New Fracking Report Shows Water Resources At Ever Greater Risk

Map above highlights the areas most compromised by fracking.

The latest report from Food & Water Watch shows ever greater water resources (see map) at risk from current as well as future fracking zones - many close to water supplies, as well as consuming vast volumes of water.  Those who care about the quality of their water, its accessibility as well as effects of fracking on soil and air need to pay more attention as the frackers are again setting up to go all out. This has especially been since the price of oil has hit $50 a barrel once more, and new natural gas deposits have been found, e.g. in Colorado.

Among the sobering revelations in the latest report:

-Fracking a single well typically consumes at least 3 5o 5 million gallons of water which can never be replaced, especially in arid states like Colorado.

- There are no good disposal options for the massive volumes of toxic and radioactive waste fracking creates.  Conventional treatment plants are not equipped to treat fracked wastewater and injecting it underground is causing earthquakes (as in OK) and putting our drinking water at risk.

- Most dangerous fracking chemicals are kept secret and fossil fuel corporations are averse to disclosing the chemicals which are called "trade secrets".

Nevertheless an inquiry by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2010-11, learned that fourteen of the nation's most active hydraulic fracturing companies used 866 million gallons of chemical fracturing products, and more than 650 of the chemicals named in the report were known carcinogens, supposedly regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. (Which was rendered toothless for fracking by lobbyists) Among the most toxic of the chemicals used (11.4 million gallons in all) were: benzene, toluene, xylene and ethyl benzene.

Nearly all of the above have been linked to: cancer (breast, prostate, liver, colon) as well as neurological problems, respiratory difficulties and even birth defects.

- A recent study issued by the Colorado School of Public Health and Brown University has also linked birth defects to the proximity of fracking near a mother's home. The study found "an association between the density and proximity of natural gas wells within a 10-mile radius of the maternal residence and the prevalence of congenital heart defects" as well as "defects of the brain and spinal cord."

Two more disgusting aspects you may not know:

1) Fracking corporations are exempt from critical statutes in all the major environmental laws, including: the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and laws pertaining to disposal of toxic waste."

2) Fracking corporations are now banking on not only doing their foul deeds in residential neighborhoods but expanding their operations to national parks and densely populated urban areas.

If anyone needs more proof that capitalism is hell bent to destroy whatever is left of this planet as livable abode for humans, there you have it.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Changes_Everything

Increasing Earthquakes in Oklahoma Now Tied To Frack Wells

As a matter of geological history, before 2008 Oklahoma had only one or two Richter scale 3 earthquakes each year. But last year hundreds were counted, and though it was only hinted at in the mainstream media, many of us suspected the increasing frequency of fracking -especially via frack disposal wells. As one geophysicist  (Katie Keranen) at Cornell University put it: "We've never seen anything like this before."

Here's a brief recap of the frack process: To get oil and gas out of the ground, drilling engineers have to pump out water - as well as inject it. (As they do here in Colo., consuming 4 million gallons of water with each well injection - one of the reasons we're running low on water.)  While the injected water is fresh - usually taken from what would normally have gone to crops - the effluent, pumped out liquid is more like brine.  This stuff is toxic to the environment so the frack companies get rid of it by injecting it into rocks via what are called "disposal wells".

While some geoscientists have suggested that such wastewater dumping could set off quakes, including the ones in OK as well as TX, there was one problem: most wells were too far away from the actual site of earthquakes. In the case of the Sooner state, most wells - especially disposal - were too distant from what has been called the "Jones swarm" of quakes. Thus people, especially oil and gas outfits, declared the wells were too distant to cause the quakes.

But give Keranen credit, she didn't buy into the simplistic argument and decided to test her hypothesis: that distant disposal wells could cause quakes - using a computer model. Her team at Cornell devised a model to estimate how far wastewater travels underground, and the pressure created around 89 wells. (Too much pressure would be able to stress the faults running throughout the Earth's crust in a frack region like OK.)

The Cornell team analyzed ground movement to pinpoint the origin of thousands of the Jones' swarm earthquakes occurring from 2010 to 2013. The computer simulation found that the magnitude of the pressures spreading from the wells to the quake origin sites were large enough to trigger the earthquakes.

Incredibly, the primary culprits were four high volume disposal wells. This alone, Keranen believes, could help the oil and gas industry pinpoint problem wells and maybe avoid so many quakes in the future.  But is she realistic? I mean, even the 5.6 quake that jolted the state in 2011 (which scientists later linked to wastewater injections) drew barely a peep and certainly didn't prompt new regulations.

As here in Colorado, when the fossil fuel industry has its tentacles extended into state capitols,  there is little chance of containing the excesses of fracking - whether that affects soil, air, water quality or (as in the case of OK) earthquakes spawned by disposal wells.

How to test Keranen's hypothesis in the real world? Easy! Turn off the frickin' frack wells and see if the earthquakes stop! If they don't then we will know her computer simulation missed something.