Can you light your tap water on fire? If you live in Pennsylvania, there’s a good chance that your water is about to combust. This is because of the dangerous and toxic practice of “fracking.”

What is fracking? Short for Hydraulic Fracturing, fracking is the process of injecting millions of gallons of sand and chemicals (many of them toxic) into the earth and extremely high temperatures to break up rock formations, and release the natural gas inside.

Why is fracking dangerous? The natural gas that’s released by fracking must be piped to compressor stations before they can be sent to power plants and other end consumers of energy. At these compressor stations, the volatile organic compounds and dangerous chemicals are burned off into the air. The remaining fracking fluid is stored on-site as wastewater; part of the wastewater evaporates into the air, and the rest stays underground. Toxic gases and chemicals can and have contaminated nearby water supplies.

Fracking can devastates communities. Earlier this year, Vanity Fair covered the dangers of fracking in the small Pennsylvanian town of Dimock. Over the last two years, Dimock’s fresh water aquifer became severely contaminated, turning the water brown and making residents sick. One woman’s water spontaneously burst into flames and animals began losing their fur. High levels of iron, aluminum, and methane were found in people’s water wells, causing dizziness, sores, tumors, neurological impediments, among other health problems.

In addition, fracking is extremely energy intensive. Three to eight millions of gallons of water are used for every shale-gas well and fleets of trucks used to ferry the fracking fluid.

Why all the fuss now? Fracking has been practiced for many decades and the impact can be seen all over the West, including Colorado and New Mexico. But, talk of fracking in the Marcellus Shale has renewed interest, and fear, in the region. The Barnett Formation shales in Texas is currently the most prolific source of unconventional gas in the continental U.S. The Marcellus Shale covers several times more area than the Barnett, stretching 600 miles to Barnett’s 170.

Although many people promote the use of natural gas because it supposedly burns more cleanly than coal or oil, its supplies are finite, which means that much of that natural gas has to be accessed by fracking. 90% of all gas and oil wells currently use fracking.

In a 2004 study, the Environmental Protection Agency gave fracking a clean bill of health. This finding was immediately questioned and Weston Wilson, a former E.P.A official, immediately blew the whistle, calling the study “unsupportable.” The E.P.A is undertaking a new study, to begin in early 2011, and the response has already been overwhelming. According to a Huffington Post editorial by Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, a public hearing in Syracuse, NY was postponed because officials were concerned that the venue wouldn’t be able to hold the 8,000+ citizens expected to show up. Back in July, a ballroom set up for 800 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, overflowed with stakeholders both against and in support of fracking. And just last week, the New York Governor David Patterson stated that there would be no fracking in New York’s Marcellus shale region unless it could be proven that the water supplies would be safe.

Where does that leave Pennsylvania? The state’s fracking industry is pushing for the enactment of a law that would force Pennsylvania property owners to sell their natural gas rights to a drilling company, if their neighbors were doing it, too. This is called a pooling bill. Although no pooling bills have been introduced to Pennsylvania legislature yet, several bills are in the drafting stages.

According to a report by the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, there have been 1,435 violations by 43 different Marcellus Shale drilling companies since January 2008. 952 of them were identified as impacting the environment. Another analysis by Clean Water Action...