Fracking is not safe

By Andrew Korfhage

OtherWords

Add yet another new concern to the growing list of reasons to oppose hydraudlic fracturing, the natural-gas extraction process known as “fracking”: Earthquakes.

That’s right, following a New Year’s Eve earthquake in Youngstown, Ohio — the town’s 11th since D&L Energy began injecting drilling waste underground in December 2010 — state leaders put a hold on proposals for new wells within a five-mile radius.

At issue with the quakes is not the gas-extraction process per se, but rather the management of the extraordinary amount of chemical-tainted wastewater left behind. To release natural gas held in rock formations deep within the earth, fracking requires drilling into those formations and blasting open fissures in the rock with injections of chemically treated water and sand — up to 4 million gallons of water and 60,000 gallons of chemicals per single lateral well, according to Scientific American.

As much as 75 percent of this poisoned water returns to the surface, often mixed with radioactive minerals and salt from underground, and must then be disposed of somehow. In Ohio, D&L Energy chose to get rid of this liquid by pumping it back underground again, essentially lubricating pre-existing fault lines within the earth.

Given its enormous scale, the industry must find some way to safely dispose of the waste caused by fracking. Otherwise, the entire method is a non-starter. In the absence of the industry taking responsibility for its waste, many states have taken action on their own, requiring fracking companies’ open-air wastewater disposal basins to be lined to prevent leakage, or to be located a certain distance from surface water. But even these precautions can fail.

Chemicals

According to the Endocrine Disruption Network, 25 percent of the chemicals used in fracking can cause cancer. Fifty percent can affect the immune, cardiovascular, and nervous systems. A group of U.S. medical experts, meeting at a Jan. 9 conference sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, called for a moratorium on fracking.

Ultimately, the Bush-era decision to exempt fracking from adherence to the Clean Water Act needs to be reversed so the federal government can properly regulate this industry.

In the meantime, states should start shutting down dirty, costly hydraulic fracturing operations that can not only foul our air and water, and poison our bodies, but can literally make the earth move under our feet.

Andrew Korfhage is Green America’s online and special projects editor. Green America describes itself as a not-for-profit organization that promotes a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. Distributed by OtherWords, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.