Statement of Earthworks Energy Program Director, Bruce Baizel
“Yesterday, a jury awarded the Parr family $3 million in damages for the fracking-related impacts caused by Aruba Petroleum’s operations near their home in Texas.
The jury’s decision is important for two reasons.
When evidence of fracking’s impacts are shown to an impartial jury in a court of law, they find them to be real and significant.
And it shows why the fracking industry is reluctant to allow lawsuits of this type to go to trial. Instead fracking companies try to force out of court settlements that gag the harmed family as a condition for financial compensation. They almost always succeed, hiding from the public the proof of fracking’s dangers. Consequently, industry and government continue claiming fracking is harmless.
We hope this lawsuit will make regulators, in Texas and around the country, reexamine their assumptions about fracking’s dangers, and their responsibility to keep the public safe.”
