Ok, I admit that there's some concern in Oklahoma. But by and large, I cannot see any serious scientific reason why fracking poses any danger to the environment. There are folks out there on a tear about it, who are even more opposed to it and stumping more furiously than they might about global warming - or 'climate change' (which is a stupid euphemism, because despite the name change, the suspected cause is the warming of the planet by greenhouse gases).
*Everything* I read about it - aside from the protests - tells me that the complaints are absurd. In some of these regions, people have been igniting their tap water for generations. It's what happens when an aquifer sits on top of an oil or gas field.
The problem with fracking is that it brings up a great deal of energy that is not being bought from the Middle East. People sympathetic to, or otherwise under the control of, the serious sheiks over there tend to find reasons (read: "made-up problems") with the United States or other major world powers not getting their energy supplies from predominantly the Middle East.
So, here's the deal; in 2013/2014, the Saudis lowered the cost of oil in an admitted effort to limit or extinguish investments in other energies or other producers of oil. Venezuela has gone under because of it, but the Saudis really don't care. Other OPEC producers are PO'd, but the Saudis really don't care. Once the competition and thought of need for future exploration is significantly reduced, prices skyrocket again, putting Saudi as a larger world leader, where people really need them in a huge way.
There's nothing wrong with fracking. There's nothing wrong with the United States being energy-independent. But, it IS a free market, and so long as it is not profitable to do so it is unlikely there will be a drive for other sources of energy. By making frackers be held up in courts, regulations, red tape, marketing campaigns to show how they're not the devil, etc., there is less interest in companies getting into fracking, or funding research into better/cleaner/safer ways to get energy. Note, when natural gas prices fell so hard and so fast, all of the new-nuclear dried up. This is the same idea with Middle East oil.