Here’s the excerpt from the Asheville Citizen-Times:
State environmental officials plan to test for the presence of significant natural gas deposits in seven Western North Carolina counties, a development that alarms environmentalists over the possibility of fracking in the mountains.
Geologists with the N.C. Department of Environmental and Natural Resources will collect rock samples along a formation called the Precambrian Rift starting in late summer or early fall, spokesman Jamie Kritzer said. … The N.C. General Assembly mandated the testing and allocated $550,000 over two years for the project statewide. The mountain counties where the samples will be collected are Clay, Cherokee, Macon, Graham, Swain, Jackson and Haywood.
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