Slashdot Mirror
High-Tech Gas Drilling Is Fouling Drinking Water
sciencehabit writes "Drilling for natural gas locked deep in a shale formation — a process known as fracking — has seriously contaminated shallow groundwater supplies beneath far northeastern Pennsylvania with flammable methane. That's the conclusion of a new study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The analysis gives few clues, however, to how pervasive such contamination might be across the wide areas of the Northeast United States, Texas, and other states where drilling for shale gas has taken off in recent years."
but but Regulation is bad... m'kay?
... a process known as fracking
Quick - blame it on the fracking Cylons!
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
New study? Ever seen 'Gasland'?
Gasland:
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
You know fracking is bad when you can put a lighter up to a running facet in your kitchen and a fireball erupts.
Yeah, it probably is contaminating the water table, but do you have any idea how much these people get paid by the drillers to operate on their land? It's a lot of money, and in most cases it's enough that these people have their water trucked in and wont have to worry about it. Bad for the environment? Sure, but do you really thing a struggling farmer cares about the environment when his business is failing?
Free gas at the faucet !
I'd set up some kind of cool burning fountain thingie in my front yard!
See, this is one of those things a truly advanced technological species WOULDN'T be doing...
Pssst.... Space Nutters... Put down the Star Trek DVDs and take a long hard look at reality.
I've heard of these kids before – if they get enough air time you wind up with expensive gasoline and a broken economy.
The purpose of existence is to make money.
They are equally entitled to clean drinking water. And the people who dont own the property in apartment complexes are not getting anything. And the locally grown produce getting sprayed with this stuff, which is then fed to kids, livestock. They arent getting paid. If they cannot mine this valuable substance without contaminating the water, then they should have to completely replace the water supply with water piped in from a clean location. Every house, every yard, every farm well replaced with free city water. Forever.
"Some of you may have noticed if you've tried to drink during the course of the last few years that your drinking water is now natural gas. That's because we've been doing invisible drilling in your area, which is turning your drinking water into natural gas. Don't worry, that just means it's working."
- Frack Johnson
It's not nice to frack with Mother Nature.
how would that work actually
As Kevin Grandia wrote last year:
In 2005, at the urging of Vice President Cheney, fracking fluids were exempted from the Clean Water Act after the companies that own the patents on the process raised concerns about disclosing proprietary formulas - if they had to meet the Act's standards they would have to reveal the chemical composition which competitors could then steal. Fair enough, but this also exempts these companies from having to meet the strict regulations that protect the nation's freshwater supply.
Imagine if your neighbor's toilet clogged and, instead of calling a plumber, he started taking a dump over the fence on your garden.
What would you do?
A) call the police
or
B) complain about lack of a regulation on taking a dump over the fence?
There are already laws in effect stating that no one is allowed to poison their neighbor's water. However, since natural gas extraction *is* regulated, and the regulations do not prohibit fracking, then an exception is created allowing the corporations to poison the water in this manner.
The problem with regulations is that when you create them, instead of using the existing laws, something that would not normally be permitted could be allowed by the regulations by default.
From the study synopsis:
"In active gas-extraction areas (one or more gas wells within 1 km), average and maximum methane concentrations in drinking-water wells increased with proximity to the nearest gas well and were 19.2 and 64 mg CH4 L-1 (n = 26), a potential explosion hazard; in contrast, dissolved methane samples in neighboring nonextraction sites (no gas wells within 1 km) within similar geologic formations and hydrogeologic regimes averaged only 1.1 mg L-1 (P 0.05; n = 34)."
The ground is fractured to increase the mobility of the gas. But when people start claiming that the gas is moving into places where it isn't welcome, people question this. I find it odd that these "anti-progress" studies need to do perfect research and journalism. It's as if the burden of proof is been placed 100% onto the "anti-progress" group. I mean really, why cant the burden of proof be on the "destroy the world and fuck you in the ass" studies.
An interesting report about the practice of fracking in rural Australia. Similar stories about widespread pollution - particularly to do with the chemicals used in the process - but also about some of the battles mining companies play with land owners http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20110221/gas/
You make a very good point, as the methane is likely coming from shallower formations than the shale, not from the fracture procedure. However, most people love to just blame the scapegoat without asking questions to become informed on the topic.
