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Study Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn't Pollute Water
RoccamOccam sends this news from the Associated Press:
"A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water."
How can they be sure that they didn't detect the fracking chemicals when the industry continues to refuse to reveal the identity of said chemicals? It is nearly impossible to do a study where you watch for every conceivable chemical that ever has or ever could exist.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So what the hell is being done about keeping your damn hippie drinking water from contaminating my fracking solution??
One site, one test well. Big whoop.
>shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site
> one was injected with four different man-made tracers
Assuming everything's above the board (so to speak), these results are all fine and dandy, but this single scenario doesn't itself make for a glowing endorsement of fracking's safety. For one thing, I'm wondering how the results from sites with fracking-related earthquakes might look.
Does anyone really want to bet that aquifers near other fracking sites are just as fracking-chemical-free?
It's not possible! The results are politically incorrect and will go against the dogma of 'we must be miserable'. Not to worry, someone will quickly find a way to bury this, spin this or otherwise make this moot. We can't let science speak, that's what we have greenpeace for.
Sure, it didn't get into the groundwater this time. My concern is whether proper studies are being done to ensure that other sites do not see different results from the supposedly clean ones here.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Nothing made its way up in a year, hardly surprising.
I'm sure people will be happy when they see these chemical showing up in the water a couple hundred years from now, then discovering records about fracking in archives. They will probably say things like : they could not have been this stupid?!
Again, the problem here is timescale. One should not think in decades but in centuries.
"While the lack of contamination is encouraging, Jackson said he wondered whether the unidentified drilling company might have consciously or unconsciously taken extra care with the research site, since it was being watched. " Ya think?
This segment of oil and gas propaganda was brought to you by the good ol' folks of the Marcellus Shale Coalition and its friends at ANGA. What a joke! I'm sure the American Natural Gas Association (ANGA) will advertise even more on your station now as a thank you for this puff piece you proffered as news. I live in SW PA. I sadly know many, many families whose lives have been destroyed by the onslaught of drilling and fracking. For them, this might be the most insulting study I have seen to date. Why not point out, CBS, that the state of PA never even had 1 cumulative impact study on human health or the environment before they allowed the takeover of our state and government by big oil and gas. No consideration whatsoever for what this would do to our health, our air, our water. We are here to be the guinea pigs and no one really seems to care thanks to a lack of media integrity and coverage about the reality of living in the gasfields. CBS should be embarrassed to even play along with this type of bought and paid for "journalism". Congratulations Duke! You found a company here that can drill and maintain a gas pad exactly as it should be without a single complication and did a study (like the 7 or 8% failure rate on the cement well casings. This is one of the major reasons we have had so much water contamination and methane migration in this state. Check the DEP numbers here in PA. That is failure of cement casing on just the completion of wells, not the overall failure rate, over time, that is much, much higher). It is terrifying to think about all of the damage that the fractures (1800 ft) themselves can or will do in addition to the failed casings. You seem there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells, and coal mines in all corners of this state that are further complicating this type of migration and contamination. Why not investigate that? Looking at one well and saying "Hey, this is how it is supposed to work when it does. See, it can happen." is not any kind of science or research that helps those of us screaming "WHAT DO WE DO WHEN YOUR DRILL SITES FAIL; WHEN YOUR FRACK PITS LEAK TOXIC WASTE; WHEN YOUR TRUCKS SPILL AND YOUR WORKERS ILLEGALLY DUMP ON OUR ROADS AND IN OUR WATERWAYS? WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE CAN'T BREATHE THE AIR OUTSIDE OF OUR HOMES AND ALL OF OUR POLITICIANS and REGULATORY AGENCIES ARE BEHOLDEN TO INDUSTRY AND NOT THE PEOPLE THEY WORK FOR?" Now there's a story we here in Gasland would love to see. I will take any honest journalist on a tour of what fracking really looks like when things go wrong, as they often do, from the view of the harmed, the sickened, the destroyed forests and farmland. I will show you the massive frackpits that sit behind people's houses and poison their air. I will show you what black, putrid water looks like where it used to run clean and water animals. I will let you smell the smell of flaring and burning of god knows what from giant cyrogenic plants next to the home of toddlers and daycare centers. I will show you where toxic waste is buried on farmland and where water catches fire and well after well is destroyed, thanks to all of the disruption of the earth below it. I could show you all of this and yet the sad truth is that you wouldn't even investigate or report on it, just like the media round these parts. You have an organization to run and that takes lots of advertising dollars, not honest reporting. Just keep spewing the BS about jobs, safety, doing it right, American independence from foreign oil, and every other lie and industry talking point that you tell to justify the plight of my neighbors and the destruction of our land and the profit of your news organization. I'll be here shaking my head at your fault, but fighting back. I'll watch as our resources are shipped to China and India, while more and more foreign companies drill and have more rights in our backyards than the citizens of this state. I'll watch with great sadness, your participation in the destruction of my democracy. And I will continue to speak truth to power. My eyes were opened a long time ago. I understand how the world works. I know what part in the coverup media outlets like you play. I only hope that many of your viewers wake up and take your news for what it is, good old American journaltizing at its best.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
But what about the videos of people lighting their tap water. Are there explanations that don't directly implicate fracking? I asking seriously. I haven't read up on those films and I'm sure someone has a perfectly reasonable sounding story for how that could be.
And suppose the fracking chemicals themselves don't migrate. What about the petrochemicals they've broken loose (which is the whole reason for fracking in the first place, as I understand it)? Can those work their way up into the water supply?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
From my understanding, part of the problem with fracking is that the well casings don't always hold. So the chemicals and methane can leak out farther up the well where the drinking water is. The failure rate is supposedly pretty high, with 5% leaking immediately and 30% leaking over 10 years, or something like that. I don't know exact figures and it's hard to know who to trust these days anyway.
Having just watched Gasland II, I don't necessarily trust the government's pronouncements either. According to that documentary (which is a bit propagandistic to be honest) the EPA did a study in Wyoming and found greatly elevated levels of chemicals in the drinking water. When the press release came out it gave the water a big thumbs up. Like I said, it's hard to know who to trust these days. Seems like everyone has an agenda.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It seems the US government has a very loose definition of "polluted".
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/06/fracking
So, they didn't test water pollution, only checked that fracking didn't contaminate water by using markers.
Hower, other studies showed a correlation between fracking and presence of water pollutants.
Therefore, the only logical conclusion is: water pollution causes fracking !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
How much do you suppose CHK Energy forked over for that article to appear?
Article doesn't address other much more serious incidents all over the NE in recent years...
Watch Gasland II.
All wells will eventually leak into surface water. About 5% failure rate per year. (The cement around the pipe develops cracks.)
They studied one well which didn't leak in the first year.
Gasland II shows what happens when they do eventually leak.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?