Fracking under national parks backed by MPs - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35107203

What could possibly go wrong and be covered up?

As someone who knows how wells are drilled, I can't see an issue with rigs being outside the national parks. By the time the week gets writhing the park the vertical depth will be very deep.

IIRC the issue isn't the holes themselves, more the fact that the wells are always going to end up as close to the border as they can legally be, so you can still get disruption and pollution inside the park. After all, no form of pollution ever respected a line on a map.

Again, having worked on land rigs (in Holland), pollution is low at the rig site.

You have to have as line somewhere and wherever it is there will be something that is right on the edge of it

True, but you can easily have the exclusion zone that's bigger than the border of the park. Of course every mile you extend the exclusion zone outside the park border makes fracking inside the park border (which is what is actually still happening) less economically viable. Intuitively, there has to be a compromise point in that equation. However it's unlikely the compromise point is zero.

Lev, I appreciate your experience (and I have no problem with fracking where there can be shown to be little environmental consequence) but it's not just about pollution at the dig site itself. Everything we build has an environmental footprint beyond the land it actually takes up. Extra infrastructure requirements, noise and light pollution etc. I don't honestly know if this will be an issue, but I don't think we can assume it won't be.

Jon