"ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, Va. -- Kim Sandum is driving on a one-lane gravel road inside the George Washington National Forest, the largest federally protected forest on the East Coast. She points to a trout stream gurgling over rocks and shallows not 20 feet from her rolling minivan."

"'Can you imagine all those big trucks operating in close quarters like this?' she asks, shaking her head. 'Earth-moving equipment everywhere, water lines stretched out on the ground. Workers actually drilling in here! I mean, there's no way.'

Sandum, executive director of the Community Alliance for Preservation in Rockingham County, has seen crews horizontally drilling for natural gas before, using a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. It was not a pretty scene, she said."

Scott Harper reports for the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot June 2, 2013. [2]