It’s looking more and
more like fracking is not such a great idea. I’ve avoided seeing Gasland, wanting to take a good look at fracking and see
for myself what the process was all about. While visiting in West Virginia I’ve
talked to frackers, and a lot of their defense of the drilling practice made
some sense to me at the time.
Well,
there’s the stuff folks tell you, and then there’s the stuff that you read
about in the news and what the science tells you. And as of right now, from the
news and the science, it looks like fracking is a lousy deal.
A
report from Environment America, a federation of environmental advocacy
organizations, gives some pretty scary numbers: Last year in the U.S. fracking
produced 280 billion gallons of toxic waste water, enough to flood an area the
size of Washington D.C. under 22 feet of bad water. Fracking by the Numbers concludes that damage from fracking, “is widespread and occurs on a scale unimagined just a few
years ago.”
Damage
from fracking can also be acute. Just this last week a study from Duke
University and published in Environmental Science & Technology found that fracking wastewater
discharged into a stream in the Pittsburgh area had elevated the levels of
radioactivity in the stream. Sediment collected downstream of a fracking
operation had radium levels about 200 times greater than sediment collected
upstream of the fracking operation. And as I’ve posted earlier, a recent study
found that wells close to fracking were more likely to be contaminated with
methane.
It
is true that not all the studies have found contamination problems. Is this one
of those times when the typical scientific rejoined, “more research needs to be
done,” can be heard? Perhaps there might be safe fracking, but I’m beginning to
think that it is from a rare combination of certain geologies, very safe
drilling practices, and a fair amount of luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment