Fracking: Economic Savior or Environmental Disaster? Imagine having your home, your sanctuary, a place of memories, and dreams destroyed by a river of toxic soup. It almost seems incomprehensible that something like this could happen in this day and age. But that is exactly what happened when one hundred thousand gallons of chemically treated water rushed off of a natural gas fracking pad onto Truman and Bonnie Burnett’s land, killing a twenty foot swath of trees and filling their pond. The Burnett’s who live in Bradford County Pennsylvania have had to abandon their beautiful retirement home in the woods due to this terrible and tragic accident, which has contaminated their well and devastated their land (Walsh). Unfortunately the Burnett’s story is just one of many that have recently made headlines. All across the nation stories similar to the Burnett’s are becoming more common. The hydraulic fracturing frenzy that is sweeping the nation has caused many recent debates that have people wondering about the environmental impacts of this technology. But what is hydraulic fracturing? The process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking” begins by clearing an area so that workers can store equipment and materials for the fracking process. Next a hole, called a well, is drilled deep into the crust of the earth. Unlike conventional wells, which are mostly vertical shafts, fracking wells are drilled vertically then horizontally, which when complete can be over 11,000 feet deep and 11,000 feet long. The final step in the fracking process involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and various chemicals into a well at extremely high pressure until the earth fractures. These fractures take place deep below the surface in dense shale deposits that can contain oil and natural gas. These fractures allow companies to retrieve oil and gas from areas that were