WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Fracking involves injecting a mixture of toxic chemicals into the ground at high pressure to separate the existing oil or gas. Along with causing tremors, fracking is also widely criticized for contaminating ground water and causing soil pollution.
"The time has come for the provincial government to take strong, unambiguous action," the release stated. "Fracking is brute-force technology. It can trigger earthquakes. It has no place near critical dams or reservoirs."
In 2009, CCPA received documents from British Columbia officials through Freeform of Information Act requests confirming that fracking could cause greater number of earthquakes "than the original design criteria for this area," the release revealed.
However, the provincial government of British Columbia neither issued firm regulations nor banned continuous fracking operations.
"Building a new dam across the Peace River, while simultaneously pushing for maximum natural gas industry extraction, is bad public policy," CCPA noted.
A dozen earthquakes were recorded near Peace River dams in the period between July 2010 and March 2013, ranging from a low of 1.6 magnitude on the Richter scale to a high of 3.4, according to the Natural Resources Canada.