Well, d'oh, has no-one watched Gaslands?
Nobody that I know of doesn't use a filter of some sort these days to keep at least some of the junk out of their drinking water (or buy bottled water). This just points to all the more reason to use a filter.
I live in the Hudson Valley, where people protest fracking like crazy.
"Brita Faucet Fryer".
It isn't called "fracking" for nothing.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/04/27/calgary-fracking-drilling-lawsuit.html
We have the same problem...
Why is fracking deemed as equivalent to "progress"?
I've got the sense you where trying to be funny, but it's quite insightful.
Dude. It's published in PNAS, one of the top scientific journals (which means the peer review would have been brutal). Read the actual study - even in just the abstract, they answer some of your questions regarding the methodology. In the actual paper, they clearly explain their basic methodology and the principles behind it, as well as their conclusions.
Your concerns are unwarranted. They test a valid comparison between fracking sites and non-extraction sites. They show quite convincingly data demonstrating the origin of the methane (ie. differentiation between biogenic and thermogenic sources), and they note that many of their non-extraction sites are slated for extraction in the future, which will allow a follow up paper for a longitudinal look at fracking on levels of methane gas in water sources and as surface emissions as modified by local geology.
I'm a biochemist, not a geologist, but the paper is super easy to read, and only 5 pages to boot. Give it a go.
And, in future, here's a hint: If you, a complete layperson, can come up with a number of problems to a scientific study in a few minutes, then you can bet that actual experts in the field who have dedicated their entire professional career (usually decades long) to these sorts of questions may just have thought about them too.
Drill baby drill!
You got the touch!
Seeing that they are the basis for many of the rebuttals to the exaggerated claims in the Gasland movie?
This is a problem I generally have with these groups that produce movies such as Gasland (Michael Moore is similar). They love to exaggerate, misdirect, and some out right lie in their presentations, all to make their case more dire. They love to incite fear and then quickly go elsewhere when objections are raised. They are quick to dismiss any objection under the head nodding, wink wink, type claim that those who don't agree are obviously shills.
This in the end weakens their cause because they come off as crack pots. I lived on a farm as a child in North Eastern Ohio. We changed wells three times during my twelves years of growing up there because of naturally occurring contamination. They are was very high in coal. We ran a water softener and a filter system just to have drinkable water. By drinkable I mean water that didn't taste outright odd. Toilets would have iron stains in days from cleaning.
So I am quite sure someone with a chip on their shoulder who didn't like the coal industry (or NG) in my old area could gen up a good scare story without revealing the pre existing issues.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think those fracking cylons did it bill, THEY'RE FRACKING UP OUR WATER!!!!!!
I'm a fracking cylon bill!!!!!
WE'RE ALL FRACKING CYLONS!!!!
From the linked article: "Analyses of 60 wells paint a picture of contamination near active gas wells. Almost all water wells more than a kilometer from an active gas well had only a few parts per million methane in their water. But most wells 1 kilometer or less from a gas well produced water with 19 to 64 parts per million methane. That’s at and above the “action level” of federal safety guidelines for methane, which can displace air’s oxygen to cause asphyxiation. The higher levels are also in the flammable range. “I watched one homeowner light his water on fire,” Jackson says."
You can't turn back the clock to a time before there was fracking for a rock solid analysis, but it is, IME, pretty solid evidence when you can chart the level of methane in the well water against the distance from the fracking site.
Perhaps more intriguing is the level of "chemical" (i.e., the non-water bits pumped into the shale to assist gas extraction) that shows up in the drinking water. If a study could find evidence of "chemical" contamination that could only come from fracking, then you have circumstantial evidence that fracking's leading to contamination (methane) and solid, direct evidence of contamination. And, I dunno about you, but I'd be willing to put down cash money that the chemicals drillers are using are not benign.
You realize that to get to the shale you have to dig a hole down to it.
That hole then gets pressurized with whatever is down in the shale.
If that hole leaks because someone slacked on their casing cement job, then you have methane from deep origins leaking out at the level of the water table.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Frak! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgiA10MfOu4
You are correct. I recall hearing anecdotes in the 1960's of gas-contaminated water in parts of Pennsylvania.
