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Dear Nick Smith,

I have an anger issue over fracking. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you out of your crazy mind? Canterbury has been through enough already without your fracking plan to harbour natural gas below our plains. That's right; I said our plains, not your plains. Is that plain enough for you?

Anyway, in case you have forgotten what the heck fracking is, I would like to remind you. Fracking is a drilling process to extract natural gas from the shale bedrock below ground. First they drill vertically and then horizontally when they reach the critical depth. What I would say first of all is that this would be all well and good at this stage but it gets worse from here. You see, it appears that anywhere can be chosen to drill for this natural gas. I find it offensive that you can just come onto any land you like and just drill holes. How would you like it if I came to your house and drilled through your vegetable garden just for the hell of it? Sure, I would have fun doing that, but you would just use your powers to stop me doing that now, would you not?

I have not even begun to get out how strongly I feel about this issue. My inner anger just starts reeling at the smallest thought of it. Okay, so now we have reached the point where there is a big hole in the ground. There is now a problem: how do you get the natural gas out of the ground? I bet that you could not suck it out yourself. You might get high doing that depending on what type of gas it is. Anyway, the method that you propose using is to pump toxic chemicals and millions of litres of water into the ground. Okay, so then you get your gas and all is fine, right? Wrong. If you thought that all was fine then you are very wrong. You see there are consequences for your actions, and we need to go over these to make it quite clear to you just how damaging fracking can be.

The first thing is where do all of these toxic chemicals and where does all of this water end up? I bet you thought that you could just leave it in the ground and not worry about it. I am sorry, but you are wrong again. Those toxins are going to leach into our water supply and possibly reach the ground level. This will make our drinking water toxic and quite possibly fatal. How would you like to drink water that kills you? If you have any suicidal tendencies then feel free but the rest of us want to live. The toxins will surely kill off large populations of wildlife and even those lovely flowers in peoples' gardens. How would you like it if this happened to your petunias? If you kill the neighbours' vegetable gardens then you might not receive any more pumpkin soup from them.

I will now return to the situation with regard to the huge amount of water that this process requires. Are you aware of the amount of water that this requires? Maybe you are and I am trying to decide whether you have secret plans to use this water for other purposes while it is supposedly being used for fracking. Maybe you have plans for a new lake. Who knows? What I am trying to say is that by taking water for fracking you are going to make Canterbury a desert. Yes, that is right: a desert. You are going to make this area bone dry by using all of the water in the artesian wells. We are not just talking about any water; this is some of the best water in the world. Yet your fracking ridiculous plan is to ruin this prized resource. How would you like it if we took away your swimming pool? Wait, do you even have one of those? If you do then you should try drinking the water from there and see what most of Canterbury has been through over these past months.

I cannot miss out the single most important factor in this hot on the collar issue. Yes, this is with regard to earthquakes. To date we have had an innumerable amount of aftershocks rock our world, and you have a plan to add more potential shakes into our lives. No, I am not talking about milkshakes, and neither about thick shakes. I am talking about more earthquakes. To date this process of fracking has been implemented in the USA, UK, and some other place which does not appear to be on the world map anymore. Oh wait, there it is. Sorry Australia. Anyway, they have had occurrences of earthquakes of magnitude 4 in non-seismically active regions. Now, in our case our region has the potential to be very seismically active. What this means is that there is no science to yet predict what could happen if fracking in our part of the world goes ahead.

Now you listen here. I have brought this issue to your attention today because it is of great concern to the people who live here in Canterbury. If you do not even consider any of these issues then I am sorry but you are just being a complete fracking idiot. The evidence is clear: fracking is very bad for our environment. SO DO NOT DO IT! If you try to go ahead with this then I am going to have to start a war against you. This is a war of common sense and if you ignore this letter then you clearly have none. I hope that you can be reasonable about this so that it does not have to come to that.

Yours Truthfully,
Michael Topp