Water Pressure

Representatives of the profitable moisture industry and the shale-fracking racket have signed a memorandum of understanding in which they agree to co-operate on increasing the number of fracking sites in the country. Aside from pumping methane into the water that is already underground, fracking uses large quantities of water from the surface; so that in the United States, where the frackers have had their way for some little time, various expendable communities have been turned into dust-bowls. The British memorandum acknowledges that frackers may use the public water supply and, when that gives out, turn directly to draining those streams and rivers which do not flow into any prominent Conservatives' private moats. Water may also be transported in from moister areas, provided the inconvenience to local residents does not unduly disturb the fracker conscience. England, of course, is the country in which two weeks of hot weather generally leads to dry reservoirs and quantities of foaming indignation about the likelihood of a hosepipe ban; this is no doubt the reason why most fracking so far has taken place in the north, where precipitation is more plentiful and sensibilities less delicate.