| By Clem Guttata
The reason I keep harping about frac'ing fluids used in Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction is because, yes, they really are a threat to clean water. Our political leaders are fond of talking about "balance" between the needs of industry and the needs of individuals to enjoy a clean environment. What's scary in this case is there is no existing regulatory framework in place to protect us.
I'm not one to fear-monger, but this is an example of where commerce is out-pacing any balancing regulation. You, me, and our neighbors who have well water in the Marcellus Shale region will be ones who get screwed. Even if you have municipal water your rates could go up just to boost natural gas drilling profits.
Via TOD, here's the details from Abrahm Lustgarten, In New Gas Wells, More Drilling Chemicals Remain Underground
For more than a decade the energy industry has steadfastly argued before courts, Congress and the public that the federal law protecting drinking water should not be applied to hydraulic fracturing, the industrial process that is essential to extracting the nation's vast natural gas reserves. In 2005 Congress, persuaded, passed a law prohibiting such regulation.
Now an important part of that argument -- that most of the millions of gallons of toxic chemicals that drillers inject underground are removed for safe disposal, and are not permanently discarded inside the earth -- does not apply to drilling in many of the nation's booming new gas fields.
Three company spokesmen and a regulatory official said in separate interviews with ProPublica that as much as 85 percent of the fluids used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after wells are drilled in the Marcellus Shale, the massive gas deposit that stretches from New York to Tennessee.
The Marcellus Shale, denoted in brown, primarily cuts across large swaths of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. (Map by Jennifer LaFleur/ProPublica)
The industry has long argued for exemptions from regulation and--so far--as largely gotten those exemptions:
If another industry proposed injecting chemicals -- or even salt water -- underground for disposal, the EPA would require it to conduct a geological study to make sure the ground could hold those fluids without leaking and to follow construction standards when building the well. In some cases the EPA would also establish a monitoring system to track what happened as the well aged.
But because hydraulic fracturing is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, it doesn't necessarily have to conform to these federal standards. Instead, oversight of the drilling chemicals and the injection process has been left solely to the states, some of which regulate parts of the process while others do not.
As the industry was lobbying Congress for that exemption -- and ever since -- the notion that most fluids would not be left underground continued to emerge as a recurring theme put forth by everyone from attorneys for Halliburton, which developed the fracturing process and is one of the leading drilling service companies, to government researchers and regulators.
"Hydraulic fracturing is fundamentally different," wrote Mike Paque, director of the Ground Water Protection Council, an association of state oil and gas regulators, to Senate staff in a 2002 letter advocating for the exemption, "because it is part of the well completion process, does not 'dispose of fluids' and is of short duration, with most of the fluids being immediately recovered."
But, that's not what is happening. Substantial amounts of water is being left in the ground. Much of the water that comes back out of the ground is disposed of without adequate treatment.
What can be done to address this?
It will fall to Congress -- and then to the EPA -- to decide whether that is truly the case. Sponsors of the Frack Act hope for a vote this spring. If it passes, and if the EPA finds reason to change the conclusions it reached in 2004, the agency would then have to decide exactly how fracturing will be addressed by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
"The thinking we did then, the study that we did then, we were really looking at a different set of circumstances," said Heare, the EPA's Drinking Water Protection Division director. "The agency has not investigated the impacts of hydraulic fracturing in other settings such as shale gas production and at this time is unable to quantify the potential threat."
Urge our Senators and Representatives to support the Frack Act. |
