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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."
Anecdotally, the first person in a given area is paid relatively well. Their neighbors are then politely reminded, off the record, that they can either accept the er, generous, offer being made, or they can end up with poisoned groundwater anyway, and the drillers will just have to wait a bit longer for the gas under their property to diffuse through the porous substrata toward the wells next door...
If pollutants respected property lines, this would be much less of a problem...
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.
Anecdotally = Pulled it out of your ass.
Well, he *is* talking about methane...
I live an an area where drillers have recently bought (and continue to buy) drilling leases. The parent is right! That is EXACTLY what happens.
All of the drilling in my area is of the horizontal variety. The gas company buys a drilling lease on one small plot of land (a couple acres). They drill straight down for a little then they turn their drill so that it runs horizontally. They then drill horizontally for UP TO SIX MILES so it doesn't really matter who leases the land they park their drilling rig on. All it takes is one greedy asshole every few miles and your community is fucked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_drilling
The nature of the gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale Formation requires that every well has a massive horizontal component and that is fracked to hell and back. It's completely uneconomical to drill regular vertical unfracked wells in Marcellus shale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Formation#Fossil_fuel
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Ah, yes, it's not like people have been living in the area and using well water for a couple hundred years. Yet now, they can light their tap water on fire and somehow this study does not count because no one tested the water beforehand.
Would there have been a reason to test the water BEFORE you could light it on fire? And what might be the cause now, after a hundred years of prior use, that the water is flammable?
This is not something confined to the PA-NY border; it happens wherever fracking goes on, yet we are supposed to believe that this particular case is confined to one bad operator? 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.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?