Pretty alarming story about the radioactive pollution that fracking injects into our water sources. The article also highlights the inability of regulators to keep up with this fast-growing industry. In other fracking news, Gasland lost for best documentary last night at the Oscars, and the mayor of Dish, Texas left town with his family out of fear that their house's close proximity to fracking operations was making them sick.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/24/mayor-calvin-tillman-leav_n_827478.html
7 comments:
Develop clean domestic sources of energy, limit economic growth and lower standard of living, or wish that "green technology" will save us. Frack baby frack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEtgvwllNpg&feature=related
http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/hanger-gas-fracking-is-safe
http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/minres/oilgas/new_forms/marcellus/Reports/Frac%20list%206-30-2010.pdf
If it were me, i would not want to drink any of those chemicals...
The general idea of hydrofracking is a good one. It is true that it would make us less dependent on foreign oil. But even one person who can light their water on fire, is one person too many. if hydrofracking were actually safe, then I think it would be a great idea. My recommendation is that we as a country do a lot more to investigate and research it to make it as safe as possible before continuing with any more of it.
As the article says:
"Gas has seeped into underground drinking-water supplies in at least five states, including Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia, and residents blamed natural-gas drilling.
Air pollution caused by natural-gas drilling is a growing threat, too. Wyoming, for example, failed in 2009 to meet federal standards for air quality for the first time in its history partly because of the fumes containing benzene and toluene from roughly 27,000 wells, the vast majority drilled in the past five years."
There needs to be much more accountability and a much more highly defined procedure for dealing with hydrofracking. The radioactive wastewater associated with it is too serious to ignore.
"the bigger danger of radioactive wastewater is its potential to contaminate drinking water or enter the food chain through fish or farming. Once radium enters a person’s body, by eating, drinking or breathing, it can cause cancer and other health problems, many federal studies show."
I agree with some of the assertions that "Gasland" is made to be dramatic and doesn't necessarily back up its videos of sink fires with scientific data, but this NYTimes article fills in "Gasland"'s gaps in information. Also, this article's claims are well founded and discuss radioactive material in a way that "Gasland" does not. The author investigates state, local and national EPA studies, as well as those commissioned by the natural gas industry.
I think you should put time in to actually read this article because it really is quite alarming. It also mentions the fact that fracking may be cleaner in some ways than other fossil fuel production. I think we need to have an actual debate on this topic that discusses the dangers of fracking, and how to mitigate those dangers.
Natural gas has to be part of our energy future but that doesn't mean that fracking needn't be properly regulated (31 regulators for some 12,000 gas wells without regular check-ups). I don't think we need to poison our citizens to produce natural gas. It is shown, both in "Gasland" and in this article, and by the Mayor of Dish that once fracking starts in certain areas, people start having strange illnesses (nose bleeds, constant headaches, etc.) and cancers. This does not take into account sink fires, which seem pretty unexplainable to me if you count out well contamination by fracking chemicals (including diesel fuels that have been banned but are still in use, see here: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/141223-house-dems-say-companies-breaking-drinking-water-law-during-natural-gas-fracking-). These facts cannot be ignored just because the natural gas industry is in the middle of a boom. In fact, these facts should be taken more into account during a boom to make sure we don't end up with poisoned citizens and uninhabitable environments across the United States.
In a recent interview with Jon Stewart, T. Boone Pickens, a big natural gas promoter, said he has never heard of any contaminated drinking water or any other safety problems with fracking. From this article and many others, that is just flat out untrue. The industry should address these claims instead of continuing to ignore them and try to drill safely in places that have little to no population.
Make sure to read this article and not just the headline, this is a very thorough investigation that deserves a reading by anyone, no matter their party identification or general ideology.
http://www.api.org/policy/exploration/hydraulicfracturing/index.cfm
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