OAKLAND, Md. — It’s a big lake, largest in Maryland. It sprawls with fingers of water scooting off in at least two major directions.
Deep Creek Lake just celebrated its 90th year created as a hydroelectric project in 1925. The generator still works but today the lake is centerpiece of a bustling tourism industry although wilderness remains everywhere. It has virgin hemlock stands — the only ones in the state. Savage River State Forest land to the east of the lake area adds 54,000 more wilderness acres. And it’s all scarcely 90 minutes from the Eastern Panhandle.
We began our getaway visit with a plunge into wilderness, searching out the four waterfalls in Swallow Falls State Park located not on the lake but on the Youghiogheny River along with other forest areas. Unfortunately, it’s been a dry end-of-summer and only the highest of the four — Muddy Falls at 53 feet — was rushing in a spectacular fashion over the rocks. We wrestled with inadequate signage and maps to visit three of the four falls, and once we’d figured out how it all fit together, helped guide other hikers we met along the trails. Impressive boulders fill the various streams. The park was once a legendary pioneer hunting area and the virgin hemlock and white pine forests that we walked through to find the falls were magical.
Swallow Falls is easily identifiable by Swallow Rock, a marvelously weathered pillar standing adjacent to the falls. We bypassed Lower Falls, warned away by fellow hikers but did make the trek to Tolliver Falls, barely a ripple over rocks in this season.
As a Baltimore City resident and a homeowner in Garrett County, I think the most recent round of regulations proposed by the Maryland Department of the Environment fall far short of adequately protecting the environment and citizens from the dangers of hydraulic fracturing.
The MDE’s proposals make it clear that the only “regulatory” course of action is for the public’s representatives in Annapolis to approve a complete ban on fracking next year.
In recent years we have gone from a mandate in which the state would only permit fracking if there were no “unacceptable” risks, to a set of proposals that accepted some moderate and high-level risks, and finally to the current proposal, which reduces previous protections and seeks to codify moderate and high-level risks as the norm.
The latest proposals increase the drilling site well pad setbacks from personal water wells from their previously proposed 1,000 feet to 2,000 feet. This is an improvement but still far from adequate.
The governor’s commission previously identified 2,000 feet as posing a moderate risk; a minimum of 3,200 feet would pose a low-level risk and be much safer. The new regulations propose only a 300-foot setback from streams and wetlands.
Keep in mind that fracking could well come to over half of the state. Citizens should seriously consider whether it is acceptable to have hydraulic fracturing operations a mere 300 feet from streams, rivers, wetlands and the Chesapeake Bay.
Nobody, except those who stand to make a profit, wants their natural environments industrialized in this way. Nobody wants the dangers of fracking in their backyard.
In its June 2016 proposals, the MDE identified fracking restrictions for Western Maryland watersheds that eventually flow into the Potomac River and through heavily populated areas of the state.
In the recent proposal, MDE adds the Deep Creek Lake watershed to its restricted list, in what can only be considered a cynical effort to appease wealthy property owners. Of course, most people on Deep Creek Lake know that fracking anywhere in Western Maryland destroys the natural environment as well as their property values on the lake.
Even so these protections still leave two-thirds of Garrett County — the Youghiogheny River watershed — vulnerable to the dangers of fracking.
Implicit in MDE’s proposed watershed restrictions is the idea that these environments and the people who live there need to be protected from the harms of unregulated industrialization. But apparently the environment and people in the Youghiogheny Watershed don’t merit such protections.
In what amounts to a “get a bigger hammer” approach, MDE suggests adding another layer of well-casing in drilling operations. Again, implicit in this idea is an acknowledgment that well casings are imperfect and that they frequently fail, allowing flow back contaminants to seep into the ground and contaminate water supplies, animals and people.
As for the methane emissions that contribute even more to global warming and climate change than carbon dioxide, MDE essentially leaves that responsibility to the gas industry itself.
It’s clear that MDE is under-resourced and unprepared to regulate emissions and most other aspects of the hydraulic fracturing process. These are just a few of the concerns that arise from the recently released regulatory proposals.
The problems associated with the hydraulic fracturing at every stage of the process make it clear that a fracking industry that has proven so irresponsible has no business operating in Maryland. There is only one course of action citizens can take and that is to support a total ban on fracking in the state.
