Click here to listen to WGXC volunteer Richard Roth introduce a phone interview by WGXC"s Sam Sebren and Alan Skerrett of Jim Michaels of Bradford County, Pennsylvania (near Scranton) who lives near shale gas drilling, or hydro-fracking, sites. Michaels talks about his experiences with the process of extracting gas from the ground by shooting high pressure liquid. On Wednesday the New York Senate voted for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing until May 2011. Assemblyman Tim Gordon, who represents parts of Greene, Columbia, and Albany counties, supports the measure and told WGXC's Tom Roe, “If we want to proceed on this, I think we need to do it right, and there are still some unanswered questions.” This is the first report created by the WGXC Audio Training program led by Dharma Dailey and Emily Bennison. Help with research from Sara Kendall and recording and editing from Goro Ikeda-Iyeki. File is mp3 audio file. Paste the following url into your computer's media player:
http://data.wavefarm.org/2010/08/WGXC_Roth_Sebren_Skerret_interviewJimMichaels_080510.mp3

From Wikipedia:

"Hydraulic fracturing (called "frac jobs"[1] or "frac'ing" in the industry[2][3][4] and recently, "fracking" by the media) is a process that results in the creation of fractures in rocks. The most important industrial use is in stimulating oil and gas wells, where hydraulic fracturing has been used for over 60 years in more than one million wells. On the other hand, high-volume horizontal slickwater fracturing is a recent phenomenon. The fracturing is done from a wellboredrilled into reservoir rock formations to enhance oil and natural gas recovery.... Man-made fluid-driven fractures are formed at depth in a borehole and extend into targeted rock formations. The fracture width is typically maintained after the injection by introducing a proppant into the injected fluid. Proppant is a material, such as grains of sand, ceramic, or other particulates, that prevent the fractures from closing when the injection is stopped. Natural hydraulic fractures include volcanic dikes, sills and fracturing by ice as in frost weathering. Considerable controversy surrounds the current implementation of hydraulic fracturing technology in the United States. Environmental safety and health concerns have emerged and are being debated at the state and national levels." Read the entire entry in Wikipedia.