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Recent Paper Shows Fracking Chemicals In Drinking Water, Industry Attacks It
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?
Are there any? negative externalities that people have an obligation not to impose on others; or is it always the other guy's job to suck it up and add whatever systems are necessary to compensate for them?
That's the chemical.
They found it (a very small amount) in the water. Parts-per-trillion levels.
It's used in fracking fluids - and also in a LOT of other places, like paints, sealants, cleaning products, et bloody cetera. The shocker would be if they didn't find the stuff. Here's a partial list of chemicals that use it:
http://hpd.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/search?tbl=TblChemicals&queryx=111-76-2
It's used in many Simple Green products, a LOT of Rustoleum paints, and a lot of others. Minwax, Goo-Gone, Zep, Windex... the list is pretty long. And all it would take would be a home mechanic spilling a bottle of one of those products to get to that same parts-per-trillion levels in their own well water.
The paper suggests that the chemical may have come from a surface-level leak at a nearby well - and that they can't actually tie the chemical to the actual fracking chemicals used at that well.
Trace amounts from a leaking well. Are they likely to go up, down or stay the same?
Remember, if you're a local, your life may depend on the answer.
There are plenty of contaminants in water that would be a serious problem at the parts per trillion level. Whether these chemicals are or not is, I think, not yet demonstrated.
You're thinking of the local water company with it's water filtering plants and pipes that lead directly to your home. That is not where fracking is happening. Fracking is done out where there isn't public water and sewer.
Hate to break it to you, but yes, fracking very much IS happening right in the middle of where there are water and sewer service. Both Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the 31st and 23rd largest MSA's in the country are right in the middle of the shale boom and both states have their department of natural resource (exploitation) overruling local control so there's plenty of drilling happening in the middle of communities (my town of 30k took the DNR to the state supreme court to try to block projects after we had several leaking wells contaminate drinking water and local streams)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Indeed. If they contaminate your well to the point the water testing company says its not safe to drink, your property value did just drop. Then they can buy it and get the mineral rights cheap while they stall you for 10 years in court.
Can someone enlighten me as to why funky chemicals are needed to break rocks?
They are not needed to break the rocks, but to dissolve the hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are not normally soluble in water, so you need detergents or other chemicals to form an emulsion that can be pumped to the surface. After the hydrocarbons are separated, the "funky chemicals" are mostly recycled and pumped back down the hole. But they are temporarily stored in holding ponds, which can leak if not properly sealed. Some of the chemicals also leak because of bad seals on the pumps and pipe joints. It is unlikely that there is leakage directly from the shale, so the groundwater contamination is not an inherent problem with fracking, but rather with sloppy practices and corner cutting.
I don't know if sloppy practice explains the earthquakes in Oklahoma, though.
The groundwater contamination is a serious issue, that needs to be resolved, probably through more frequent inspections and higher fines. The earthquakes are a trivial problem. They are small, and transitory. Once the frackers move on, the earthquakes will stop. Fracking has generated over a million jobs, adds hundreds of billions of domestic production to the US economy every year, and, by replacing coal with gas, has done more to reduce CO2 emissions than all other efforts combined. If the price of that is a few rattled windows in rural Oklahoma, then so be it.