The methane can also originate from old leaking well case as mentionned in the PNAS study.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
the problem with Josh Fox's movie is that the Gas industry hired a bunch of PR flacks to shoot him down at every available opportunity. if you surf any internet forum comment thread on this issue, you will see post after post after post that use classic PR strategies, like avoiding the question, changing the subject, and personal attacks against Fox, (it almost reads like a page out of Team Themis' plans against Glen Greenwald), etc.
Another thing the PR flacks rely on is the lack of 'scientific proof'. They say there is no real evidence, everything is anecdotal, Josh Fox is not a scientist, etc etc etc. If they cannot get rid of their opposition, they at least try to slow it down and delay it as long as possible. This is actually a good strategy; the GOP took back the House of Representatives in 2010, so all of that delay from 2008-2010 actually accomplished something.
The PR flacks of course are moving to buy off their own scientific experts but if you have articles like this in reputable scientific journals, it is a major blow to the PR people. It destroys a lot of their arguments. They will have to move on from "there's no evidence" to "there is conflicting evidence" (see Global Warming) and "we need jobs". They also might have to stop personally attacking Josh Fox and performing character assassination. . . that is something that doesn't work quite as well with reputable scientists (although it can still be done).
if you would watch the movies you would understand that Josh Fox is nothing like Michael Moore. he doesn't ambush any executives in order to get a video clip of him chasing after some guy in a parking lot or elevator lobby (Moore).
the executives just flat out don't talk to him. he calls and calls and calls. who will talk to him? dozens of homeowners, a handful of scientists, and an obviously conflicted regulator. Fox's film main strength is that a lot of it is very dispassionate.
if the PR flacks are paying you based on how many anonymous bullshit 'rebuttals' you spray all over the internet.
considering the tens of thousands of farmers who depend on underground aquefers for the water they use on their crops and to water their cattle, i just dont understand your post, at all.
the gasland film even has a rancher on it whose cattle are suffering becasue of contamination.
the fluid the pump down into the ground is a cocktail of chemicals dreamed up in a lab to better crack rocks apart. the levels of chemicals were even kept secret from the public for a long time.
you can get more information about the chemicals in a big mac than about what the gas companies are pumping into your water supply.
You failed to read the article. They explicitly tested wells up to 5 km from the closest fracking site, and they also tested for the source of the methane. The methane measured at far distances (1-5km from the closest site) was coming from naturally occuring bacteria, and averaged 1 mg / L, while methane measured closer to the sites ( 1km ) ranged from 19mg/L to 64 mg/L, and the type of methane was the same as obtained from extraction from the shale, being hydrocarbon rich. They also pointed that a few further sites had more methane than expected, but they also said they could not get the information about how far the wells went horizontally, which could have helped them a bit more.
Anyway, take a look at the article. It`s really well done.
It just means we need to delay further studies while pretending we need them so that any relations between fracking and flaming faucets won't be proven before we have finished drilling. By that time, we'll have retired to the bahamas and our successors will be the ones left to deal with the situation.
clearly "Attila Dimedici (1036002) ", has not actually read the article before responding to it.
but that doesn't matter. they KNOW they are right.
Shell recently started a tender processes to obtain the privileges necessary to do fracking in the Karoo (a vast semi-desert) in South Africa. The area of concern produces most of South Africa's meat produce through sheep farming, and many towns and farmers depend on the groundwater supply in the area for survival.
So, there's a reasonably strong movement among farmers and concerned environmentalists in SA to stop Shell from using this process in the Karoo - it's just too risky. Of course, Shell promises that nothing will go wrong, and it will have no effect on the water supply. But the process requires several megaliters of water, which basically amounts to all the groundwater available in the Karoo.
There are other known cases where this process also didn't turn out well, but perhaps this case will help make the farmers' and concerned parties' case.
Unfortunately, this being South Africa and politicians being who they are, the government is leaning strongly towards allowing Shell to mine the Karoo for natural gas. "Thousands of job opportunities" is the catchphrase they love to use in this regard. So if you ask me, it's going to happen, no matter what the risk. But at least now, with it going wrong in several other places, the environmentalists may have solid grounds to take this matter to the courts.
