Your article, Fracking licences for county, (Hereford Times, December 24) was wrong in stating that: "a high pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas".

This is not a water mixture but a toxic chemical cocktail which uses water as its carrier.

Water always finds its own level over time - so to poison it in order to extract a fossil fuel in a country increasingly prone to flooding, feels like lunacy.

This month the UK government, (that's you guys Mr Norman and Mr Wiggin) signed an agreement in Paris to limit warming and end our fossil-fuel addiction.

Be under no illusion, fracking is a last gasp attempt for capitalists and their cronies to make money out of fossil fuels, ordinary people will not benefit from fracking.

Mr Norman and Mr Wiggin's constituents would be better served if their MPs properly supported the renewable energy economy which could boom in Herefordshire, offering jobs and opportunities for our money to stay in the county.

This is sustainable economic development, not a methane-belching, water-poisoning option which makes a handful of rich people richer, while industrialising our tourism offer and driving ordinary people to civil disobedience.

Toni Fagan

Mayfield, Llanwarne

  •  Editors note: Our shorthand definition for the process of fracking is standard, though we accept that the mixture itself is water, sand and chemicals.