The George Washington National Forest is currently one of the last areas of undeveloped forest in the Eastern United States. It is the largest national forest in the Eastern US with over one million acres of forest and protected land. Both the Potomac river and the James river flow through this national forest.

Underneath the forest is a portion of the Marcellus shale. The Marcellus shale is a gas reserve that stretches from New York to Virginia. The US Department of Energy estimates the Marcellus shale to contain 262 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

If Hydraulic fracking is to take place in the George Washington National Forest, it will not be without consequence. Fracking comes with huge environmental burdens, including biodiversity loss/disturbance and the threat of contaminating regional water supplies. The water supplies that would be at risk are those that contribute to Washington, D.C. If the water was to be contaminated, it would also disastrously affect the aquatic ecosystems in the forest.

Fracking requires up to ten acres of forest that would have to be cut down and could never be regrown. It requires large amounts of water and would result in large amounts of CO2 emissions. Roads would have to be developed throughout the forest distrupting wildlife, and the trucks that would be using these roads would be very fuel intensive, further adding to the emissions.

It is argued that fracking is more destructive than logging. When a forest is logged, it will regrow within 100 years, where as the area affected by a forest can never be regrown and will result in a permanent clearing.

Citations:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6227/7015903487_3df678428b_o.jpg

http://www.fairfaxclimatewatch.com/blog/2013/10/hydraulic-fracking-in-george-washington-national-forest.html

http://oilshalegas.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mar.JPG