For the foreseeable future, America's LNG seems to be the way to free ourselves from the energy racketeering, exercised by hostile Asian countries. I hear that Gasprom is already suffering financially largely due to the diversification of Europe's gas import. The USA's LNG hurts them. And that is wonderful.
It's not enough to pursue fossil fuels to the point of destroying the environment on a global scale, but what really, really pisses me off is that the 10 motherf@#$ in control of the world's supply are so crazed with insatiable greed that they can, and will, continue to as they wish with no regard for anything. They are unstoppable becuase they own the lawmakers.
I'm looking at you especially, Walker; you kochsucker.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Instead of condemning fracking as a public health risk due to methane release in the ground water, why don't we come up with a simple separator that could be connected to people's wells that would siphon off the methane and either store it or use it to heat the home or generate electricity?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/natural-gas-drilling-linked-to-methane-in-water/
but it is, IME, pretty solid evidence when you can chart the level of methane in the well water against the distance from the fracking site.
Or perhaps, it is just the distance from a site that was optimal to drill a well that would use the fracking technology. The logic you use is very similar to the logic used by people who were convinced that vaccines caused autism. This does not mean that fracking is not a problem. It just means that you need to actually determine quantitatively what the problem is.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
How difficult/expensive is it to pull methane out of the water in a treatment plant?
So, they tested wells 5 km from the fracking site and they tested wells close to the site. That is like saying they tested land close to a uranium mine and it had more uranium on it than land further away, that must be a result of the uranium mine. When in actuality, maybe that has something to do with why the mine is there in the first place. I am not saying that the same is the case in this situation. I am saying that until someone does more thorough studies, we do not know that there is not a relationship between why they put these wells where they did and this phenomena.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They specifically tested over the same `underground profile`, and that`s also why they didn`t go to 50km away. Beside, validating the methane profile in the surrounding really makes the point valid. Please take some time to read the article itself, it`s freely available from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/02/1100682108.full.pdf and should answer most of your questions.
S11E08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI:_Crime_Scene_Investigation_(season_11)
So does the well have high levels of methane because of the nearby drilling, or was the nearby drilling done at that location because the area was already high in naturally-occurring methane?
Correlation is not causation.
For the people who've been living there for the past 10 years. Watch the documentary "Gasland". It shows the natural gas industry in all it's glory.
My other sig is a knife wound.
The frakking is done a mile underground. (5000+ feet). Water wells are rarely over 500 feet deep. If the 'fractures' spread that much, all the (pressurized, remember) NG would leak away into the atmosphere.
What's much more likely is that the local ground water or aquifer is being drawn down more than usual (what with all the extra NG company employees around, drinking, showering, flushing toilets...), and the wells are now sucking the contaminated water off the top of the water table. Drill them deeper, and they'll start sucking clean(er) water again.
Of course it SAYS socialism all over the place; that means it really really IS about socialism - just like 'Obama is a socialist' and 'regulating business is socialist'. Right?
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
I don't have time to read the paper this morning. Does it only discuss sites using hydraulic fracturing for natural gas production and non-extraction sites (which I take to mean sites where natural gas is not being drilled for or produced)? If so, then it misses the possibility (which the commenter you addressed as "Dude" pointed out) of natural gas wells in the same area that do not use hydraulic fracturing. In other words, the suggestion was that they failed to isolate the variable of hydraulic fracturing. But, as I said, I don't have time to read the paper at this time so it's possible that they did account for that. Your response, however, does not indicate they did.
Fracking is exempted from EPA regulation of the substances they pump into the ground - you be surprised what they're pumping down there. It's likely that much of the contamination is not from the release of the gas, but from the stuff directly injected into the ground. This methane issue does suggest that both are a problem though.
clearly "Attila Dimedici (1036002) ", has not actually read the article
As I understand it, Slashdot comment system culture expects articles in scholarly journals to be paywalled and generally does not expect users to read paywalled articles. This journal article, on the other hand, is an exception: "Free via Open Access".
They have been doing this in Canada for decades and there is not the same issues reported here. Canada has a "loser pays" tort system and the US does not. Do the math.
