AS an SNP voter, I find it exceedingly worrying to hear that the party are intending to water down the moratorium on fracking (“SNP rift widens as fracking motion is watered down”, The Herald, October 8).

It is significant that the term "water down" is used here as fracking for gas is ultimately about water.

Over the average life of a single fracking well, hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water are used to facilitate the fracturing process underground. This water is then returned to the surface and is so permanently polluted that it can never be returned to the water system and must be stored on site in growing amounts. The safe disposal of the resulting toxic sludge left over after evaporation is already a growing problem.

The act of fracking – fracturing layers of bed rock underground – also shatters artesian rivers and water routes which for millennia have channelled our essential water tables, in some cases surface river beds have cracked and the river has vanished, in others the toxic fracking solutions have poured into once clear river ways.

Jim Ratcliffe, the chairman of Ineos, wants to build a huge fracking industry in the Central Belt – the area of the country with the greatest population. He lives in Switzerland, where fracking is banned.

Many of the companies seeking licences to frack in the UK are French. France has banned fracking.

I ask Nicola Sturgeon to pour herself a glass of good Scottish tap water, take a wee sip and have a right good think about banning fracking for good – our good.

John Elder,

14/8 Howden Hall Road, Edinburgh.