Ban fracking, Sen. Conway

I and many others who live in state Sen. Joan Carter Conway’s district in Baltimore drove nearly an hour to Annapolis to participate in Lobby Night with Don’t Frack Maryland —a diverse group of public interest organizations, labor groups, businesses and faith communities united in support of a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing in our state.

We had a wonderful meeting with one of our delegates before heading to her office for our scheduled appointment. We wanted to urge Senator Conway to support a complete ban on fracking (Senate Bill 740) within our state’s borders rather than another moratorium followed by a county by county vote on the issue (SB 862). We wanted to encourage her, as the chair of the House Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee, to take bold, unapologetic, commonsense action to protect all of Maryland’s citizens.

Some of us had moved to Ms. Conway’s district from western Pennsylvania and the Texas panhandle and wanted to share our experiences with supposedly safe fracking practices that had gone horribly wrong (as they always do). We wanted to tell her about the negative impact to tourism, the decrease in property values and the increased difficulty in selling property located near fracking sites. We wanted to speak with the senator about the fallacy that the negative effects of fracking can be contained within a well, a container or a county.

We had so much to say only to be turned away, told that not only would she not be meeting with us but that no one on her staff would be available to meet with us either because they had all gone home early. It was a sad day for democracy.