Documentaries like Gas Land need to be looked at closer. I used to love Micheal Moore after watching Roger & Me on his failed quest to interview the CEO of GM. Then I found out that he actually interviewed him twice but you never see that in the movie.
Supersize me cronicals a guy who eats nothing but McDonalds and gets fat. It gets great reviews etc. The same approach is applied by a teacher and he looses weight.
Track down a copy of this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_(mockumentary)
I was channel surfing one night and stumbled into this one half way through. I thought it was real and started to buy into it. The guy took stock footage, interviews etc. and created a great (but fake) documentary.
Stop taking everything you read online as the truth. Use your head.
It is true there was no comparison done on that specific area before the fracking but they did compare it to a wide are (60 miles around the drilling site) and found that the elevated methane levels were only found in wells within 1 km of the site. Additionally, according to the article, the methane bears a signature that they can use to determine it comes from deep shale. Even though more study is suggested this seems to be enough to start taking action on this issue. The problem is clearly evident so the EPA should start work on determining the source and correcting it. If the drilling is the issue then it should be dealt with and the company compensate the injured parties / pay for the cleanup. Rather simple actually. Not anti-progress at all merely problem solving and responsible citizenship by the drilling company if they are the cause.
Wow. I knew people here would not RTFA, but that`s quite bad. They tested the type of methane found, to distinguish the naturally occuring methane from the one obtained from drilling. Guess what ? What they found in the wells nearby drilling station was not naturally occuring methane, but rather, deep underground high in hydrocarbons type of methane.
It's almost a given, for any story about a big corporation doing something terrible, there will be a certain cast of recurring characters who will jump to the defense. You can almost hear their thoughts, "How dare these unimportant little peons question the activities of their betters?" It is a knee-jerk defense of authoritarianism.
So tell me, did you miss the part about the methane being "fingerprinted" as exactly the same methane coming from the fracking well? Science has been satisfied. But science doesn't matter to you, does it? The only thing that matters is that the "better" class of people are allowed to do whatever they like without interference from the serfs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Thinks that this is more important than funding higher education.
Yep, they thought of that. How about you try and find time to read the paper before talking about the contents of the paper?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I don't know ... I tend to trust the Italian merchant royalty.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
I wouldn't call brute-force shattering of rock as "high tech".
Also note that more than natural gas is seeping into the ground water. There's the chemicals used for the process as well as even radioactive materials that are down there.
If you dig that hole you are in any deeper, you might hit gas yourself. They compared it to water distant from fracking sites, but in similar geological formations.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Which will become more rare in the US of A: privacy or potable water?
Restraining people from doing bad things is called policing. Restraining corporations from doing bad things is called regulating.
How'd we get this schism in thinking that says policing is good but regulating is bad? Solely by having different terminology? If regulation is bad, then we ought to shut down all our police departments. Save a bundle of money. Let people police themselves. Give everyone weapon permits.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Last I checked, the majority of the places in Texas where they are doing fracking get their drinking water from lakes, which come from rivers and rainfall. There are some rural communities that use groundwater. I guess this could be a concern for a few thousand people at most, but even a majority of the rural areas buy their water from the major cities. I am racking my brains trying to think if any of the areas around here that they are drilling at use ground water for their drinking water, and I don't think they do (although I could be wrong). The majority of the drilling is being done in Fort Worth and areas to the south, and pretty sure that by the time you get to areas that have pumps and water-wells, you are outside of the shale.
Not saying that its okay to pollute ground water, just that saying that fracking is polluting DRINKING water is a bit of an overstatement.
"The gas industry needs to seriously review the precautions they are supposed to be taking and see if they are truly being responsible corporate citizens."
We fight hard so that citizens have no responsibilities. Corporate citizens have fewer responsibilities than individuals now, and our right wing is fighting hard to remove the burden of THOSE (and why not? Corps have earned their privileges, and have proven how trustworthy they are time and again, just ask any good 'Party man - if a corporation does anything wrong, its always damned socialists that MADE them do it)
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
For anybody who imagines that this issue is confined to a few farmers and their wells, please skim:
http://www.hazenandsawyer.com/uploads/files/The_Threat_From_Hydrofracking.pdf
The article was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Waterworks Association, by Paul Rush from the NYC bureau of water supply. He reviews the issues (typical well injects 50,000 gal of water and chemicals, times thousands of wells in the NYC watershed), and mainly points out the sheer LACK of regulation of the industry.
