The Real Cost of Fracking (29 page)

Some chemicals in the fluid are known and are listed on industry websites such as
fracfocus.org
and the sites of individual companies. However, a major problem is that the exact composition of the fluid is not known
prior to drilling
by individuals who might be affected, negating their ability to test their well and surface water completely
before
drilling begins. Learning the composition of the fluid after the fact (e.g., on the FracFocus website) is of more limited value because it is impossible to prove that a chemical detected after drilling was absent before the drilling began. Moreover, the information released to the public is largely at the discretion of the company; proprietary information is withheld. The importance of this selective release of information is often downplayed, but a glance at the Material Safety Data Sheets of drilling components clearly shows that quite a bit of information can be withheld. Legitimate questions to ask state regulatory agencies are whether a company should have the right to withhold the identity of chemicals that might end up in our drinking water or our food supply, or that medical personnel might need to know about to safely treat people or animals exposed to the chemicals in accidents.

We often hear that the composition of hydraulic fracturing fluid contains 99 percent or more water and sand and less than 1 or 2 percent other chemicals.
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Not only that, but we are told many of the chemicals are found in food and pharmaceuticals, so no need to worry. A public relations executive might think that providing this anodyne to the public would calm any fears. In truth, this information is sadly misleading and contributes to mistrust of the industry among much of the public.

Consider what is being said. First of all, sand sounds fine because our kids play in sandboxes and we all love sandy beaches. But this isn’t your average sand. In fact, these huge quantities of silica sand increase exposure to respirable crystalline silica dust, which is a public health threat to the communities in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where the sand is mined. Furthermore, the huge volume of silica used in hydraulic fracturing operations is a major threat to the rig workers and to residents in communities where sand is stored on its way to drilling sites. Breathing these silicates is a well-known cause of silicosis, which results in inflammation and lesions in the upper lobes of the lungs.

The next question is the implication that 1 or 2 percent is somehow insignificant. In the biological and medical sciences, a 1 percent solution is often an enormous concentration that can be extremely toxic. In that sense, the assertion that the fluid contains “only” 1 percent chemicals is not reassuring. Also, 1 percent of five million gallons is fifty thousand gallons, which is not a small volume of toxic fluid.

The notion that the components are found in everyday products is perhaps the most misleading. The public is told that ethylene glycol is found in many everyday products and that glutaraldehyde is used to sterilize medical equipment. What we aren’t told is that these highly toxic compounds should never be found in drinking water. Hydrochloric acid is used, and since it is a component of your stomach, it most certainly must be safe. But it is a strong acid; spills of hydrochloric acid have caused environmental damage and sent workers to the hospital in Pennsylvania.

The final question is whether this potentially dangerous solution of hydraulic fracturing fluid can ever come in contact with drinking or surface water. The answer all depends upon how the question is asked. There is little doubt that individual chemicals or the mixed fracturing fluid has been released into the environment, either through spillage on the surface or from the blowout of wells during fracturing. Fracturing fluids have been released into the environment multiple times in Pennsylvania, and each event is always immediately dismissed as unimportant (“only a few frogs were killed”).
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The harder part of the drinking-water question is whether hydraulic fracturing—that is, the fractures—can contaminate aquifers. The argument is often made that contact is totally impossible, because the horizontal portion of the well bore is a mile below the aquifer. Industry estimates suggest that rare fractures can occur up to two thousand feet from the horizontal well bore, although most are much smaller.
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Nevertheless, because hydraulic fracturing has been done in formations as shallow as two thousand feet (in Wyoming and Canada) and many shale plays slated for drilling are less than three thousand feet deep (e.g., in the Marcellus in New York; in Fermanagh in Northern Ireland; and in Letrim in Ireland), direct contamination of the aquifer becomes a greater probability. What’s more, abandoned wells, if contacted by a fracture, can form a conduit to the surface or to an aquifer.
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For this reason, abandoned wells should be identified by seismic testing, but they have been missed in the past.
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Finally, natural fractures in the rock could be a conduit to aquifers,
¹⁵
particularly during the drilling of shallow formations. Thus, legitimate questions remain about the safety of the actual process of hydraulic fracturing.

After the hydraulic fracturing or fracturing with propane or nitrogen is done, the pressure is released and fluid and gas now come back up the well bore to the surface. The pressure deep below the earth’s surface is high, so that the general flow is in the direction of the surface. In dry-gas areas, the drillers are seeking methane, so the gas is collected and the remainder is waste. In wet-gas or tight-oil regions, the methane gas and petroleum liquids have to be separated from the other liquids returning to the surface. Aside from the processing, wastewater may be the biggest environmental threat that arises.

Even when propane or nitrogen fracturing is used, wastewater returns to the surface in large quantities and has to be disposed of or reused. Before either of these steps, the wastewater is generally stored on site either in large lagoons (wastewater impoundments) or in metal containers. The leakage of these wastewater impoundments has contaminated soil and drinking water for both humans and animals, and wildlife (particularly birds) can be directly exposed. The wastewater is being recycled more often now than in the past—an approach with many advantages. It reduces the volume of wastewater that has to be discarded and reduces the amount of freshwater that has to be used. On the other hand, the fluid becomes progressively more toxic as it is used in subsequent wells, and while smaller in volume, it does present more of a disposal problem.

