When you live in a region known as the Great Lakes Basin -- the world's largest collection of fresh water -- and hold the title of Beer City USA for the second year in a row, you have to sometimes engage in activity that shows how serious you are about the protection of the natural resources that make our beer taste so damn good.
On Monday, one of the area's tiniest neighborhood breweries, Harmony Brewing Company, will be hosting a fundraising event to ensure we do not threaten our fresh water.
Let's Ban Fracking, a grassroots campaign to stop this process in Michigan, has been showing up at area festivals and the occasional environment-themed event to raise awareness about the dangers of this mining process that has impacted other states as well as spawned Academy Award nominated documentary Gasland.
Natural gas extraction uses roughly 21 billion gallons of water mixed with hundreds of dangerous chemicals (most of them not revealed to the public due to host of proprietary reasons from the mining firms) to "frack" a well.
It''s accomplished by pumping this water/chemical mixture deep into the earth forcing the shale to split, releasing gas that can then be pumped back up. The problem is that the gas, along with the now ruined water, can seep into the ground water, causing fresh water tables to become polluted, thus ruining an area's drinking water.
Getting a brewery to host this event was a natural fit for Let's Ban Fracking volunteer Nick Nortier, who suggested Harmony get on board with this cause.
"It is important to get the breweries involved because they rely so heavily on clean water to produce great beer," says Nortier. "What will happen to Beer City USA and Michigan, 'The Great Beer State,' if our water is tainted with gas?"
Harmony is donating a portion of the sales from the event to the cause. Drink up the goodness while sustaining good.
Admission: Free
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