The post you are reporting:
Hi Reg, I am no expert on this, and do not pretend to be, but am prepared to spend time reading up on the subject, look at available records from what was the coal board and from the water companies, consult with a mining engineer, take some time to look at data driven, objective, academic reports, spend some of my time and money calling up and speaking with people and organisations who have experienced this type of gas extraction, both here in the UK and overseas and who are not running to some environmental agenda. I'm also capable of applying common sense and historical knowledge/experience of the impacts of coal mining and previous test bores to discern hyperbole driven by an 'agenda' from reasonable objection on the grounds of safety and security of water supply.
This subject is very important to me (as it is for you) as it directly impacts my home village and so of course I am going to study the detail as much as possible to arrive at as reasoned and sensible conclusion as any lay person is able to with the information, stripped of scary stories, that is available in the public domain.
As a layman I am merely writing out the results of my own findings after having conducted research for myself over the last several months since Balcombe hit the headlines. It was through the research that I was doing out of curiosity as to what the fuss was about at Balcombe that I saw, pretty much as they were published, the applications for the test bores in East Kent.
To date, the reading and talking that I have done leads me to a different conclusion to yourself Reg, particularly with regard to the Tilmanstone bore. Extraction however is a different matter and, given the history of contamination during the coal mining era, we need to be very sure that the same mistakes are not repeated with regard to water supply today and that the highest standards of industrial probity and safety are observed.
Just as different experts within the same field can have entirely different opinions about the same matter, so can lay people. We don't have to be experts to exercise discernment, study existing sites in this country or to develop an opinion
What concerns me most is that a fracking based protest and campaign will cause immeasurable harm to our ability to be listened to and properly heard when it comes to raising any objections that we may have on the actual substance of the applications in hand and then again later with regard to extraction our position could have become so undermined by unrelated (or only loosely associated) scare stories that the extracting companies and national authorities will find it easier to drive roughshod over legitimate concerns and will fail to properly engage in meaningful conversation.