Lake drilling not an answer

Pollution has always been a problem in the Great Lakes region. In the summer of 1969, the Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie, caught on fire because of the amount of pollutants in the water.

But some people still are willing to take a chance of this happening again. They want to lift the ban on drilling for natural gas and oil in the Great Lakes, thus endangering the largest fresh water source in the nation.

With the possibility of an energy shortage on the horizon, the government is looking for a way to produce more energy, and its eyes have landed on the Great Lakes. However, there are drawbacks to these plans.

No one knows for sure how much energy is in the lakes' deposits. The government could be drilling for a small amount that won't solve an energy crisis, and instead hurting the environment and polluting millions of people's drinking water. And it wouldn't be just the lakes that are damaged. All the streams and rivers that are connected to them would be affected as well.

Sure, the technology is there to drill for energy sources, but do we have the technology to clean it up if there is a spill or some other disaster? It cost billions of dollars to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. And more than 12 years later, the environment has not recovered, and no one knows if it ever will. This is the kind of irreconcilable damage we could be faced with if we are to lift the drilling ban on the Great Lakes.

Americans should spend more time looking at environmental-friendly power sources, such as wind and solar powers. While these renewable resources are not effective everywhere, they need to be implemented where they can be used efficiently. They should become the norm, not the exception, in power sources. We need to be spending our time and money on resources that we know can work instead of damaging our environment for an unknown amount of oil and natural gas.

Instead of yelling for "more, more, more," Americans need to be focusing on using less and conserving energy. The possibility of an energy crisis would be less threatening if we all used less. We need to follow the lessons we were taught as children - ride your bike or walk instead of driving, turn off the lights if you aren't using them, open your windows instead of using the air conditioner. These all are simple things we can do to save energy.

Before we tear up our environment more, we need to look at alternative power sources, as well as conserving the power we already have. No one knows that drilling the Great Lakes will not help produce more energy. Instead, we could end up using more energy to clean up a mess that is caused by the drilling. No one wants to see Lake Erie, or any of the other Great Lakes for that matter, burn again.