What the Frack?!?

I thought technological advances were supposed to lead to a cleaner, greener way of life. Turns out America, the oil and gas addict, has just used these advances to wring every last drop of gas out of our land. Our newest peddler goes by the name of hydraulic fracturing. Oil and gas companies drill down into coal beds and marcellus shale, they then pump massive amounts of water filled with sand, lubrication and various chemical cocktails down into the shale and coal formations. The hydraulic pressure fractures the formation and the sand and chemicals hold the fractures open, allowing the companies to extract natural gas from the well. Genuine proponents of natural gas and fracking, who are not just benefiting monetarily from the practice, cite fracking as a temporary stopover between obtaining our energy from petroleum and coal and the clean, green future. Natural gas emits 30% less CO2 than petroleum and 45% less than coal. Plus we can get it right here in the States, which creates jobs at home and avoids funding the wars against us in the Middle East.
But if the Massey Coal Mine disaster in West Virginia and the BP oil spill this year taught us anything (jury is out on whether it has), it is both that the Earth is a powerful thing and manipulating its resources must be done with extreme caution and also, that industries with massive monetary incentives are willing to plow recklessly toward the money and must be regulated by a thoughtful and independent agency.

The problem with fracking is that it prolongs our dependence on fossil fuels, consumes vast amounts of water, contaminates that water and cannot account for it all staying out of our homes and communities. The other problem with fracking is that we don't know what the problem with fracking is yet. Industry cannot be allowed to plow forward until the full implications of pumping chemical-filled water into the ground and fracturing rock formations in order to release gas are known. Even the casual bystander has to have their trepidations about the process.

In areas of the country where hydraulic fracturing has been taking place, citizens report their water turning cloudy with grayish sediment..frothy, brown, slimy, oily, odiforous... Citizens report fishkills, wells drying up, trees and grass dying, getting blisters from their showers...the list goes on. And this water cannot be contained.
Companies attempt to pump the water back to the surface but some is left "stranded, meaning they could contaminate groundwater far in the future as the water table rises. Some water will just naturally make its way through an unseen crack in the rock formation. And even if the water goes down and comes back up according to plan, 60,000 to 150,000 gallons of water per well, will be drawn from somewhere in our environment, filled with chemicals, gel and sand and then processed (our water treatment systems do not currently have the capacity to treat this much water) and put back into our environment.



In 2005, Congress exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, thereby washing their hands of the issue. This is unacceptable as the National Petroleum Council estimates that sixty to eighty percent of all wells drilled in the next decade will require fracturing, and is not occurring in isolation of humanity. Once again, environmental regulation has been left to the states. New York, has actually been slow to allow hydraulic fracturing and this is in part due to the states mini-NEPA (SEQRA), which requires an environmental impact assessment before drilling commences. The draft of the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement was posted by the NY Department of Environmental Protection on September 30, 2009 and the comment period ended two months later, this updated the 1992 statement which did not address horizontal drilling or high volume hydraulic fracking. The DEP is still going through the many comments they received on the draft.

In the meantime, however, those applying for a permit to drill will be able to go forward under the current Mineral Resources regulation program which requires an individual, site-specific environmental review. The New York State Assembly, however, overwhelmingly passed legislation on June 14, 2010 placing a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing until a closer review of its effects can be undertaken. The moratorium would have lasted until May 15, 2011. On December 13, 2010, however, Governor Patterson vetoed the bill and enacted an Executive Order. The Order institutes a moratorium until July 1, 2011 but is only on horizontal wells.



The same issues of drinking water contamination and other water problems have been linked to vertical wells. Vertical wells, go straight down and have one contact point with the rock formation, while horizontal wells go down and then run through the natural gas-holding formation. Further, gas companies have already threatened to drill vertically and then convert those wells to horizontal wells as soon as the moratorium ends.

The EPA is in the midst of a two-year investigation of hydraulic fracturing and its potential effects on groundwater. The preliminary investigation included public meetings in many of the affected areas of the country, including Binghamton, New York. The public meetings occurred this past summer and the study will commence in early 2011 with the results expected by the end of 2012. The next governor would do well by repealing the Order and waiting for the finalized DEP Supplemental GEIS as well as the EPA study. This technology puts too much at risk to allow industry giants to shove us toward another disaster.