Leigh - There is nothing good about lighting tap water on fire.  It is as Scott mentioned.  My point was that the methane was in the tap water way before the current fracking and that some people are always looking for an easy way to make a buck.  Like Dire Straits said - money for nothing and your checks for free.   This NY Times piece was nothing more than another hit piece against retrieving our own resources, which is why it hit a nerve.  I have been hearing about how we need to be less dependent on foreign oil since I was in high school and that was a LOOOONG time ago.  It has not decreased, but increased from people who want to see the demise of the US and all of us. 

My great grandfather was also an immigrant from Italy and came to the US to find "his fortune" from hard work.  He started int he coal mines in PA and when he had "made his fortune" (enough to get married, he went back to farming like he did in the old country.  However, those years in the coal mines led to his early death as well. 

Technology today is so much better than it used to be and the screaming memes yelling NIMBY are not seeing the forest for the trees.  But the media is definitely a propaganda machine.  As I said in a post earlier in the year, Hearst must sure be proud that his use of yellow journalism is still going strong.