This just in from our friends at the Shenandoah Valley Netowrk: horizontal drilling and fracking has been prohibited in the George Washington National Forest, which houses the entire headwater network of streams supplying the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, and a major portion of the headwaters of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. 

The decision to ban fracking came from the Forest Service, which cites fracking's potential to impact drinking water as reason for banning the practice. Public drinking water is now identified as a management priority, which is an improvement over previous planning documents that did not include public drinking water.

The ban is pretty good news, considering a recent blowout at a fracking well spilled thousands of gallons of chemical-laced water, contaminated a stream, and lead to the evacuation of nearby families.

We do NOT want that kind of disaster around our drinking water supply, or our homes!