wake.

The people at Fleishman-Hillard PR, for instance, who were just hired by the American Petroleum Institute to “sell the public on hydraulic fracking.” Or Orvile Cole, President of the Quebec company Gastem, who bought up 30,000 acres of leases in upstate New York and is trying to steamroll local community opposition.  (Ironically, Quebec recently declared a moratorium on fracking.) Or Halliburton’s own Dave Leser.

Will you let us know what impact fracking is having on your community, and help us crowd source a local activism map?