NY Times: Hunt for Gas Hits Fragile Soil, and South Africans Fear Risks
When a drought dried up their wells last year, hundreds of farmers and their families flocked to local fairgrounds here to pray for rain, and a call went out on the regional radio station imploring South Africans to donate bottled water.
Trenly Spence says "one big spill, leaky pipe or crack underground that their studies didn't catch, and a farm my family has run for four generations is done."
Covering much of the roughly 800 miles between Johannesburg and Cape Town, this arid expanse — its name means “thirsty land” — sees less rain in some parts than the Mojave Desert.
Ian Urbina shifts the focus of his series opposing hydraulic fracturing to South Africa