YES: Once permitted, the environmental damage cannot be undone.
By Arnold J. Mann
On May 24, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testified before Congress, saying, “I am not aware of any proven case where the ‘fracking’ process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing.”
It was a classic case of nondenial denial by a federal agency enjoying observer status courtesy of a law assigning natural gas drilling oversight to the states. Jackson wasn’t saying there have been no cases of ground water contamination from this controversial new mining technology; she was just saying she wasn’t “aware” of a “proven” one.
So why have New Jersey, North Carolina and New York, the cities of Buffalo and Pittsburgh, the Canadian province of Quebec and all of France banned or issued moratoriums on fracking?
With fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a well is drilled thousands of feet deep into rock. Then millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals — including asbenzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene and formaldehyde — are blasted into the shale, fracturing it and releasing the natural gas.
Suddenly, the inaccessible is accessible, and the gas rush is on with tens of thousands of new wells popping up in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, West Virginia, Utah and Wyoming, with residents in those states reaping lucrative leases.
And why not? Natural gas burns cleaner than oil or coal, it’s cheaper than foreign oil, and it creates jobs. That’s what industry is pitching, and it’s what Lisa Jackson pitched to Congress. And it’s probably safer than nuclear energy.
Or is it?
When a well broke in Bradford County, Pa., tens of thousands of gallons of fracking fluids leaked into the Susquehanna River, just like the 8,000 gallons that seeped into a creek near Dimock, Pa.
Thousands of Texas residents have had their water contaminated in the Barnett bonanza, along with water wells in Pavilion, Wyo.
It’s not just chemicals. Duke University researchers found elevated methane in 13 of 26 wells tested in northeastern Pennsylvania, to the point where the water could catch fire — just like the Wyoming sink water in the documentary film “Gasland.”
The New York Times obtained EPA documents revealing that wastewater from fracking is often much more radioactive than federal regulators deem safe for treatment plants to handle — water that is eventually fed into rivers.
A 2009 ProPublica investigation found more than a thousand reports of water contamination. No wonder New Jersey and New York live in constant fear that Pennsylvania’s fracking boom will contaminate the Delaware River, where all three states draw drinking water.
Then there was the dramatic drop in the number and intensity of earthquakes in central Arkansas when fracking was halted, as well as the dramatic increase in air pollution in otherwise pristine northeastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming since fracking began.
When I first sat down to write, the absurd idea of bringing back underground nuclear testing came to mind. That would crack the shale with no chemical mess. Imagine my surprise when I learned that this preposterous idea had already been executed!
During the 1960s and 1970s, a series of test explosions, five times that of Hiroshima, were set off in New Mexico and Colorado to get at the natural gas. Unfortunately, the gas came up radioactive, and fear of contaminating water supplies put an end to what was to have been a nationwide bonanza.
At the very least, what’s needed is a moratorium on the helter-skelter drilling of new fracking wells, until the process is proved safe or made safe. Preliminary results of an EPA study are due in a couple of years. Until then, all Americans should be aware that fracking is another genie that — once unleashed — cannot be forced back into the bottle.
Arnold Mann is author of “They’re Poisoning Us! From the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico, An Investigative Report.”
NO: The dangers are mostly theoretical; all energy extraction has risk.
By Andrew P. Morriss
Natural gas is a key part of America’s energy supply, providing nearly a quarter of our total energy needs. That includes a third of the energy used by industry, homes and businesses, and nearly 30 percent of the electricity we generate.
Natural gas is clean and cheap compared to other forms of energy. Over the last few years, U.S. and world natural gas reserves have soared — U.S. reserves are up by over a third — as we’ve discovered how to apply the technique known as “fracking” to unleash gas trapped in deep underground shale formations.
Fracking involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under pressure into underground formations, releasing the gas trapped there. Some of the material pumped in returns to the surface; some remains underground where it props open the fractures created in the formation.
The technique has been in use in the United States since the 1940s, and it has been used around the world for decades in both oil and gas production. What is new is its effectiveness as methods are refined and the extent of the areas where it can be used cost effectively.
This has revolutionized America’s energy picture. Shale gas made up just 1 percent of our gas supply in 2000; today it represents 25 percent.
In the early 2000s, plans were under way to build liquefied natural gas terminals to import natural gas from the Middle East. Today we are retrofitting our ports to allow us to export it. Natural gas prices have fallen to a quarter of their 2000 price, largely as a result of this dramatic increase in supply.
As we discover new shale formations with recoverable gas, we face some difficult technical and legal issues. The liquid residue can pose risks to ground water and pumping pressurized liquid into the ground can affect neighbors’ properties.
However, thus far fracking’s dangers are mostly theoretical. Earlier this year EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson — certainly no friend to the hydrocarbon energy industry — told Congress that there had been “no proven cases where the fracking process itself has affected water.”
“We have in place a national regulatory system to protect ground water and well-developed principles of property law that protect neighbors,” she testified. “We don’t need more rules, just consistent application of those we have already.”
Indeed, all forms of energy production involve side effects. Consider these examples:
● Wind and solar energy production require extensive use of rare earth minerals. Almost all of these minerals are imported from China where their production often triggers environmental disasters. The British Daily Mail’s investigation into rare earth production for renewable energy earlier this year quoted Greenpeace China as saying “There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment.”
● Ethanol poses serious threats to water in the Midwest, both from its water-intensive production draining aquifers faster than they recharge and from groundwater pollution from increased fertilizer use in growing corn.
● Nuclear plants require disposal of long term radioactive wastes. Coal plants emit both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases, while mining risks lives and the environment.
Unless we are willing to drastically reduce our energy use — and so diminish our access to energy-intensive goods like pharmaceuticals and computers — we cannot reject every advance in energy production.
And unlike renewable energy firms such as General Electric and Archers Daniels Midland, the natural gas industry doesn’t have its hand out asking for subsidies. Making sure we do not shut down development of our natural gas reserves with ill-considered regulatory measures is critical to our energy future.
Andrew Morriss is the D. Paul Jones Jr. and Charlene A. Jones chairholder in law and professor of business at the University of Alabama and a co-author of “The False Promise of Green Energy.”
