By Amanda Crater – Just as George Washington once swung an ax into his own father’s beloved cherry tree, the United States federal government just drove a drill into the heart of its national park system by approving a federal management plan that will allow fracking to occur in parts of the George Washington National Forest – the nation’s largest national forest on the East Coast. The controversial practice is vehemently opposed by both environmentalists and Virginia’s governor Terry McAuliffe, but fracking will be allowed thanks to the new plan passed Tuesday November 14, 2014 over their objections.

It seems fitting that this symbolic move applies to a national park named after a president whose legacy includes taking an ax to his own garden in a masochist act of self sabotage – good fracking job America on this one too.  Just as elementary school text books commend dear George for fessing up to his father, politicians and lobbyists are applauding themselves for coming up with a compromise that allows the country to continue a destructive practice for which future generations will be forced to pay the price.

 

The federal management plan reverses an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing that the U.S. Forest Service had proposed in 2011 for the 1.1 million-acre forest, reported the Washington Post (see “Fracking to be Permitted in GW National Forest“).

“We think we’ve ended up in a much better place, which is we are allowing oil and gas drilling,” said Robert Bonnie, the undersecretary for national resources and environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.

“From a policy perspective, the Forest Service allows fracking on forest lands throughout the country. We didn’t want to make a policy decision or change policy related to fracking,” Bonnie told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Keep on destroying that Garden of Eden with your unsustainable, violent acts on the earth, America, frack on!