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Recent Paper Shows Fracking Chemicals In Drinking Water, Industry Attacks It

Posted by timothy on from the they-never-factor-in-the-tastiness dept.

eldavojohn writes: A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences turned up 2-Butoxyethanol from samples collected from three households in Pennsylvania. The paper's level headed conclusion is that more conservative well construction techniques should be used to avoid this in the future and that flowback should be better controlled. Rob Jackson, another scientist who reviewed the paper, stressed that the findings were an exception to normal operations. Despite that, the results angered the PR gods of the Marcellus Shale Gas industry and awoke beltway insider mouthpieces to attack the research — after all, what are they paying them for?

4 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Lives be damned by ArcadeMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Profits above all else.

    Hu-mans have turned into Ferengi.

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    1. Re:Lives be damned by mellon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually I would blame the regulator, and the regulations, and the congresscritters who voted for there not to be any. By the time the product reaches the final point of sale, we are powerless to discriminate between ethically-extracted and unethically-extracted fuels. The only way to get companies to behave ethically is to require that they behave ethically. This isn't because the people who run them are unethical bastards (maybe they are, maybe they aren't). It's because it's a commodity, and no producer can afford to do anything that costs more than what any other producer is doing, no matter how good their intentions.

      To move the higher-priced ethically pure stuff to the customer the ethical producer would have to control the entire distribution chain, all the way to the customer. That's not as practical as it might sound. The major market for natural gas is in gas-fired generation, and those buyers then wholesale the electricity to the grid, and then we purchase it from our power company. So we are two or three steps removed from where we could vote with our wallet. We have no power to affect this market.

      We customers of the grid are actually, a lot of us, paying a premium for clean power, but that power isn't coming from burning natural gas, because natural gas is not a clean source of power. So while we can reduce the total demand for natural gas, and we have, we aren't affecting the functioning of the natural gas market.

      Because it's a commodity market, because producers really don't have any choice, the only way to make it possible for them to behave ethically is through regulation. Regulation prevents the race to the bottom: prevents the producers who would prefer to behave ethically from being forced to behave unethically in order to keep their prices at the same level as the producers who don't mind behaving unethically. This idea of just letting the market take care of it, and blaming the customer when they don't make choices they can't make, is futile and absurd.

  2. Make them drink it ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think any PR person, CEO, and other mouthpiece who says this stuff is perfectly safe should be forced to drink it. Daily. For a year. Their family included.

    If the PR clowns are going to claim it's safe, put their money where there mouth is. If they refuse to drink it, assume they're lying and feed them to bears.

    Hold these guys to some standard of truth instead of their accustomed truthiness, and see what they do.

    I'm so tired of these "think tanks" who are nothing more than paid shills who spout this crap just to obfuscate the truth -- it's no different than the tobacco lobby did. It's slimy and dishonest, and should carry a huge penalty.

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  3. Simple Demand. by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The communities are just following the stupidity of the political view points.
    Can we frack in your community? Sure... However we want our water quality (including well water, checked once a month at your expense, for as long as the pumps are active and 10 years after. (This is relatively inexpensive demand). If there is a problem with water quality that has changed sense fracking. Then you need to supply us with clean water for 150 year or until the water quality returns.

    If your method is as safe and clean as you state, then you shouldn't have to worry about it.

       

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