If the watershed is contaminated by this process, it will be a long time before all the chemicals come out of the deep rocks and the water can be trusted again. The gas will be sucked out, sold and burned in a matter of years; the contaminations could last for decades. This is not some anecdotal, enviro-nut issue. Some of the most respected scientists in the water industry are deeply concerned by it.
...to come out and suggest that tainted drinking water is just natural, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with all of the activity going on that *directly* generates the materials contaminating the water. And even if, somehow, this actually *does* have something to do with these drilling companies (very unlikely, since they're corporatist saints, and behave completely ethically), then it's obviously the free market telling these homeowners that their contaminated water is the result of not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps hard enough.
This is the kind of batcrazy bullshit that makes everyone think that Libertarians are so retarded. I think the best solution to this problem is to round up all of the people who support the gas drilling industry, make them live in the middle of these troubled areas, and make them drink and bathe in this 'perfectly safe' water until they die of poisoning. Then we can dispose of their worthless bodies by setting them on fire -- they'll be *really* flammable by then anyway.
It requires all goods and services to be luxuries. example: supply and demand goes out the window when life is on the line.
It requires infinite markets. example: the job market. In order to subscribe to libertarian dogma, you must always be able to 'just go out and get another job'.
It requires immortality so that the market will have time to adjust/equalize.
It requires one to ignore that government regulation can be the result of market abuse in even nominally democratic governments like ours.
It requires one to forget that the closer we've gotten to free markets in history, the worse things have been for the bulk of the people.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
I don't see the "alarmist" tag?
Oh yeah, this is unrelated to the spreading of radionucliotide contamination. So ingesting these substances are dangerous to human health, and life, in general, as opposed to big heaping spoonfuls of cesium-137 and strontium-90, which are safe, and can be used as flavorings in gourmet cooking.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Regulation won't possibly work. Monkey wrenching is the only thing that will work.
Question: Ethically speaking, how should a community react when someone(s) repeatedly and knowingly poisons the community water supply?
Answer: Kill all the water-poisoners and then permanently destroy their water-poisoning operation. Anything else is an under-reaction. Note that the primary aggressors are not the workers operating the machinery (although they should probably expect to be killed, too, poor blokes), they are the owners and operators of the corporation choosing to poison community water supplies. From the community perspective, this situation clearly calls for extreme and violent retributive measures.
I am a self-defense pacifist & abhor violence. Violence is only ethically permissible in self-defense. When an outside organization enters a community and knowingly poisons the community water supply, this is clearly a self-defense situation. A cohesive community would be hunting and executing those responsible, in order to stop further poisoning of the water supply. Laws be damned, when someone knowingly tries to poison your community, it is ethically permissible to kill them in self-defense. Ask any arab.
of studying before you will finally admit the truth that we already know? I would imaging it's close the the number of decades that fracking will continue to be profitable. Then once the truth is even more undeniable, all your friends have to do is declare bankruptcy and make their victims live with the results.
That your uninformed corporate whoring rant is worthy of anything other than his style of response? when my young children make such outlandish statements as you then I don't bother with a fully detailed summary of why they are wrong, I simply tell them to sit down, shut up and stop wasting the grownup's time. so please, sit down, shut up and stop wasting the grownup's time.
From the study:
"We found no evidence for contamination of drinking-water samples with deep saline brines or fracturing fluids."
and:
" we found no evidence for contamination of the shallow wells near active drilling sites from deep brines and/or fracturing fluids"
and:
" In sum, the geochemical and isotopic features for water we measured in the shallow wells from both active and nonactive areas are consistent with historical data and inconsistent with contamination from mixing Marcellus Shale
formation water or saline fracturing fluids (Table 2)"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are looking at the problem too narrowly. Well water is often used, I believe, on farms and ranches where it might end up being ingested by cattle, hogs, chickens, etc, either directly, or through feed plants irrigated with the contaminated well water.
Which then might contaminate the meat. I'm honestly not a farmer or biologist, so I don't know to what extent that is a 'real' risk, but it seems like something which might at least be a potential concern.
