Charles Ritter: All deserve better fracking rules

Regarding the March 21 news article “Fracking rules to cover federal, Indian lands”: The N&O reported that the Obama administration issued “standards for wells on federal and Indian lands, requiring disclosure of chemicals and covered storage of waste. Companies also will have to use covered storage tanks for fracking waste rather than open pits, a requirement that was made in order to give ‘greater confidence that we are in fact protecting groundwater.’”

It is great the U.S. government protected Native Americans. Too bad it did not protect all of us in this state, not just the Cherokees living on a tribal reservation in the mountains.

North Carolina had the opportunity to protect all its residents and chose not to. These standards were the major part of the 217,000 comments submitted to and ignored by the N.C. Mining and Energy Commission in generating rules for fracking. The MEC also ignored the Duke University study concerning the dangers of fracking.

All of us now deserve to have the same protection that Native Americans have under these standards.

This story was originally published March 29, 2015 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Charles Ritter: All deserve better fracking rules."