Painting with a dire brush

Painting with a dire brush

A Jan. 4 letTer, “Fracking doesn’t sound so great,” paints an unnecessarily dire picture of hydraulic fracturing in an apparent effort to build a case for a moratorium. The problem is that the letter’s allegations are either grossly exaggerated or downright untrue. Here are the facts.

Hydraulic fracturing has been used in more than one million wells in the United States during the past 60 years. Not one confirmed case of groundwater contamination stemming from fracking has been documented, according to a recent University of Texas study.

About 99.5 percent of the fluid used in the fracking process is water. Sand or another proppant and trace amounts of chemicals make up the remainder. Most of the chemicals can be found under kitchen sinks in products we use every day. They include surfactants to make the water slippery, anti-rust agents to keep pipes from corroding, and cleansers to kill bacteria. The amount of water used and the composition of the chemicals vary from well to well.

Fracking is regulated by state water agencies. A 2009 study by the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC), which consists of water regulators, found that enactment of additional federal regulations would be “duplicative of state regulation, and ultimately ineffective because such regulations would be too far removed from field operations.”

Fracking was not exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) because it was never included in the first place. The law was enacted in 1974 to “protect drinking water from contamination by the underground injection of waste,” not the use of hydraulic fracturing fluids used to enhance oil and natural gas production.

Rather than fret over fracking, the United States would be better served by recognizing fracking’s potential. Fracking is a game changer. It is breathing new life into old U.S. oil fields, facilitating the development of oil and natural gas from hard rock formations such as the Marcellus Shale, and is vastly improving U.S. energy — and national — security.

Every barrel of oil or cubic foot of gas that is produced here lessens the need to import energy from other countries.

The use of hydraulic fracturing has greatly improved U.S. oil and natural gas production and is creating well-paying jobs at a time when millions of Americans are out of work. Rather than fear fracking, Ohio should rely on the facts as the basis for regulations and reap the benefits. This is not the time for a moratorium.

Gary E. Slagel, Canonsburg, Pa.

The writer is senior advisor for environmental affairs for Consol Energy Inc.

We will be ‘collateral damage’

Human loss of life is the cost of employment produced by polluting industries like steel, extractive industries like oil and gas drilling, and good old “bury ’em alive” coal mining.

Here in Youngstown we are quite familiar with the cost in lives due to accidents in steel mills and cancers resulting from living near them. Historical research of the American Cancer Society will show you all of the much greater incidences of cancer through the years that steel mills operated in cities like Pittsburgh, Pa.; Gary, Ind.; Birmingham, Ala., and Youngstown.

Now, we are taking the hazardous waste from Pennsylvania’s hydrofracturing industry which contains hundreds of neurotoxins and cancer-causing chemicals used to fracture shale and injecting it beneath the ground in many populated areas of Ohio. We have an injection well right next to V&M Star, which makes fracking pipe and profits here in Youngstown because there’s a country-wide ban on fracking in France, where the home office is.

Now we know the high pressure injection of millions of gallons of this waste has caused 11 earthquakes in Youngstown. And the company doing this assures us we can depend on well’s concrete casing to protect us from hazardous waste seepage into the ground and water tables. We all know how reliable concrete is when an earthquake occurs. It is just as reliable as the concrete well casing that cracked during an explosion at BP’s Deep Horizon oil rig and caused the largest oil spill ever recorded.

When corporations decide they are coming to extract our natural gas resources and export them on the world market at massive profit, Youngstowners must realize that once again, our loss of quality of life, and eventually our own lives due to disease will be merely what they consider to be “the cost of doing business.”

In no way will there be enough jobs produced for our citizens to justify making our city a hazardous chemical waste dump. Outside corporations profit from the natural gas extraction, as well as a few short-sighted land owners selling their mineral rights. Rig workers are coming here from Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. Our trade schools say that they will be training for a lot of jobs that will come available in this industry. This needs to be researched more thoroughly.

This is a travesty. Youngstown State University needs to abandon money-making tactics like inventing a shale industry minor. Create a major in green job development.

Lynn Anderson, Youngstown