If meat could get contaminated this way, then gets into the food supply, it could be consumed by many, many more people than just the farmers. Hopefully there are safeguards to catch any such contamination, but I don't know.
Palin may have said "Drill, Baby drill", but it was Obama that greases the wheels so BP could "Drill, Baby drill" in the gulf of mexico and we saw how that turned out.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Where is the "before" data on all of the wells? To date, nobody has compared "before fracking" and "after fracking" data. There are plenty of claims about well problems after the fact (Gasland) but there has not been a single study of any kind that compares drinking water pre-fracking and post-fracking. Some of that is because the data may not be available. However, basic scientific method requires a control. Where is the control in all of this? I've seen someone on this thread spout claims something along the lines of "we've had these wells for 100's of years and they've always produced clean water". Great -- show us the data and let's study before and after.
Without that basic comparison, it is difficult to determine culpability. The fact that there is methane in the water is not an indication that fracking is responsible. There are other possible explanations that need consideration.
It may very well end up that fracking is a problem. I am simply saying the data is not there to say that yet. There are some indications, yes....but we've been wrong about "obvious" things before.
Average American, Frothing with Rage: "We need to end our petroleum addiction! We need to end our dependence on foreign oil! We need to protect the environment! And I'm not going to change any of my day-to-day habits!"
Oil and Gas Industry: "Okay, look, we're investing in shale gas, which is much more environmentally friendly than oil and fills an economic niche, serving to make America more energy independent. It relies on this new technology that we're continually developing and making safer and more efficient, called hydraulic fracturing - "
Average American, Frothing with Rage: "FRACKING?" *tears out huge clumps of his own hair while screaming obscenities*
Hydraulic Fracturing is not the culprit. You need to direct your attention to proper well construction, just like you would look at poor bridge construction being the problem instead of directing your efforts at banning bridges. Please remember this: 100% American Clean Burning Natural Gas does not come without a cost. All the easy, conventional, great white elephant onshore oilfields have been found. If we are going to get off our foreign oil addiction, we need to address the current laws that are already on the books to protect our potable freshwater aquifers. Any Operator of an exploration or development program to exploit our natural resources is shooting themselves in the foot if they build a commercial failure designed to contaminate fresh water supplies that they need to hydrate the men who work on the drilling rigs. Let's all be good stewarts of the environment and promote responsible development of our domestic resources by enforcing existing laws to deal with those who act in an irresponsible way when they fail to properly construct safe wells through thorough testing of each phase of well construction and slap shod safety practices. Condemning an integral part of the domestic onshore energy industry is NOT the answer to solving our energy problems or protecting the water table. If you wish to comment, I can be found @CLAYGATLIN.
(That's the joke).
I live here in gas heaven, and this study is NONSENSE!
This is a well known problem in the Northwest, esp. areas of Wyoming and Montana. There, environmental and conservation groups have been working to either stop it, or make sure -- by actual scientific study -- that it does not pollute the ground water and lake/stream supply.
In Texas we have a larger than normal number of earthquakes since serious fracking began, and they appear to be linked to the areas where drilling has been the most invasive. This is not even considering having the boneheads drilling (for all practical purposes) in your back yard. The noise level alone is driving some out of their homes.
In Texas a large portion of that drilling sits directly over the largest aquafer in the U.S. Wonder if we'll start having birth defects from this too, while the oil/gas companies record more record profits?!
Just to make it clear the process of "drilling" is not "fracking" as this suggests. Drilling is just that drilling. Yes it is true that you can fracture a formation while drilling but this is in most cases an unwanted occurance while drilling. Fracking on the otherhand is a completely seperate process where a formation is purposefully fractured. Yes it is used in natural gas wells in shale formations but it occures AFTER the well is drilled. Fracking fractures the formation so that there is a larger collection area. I am not saying that it is always the best choice but people should understand the difference between drilling and fracking. Most people do not understand.
I was talking about the contents of the post I was responding to, which only distinguished between sites using hydraulic fracturing and sites without any wells, yet claimed to be authoritative. I never once claimed that the paper did or did not say something, only that the person I was responding to fell short of demonstrating his own point. Maybe the AC should also have read the paper before writing about it (which is what that person actually did).