There is a lot of talk about fracking, the process where engineers pump liquid into the ground to open up tiny pockets of natural gas in the rocks to capture it for commercial and domestic use. Its an understatement that environmentalists are concerned about the use of this process. As it involves pumping liquid into the ground, soil and ground water contamination is a obvious side effect, plus, as the pumped liquid is pressurized enough to break rocks, it could cause micro-earthquakes, which is bad news for moles, rabbits, wombles or anything else that lives underground.
One well publicized side effect to fracking is that people living near fracking operations who relay on groundwater as their water supply have experienced more than just water coming out their taps...
One of many videos under the search results "fracking water fire"
Of course almost everyone who has seen such clips are shocked that this is happening. But just recently I had a thought about this phenomenon. One way to have great ideas is to look at problems at a different angle, in this case turning a negative into a potential positive. To everyone who is experiencing gassy waterworks, hear these words...
Connect your taps to a tank and collect that gas. With some tinkering you could pipe this gas into your existing gas system. That's right, you now have a free supply of natural gas straight from the ground. If you can manage to live off this FREE GAS, you can successfully boycott the gas companies that are fracking your local sub-terrain. With the loss of profits due to people living off their free gas they have to cut down their expensive fracking operations.
It's just an idea. I'm not sure if there's any bureaucratic red tape that prevents such protesting plumbing from happening. But if there is nothing stopping you form doing so... well I can't be held responsible for giving people the idea. And if the gas companies complain about you doing this, you can just say "Well, you started it by fracking my ground."
Its such a simple idea, I'm surprised that I have not heard about it from someone else. I came up with it on my own. I'm sure someone else must have thought about it, but I don't want to contaminate my internet history by finding out.