Disposal of wastewater presents another challenge. This step requires the removal of the fluid from the site either by pipelines or by truck. Leaks and spills can occur, introducing the wastewater into the environment, with the possibility of contaminating drinking-water aquifers. In our experience, at least some of the leakage from trucks has apparently been intentional. The wastewater can be taken to a water-treatment plant. In the past, treatment plants incapable of treating these fluids have accepted wastewater and released contaminated fluid into drinking-water supplies. An example is the contamination of the Monongahela River, which supplies some of the drinking water to Pittsburgh, in 2009.
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More-sophisticated water-treatment facilities exist, but the safety of the process cannot be verified if the effluent isn’t fully tested, as is almost always the case. For example, a recent study showed that treated effluent from a water-treatment facility that was processing drilling wastewater contained above-background levels of bromide, chloride, and radium-226.
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Another use of the wastewater is for dust control or the deicing of roads, a process with the Orwellian name of “beneficial use.” In principle, wastewater cannot be used unless tested for a few select chemicals. In practice, the testing is minimal and the changes in the composition of the fluid in different stages of extraction make the testing at best problematic.

Finally, wastewater is often injected deep into the ground. Although this method of disposal has been widely used, it has, in some cases, resulted in earthquakes. The events are not on the magnitude of the 2011 earthquake in Japan, but have measured 3 or 4 on the Richter scale. Earthquakes of this magnitude are rarely deadly but can cause damage. However, a magnitude 5.7 quake in Prague, Oklahoma, in November 2011 destroyed fourteen homes and has been linked to wastewater injection wells.
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In 2012, scientists from the US Geological Survey found that the frequency of magnitude 3 or greater earthquakes in the midcontinent of the United States in the decade starting in 2001 was six times greater than the frequency during all of the twentieth century and that this was almost certainly due to human causes.
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This increase in midcontinent earthquakes is the source of the often-repeated notion that hydraulic fracturing causes earthquakes. It is actually the injection wells that have been the cause of earthquakes rather than the wells used to extract oil and gas. And while the eastern United States is seismically active, it is nowhere near as active as California. With proposals to extract oil and gas in California using hydraulic fracturing and the necessity of disposing of wastewater,
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issues of seismicity will undoubtedly be given considerable attention in the near future.

In addition to what happens at the well site and with the disposal of wastewater, the community impacts are important considerations. The public is often treated to the canard that drilling and hydraulic fracturing only takes a month or so at most and, after that, there is just a pipe in the ground from which riches flow. For a small part of the process, there may be a small kernel of truth in this statement, but overall, the idea is misleading. Drilling rigs are expensive, so the drilling time is indeed held to a minimum, and hydraulic fracturing, which can occur within days or months after drilling, may take less than a week to complete. But this happens only after the well site has been prepared and the access road built. Furthermore, additional wells can be drilled on the site at any time after the first well is drilled, and wells can be flared or fractured multiple times. In addition, pipelines have to be built to take the gas away and sometimes to remove the wastewater. All this heavy equipment and huge quantities of fluid and sand arrive at the well by truck, necessitating thousands of truck trips per well, often on roads ill equipped to handle anything more than the occasional farm truck. It is not uncommon for activity at a well pad to stretch on for more than a year or longer. We know of cases where activity on the same well pad has extended on and off for longer than four years.

Multiple wells are drilled to maximize the profits from drilling in a given area and to support the cost of constructing pipelines and other infrastructure. Living in an area that is intensively drilled is not a minor disruption for a month and then easy street; the people interviewed throughout this book have described it as an “invading army.” While activity on one well may not be continual, from the perspective of the community as a whole, activity is indeed continual and disrupting. Multiple wells are drilled, hydraulically fractured, and flared; pipelines are built; compressor stations and processing plants are constructed; and the truck traffic is never ending.

This massive activity is a blessing for some and a curse for others. Indeed, some businesses thrive (fast-food restaurants, hotels, bars, nightclubs, gas stations), while others are disrupted (tourism, recreation [hunting, fishing, and boating], farming, wine-making, cheese-making, beer-making, real estate sales, bed and breakfast reservations, cottage rentals). Although the economic impact is often presented as positive, several studies, especially the work of Deborah Rogers
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and Janette Barth,
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have questioned this conclusion and have looked at both the positive and the negative drivers of the economy. Clearly, some people do see the riches, but what is the overall effect on the community, state, and nation? We cannot just consider the bottom line of multinational companies and the restaurant owner; the final analysis includes such far-reaching effects as water and air pollution, global warming potential of different forms of energy, and the cost-benefit analysis of switching more rapidly to renewable energy. But a switch to renewable energy will eventually be required, since fossil fuels are finite and extraction methods to eke out the last dregs of fuel on the planet will become increasingly more expensive and hazardous. The sooner and more aggressively we move to a clean-energy future, the better life will be for our children and grandchildren.

Weeks from our book deadline, one of us (MB) noticed an article in the
New York Times
, “Two Promising Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years from Earth,” with an illustration of one of these planets, looking just like Earth.
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These are her thoughts: