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EPA Says No Evidence That Fracking Has "Widespread" Impact On Drinking Water
sycodon writes: A long-awaited EPA report on hydraulic fracturing concludes that the extraction process has "not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources." The report also cautions of potential contamination of water supplies if safeguards are not maintained. "The study was undertaken over several years and we worked very closely with industry throughout the process," Tom Burke, EPA's science advisor and deputy assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Research and Development, said on a conference call hosted by the agency.
... and we worked very closely with industry throughout the process.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
EPA is God when they agree with the environmentalists. Now we'll hear all about why they're wrong or why this is misleading.
Greedy cocksuckers like you
Yeah. You tell 'em. As you sit there barefoot in your yurt posting on Slashdot using telepathy; no electricity, polymers or climate control involved.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
So in other words they're saying it could have been too contaminated to tell where it came from.
More like there was already contamination there from other sources, so it was impossible to say for sure if the fracking was at fault or not.
Which opens up an interesting possibility for the whole fracking controversy: what if the fracking in and of itself isn't causing contamination, but something about it exacerbates already existing issues (e.g. natural sources of contaminates or long forgotten buried crap from the first half of the 1900s). Sort of like how someone might claim to be allergic to wifi, and even show symptoms when a router is turned on or off nearby, but in actuality it's the high frequency noise from the power supply switching kicking off their previously undiagnosed anxiety disorder.
The Republicans claim that was caused by fracking, but that is a typical Republican lie.
Wow, someone that gets it.
Uh .. no. Someone who believes opposition to fracking is led by "The Republicans", is not someone who "gets it".
Yeah - earthquakes that are dwarfed by the vibrations from passing trucks. Why exactly does that suck?
You are either (1) rationalizing a harmful practice in which you have a vested interest, (2) being paid to take deceptive positions on the internet, or (3) have bought the lies of persons in category 1 or 2. That doesn't necessarily make you bad--the oil companies hire *very* good people to do this, and of course as humans we are all very good at rationalizing things and somewhat bad at spotting lies.
These earthquakes are not limited in effect to the side of an interstate. An oil company should not be causing people living in their own homes to go through an earthquake every day, and certainly shouldn't be doing it unless *paying* to insure all of those people for property, casualty, or medical harm resulting from the earthquakes, not to mention partial loss of the use and enjoyment of their property and any decrease in market value.
Admittedly, most are big enough to be felt but too small to do direct and immediate damage. Still, that doesn't mean they always will be, and shaking houses is obviously not good for them and over time causes settling, cracking, etc...
Every oil or natural gas well ever drilled goes through the focking water table to get to the hydrocarbons we have grown accustomed to having at the ready. There is a protocol required when drilling, in that the well must be cased with concrete to a depth beneath where the fresh water table ends. There are a million+ wells producing in the US alone right now, and many times that number of abandoned wells since Titusville in the 1860's.
There is an environmental consequence for every form of energy we humans use, mind you, but if the failure rate of the casing was only 1% over the timetable when wells were even cased, that is still a metric fuckton of water supply contaminations.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"The two largest private sector sources for these EPA positions are Monsanto and Waste Management Inc. Since the creation of the EPA in 1970, at least twelve high-level employees of the agency also have one of these two companies on their resume." ref
EPA Study Says Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water
June 4, 2015
> “Despite industry’s obstruction, EPA found that fracking pollutes water in a number of ways,” said Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel. “That’s why industry didn’t cooperate. They know fracking is an inherently risky, dirty process that doesn’t bear close, independent examination.”
> The report also pointed out the declining amount of water that could be available for drinking purposes due to extended drought, saying, “The future availability of drinking water sources that are considered fresh in the U.S. will be affected by changes in climate and water use. Declines in surface water resources have already led to increased withdrawals and cumulative net depletions of ground water in some areas.”
> And, while saying it didn’t find evidence of widespread impacts on drinking water to date, the U.S. EPA report did conclude, “The colocation of hydraulic fracturing activities with drinking water resources increases the potential for these activities to affect the quality and quantity of current and future drinking water resources. While close proximity of hydraulically fractured wells to drinking water resources does not necessarily indicate that an impact has or will occur, information about the relative location of wells and water supplies is an initial step in understanding where impacts might occur.”
http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/04/epa-fracking-pollutes-drinking-water/
From the FA: 'no evidence fracking has a "widespread" impact on drinking water'
What does "widespread" mean? Is this like bullets, where statistically they do no harm but in certain localised scenarios (e.g. entering a particular human body at speed) they cause a lot of damage?
I'm not sure what the water management strategies are like in the US, but I find it hard to conceive that communities may not be affected by the impact of fracking in their region. The article mentions the impact in "select areas" - and problems when the water supply is constrained (US never suffers droughts, do they?) - but doesn't go into details in the article. Does this mean that some communities are effectively shut off from their local water supply because of fracking? It's unclear.
I suspect the potential impact of fracking is more complex than the one-line takeaway from a report. But I'm not a geoscientist, so I'll shut up now.
Or what's going on is that people tend to not bother testing their well water until they hear fracking is going on, then blame anything found on the fracking, even if it was present years ago.
Natural gas is in the water of wells in some areas naturally, but it's not especially harmful to drink it. After all, it's just a hydrocarbon, and our body knows how to handle them.
I don't read AC A human right
From reading the comments already on here, why not just admit there's no amount of proof you work accept. Let's face it. If you're unwilling to trust EPA than there's no one you would trust.
Hmm, EPA estimates all fracking in the USA amounts to 70-140 billion gallons per year.
CA uses about 38 billion gallons per DAY (2010 estimate).
So, if ALL of the water used in fracking (worst case estimate) were diverted to CA, it would increase their water supply by about 1%.
Note that all of the water used in fracking can't be diverted to CA in any case, since we don't have a national water distribution system. Best case would be the water from the western States could be diverted to CA.
So, a quick look around the web shows that maybe 5%, tops, of the fracking is done in places where the water could be diverted to CA. Which amounts to maybe 7 billion gallons of water per year, tops. Which is almost FIVE EXTRA HOURS PER YEAR of water available for CA.
Assuming, of course, that the two DESERT States doing almost all of that fracking couldn't find a use for that water themselves....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"