There are Hundreds of Complaints of groundwater contamination in the 4 states at the heart of fracking:  West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas!  Please read and see some examples from Food and Water Watch, based in Washington, D.C. (www.banfrackingnow.org) and Southern Environmental Law Center, based in Charlottesville, which is fighting fracking in the George Washington National Forest from which we get a lot of water www.ProtectTheGW.org). Maybe you can set up meetings with these groups and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters in Richmond (www.VALCV.org, 804-225-1902) which was largely responsible for stopping Uranium-mining in VA, where the mining entrails after rainstorms and Hurricanes! (yes, we have these) would flow to Lake Gaston in N.C., from which Tidewater cities gets their water supply.

The Virginian-Pilot article on Jan. 26, 2014 entitled "Fracking in eastern Virginia" points out a lot of horror stories that we can expect after fracking through our huge freshwater aquifer that needs to supply water for the next 200 years or rather milleniums, if we don't stop making terrible mistakes.  To get to this Virginia Shale Formation between Fredericksburg and Richmond, they have to drill through this huge pool of Fresh Water Aquifer (that we need for the current and future generations of Virginians).  This opens up holes in the Aquifer.  The millions of gallons of Fracking Fluid will then migrate into aquifers and groundwater and CONTAMINATE with DRILLING CHEMICALS, HEAVY METALS, AND NATURALLY OCCURRING LOW-LEVEL RADIATION.

Please PROTECT OUR WATER FOREVER!  Make the company that wants to frack in Virginia impossible to get through hurdles that your Department can put up and go home!  Drinking Water for generations to come trumps a few jobs for a few years.  PROTECT US AND OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S CHILDREN.

Thanks for reading this and helping fellow Virginians have drinking water and water for their crops.

Lyn Snodgrass