Don’t drain too much too fast

Don’t drain too much too fast

Columbus Dispatch:If streams, lakes and reservoirs on Ohio’s rare public lands are to be tapped for millions of gallons of water to blast into fracking wells, state regulators should develop a process to make sure no body of water is harmed. They also should set a price that will guarantee a fair return to Ohio taxpayers for heavy use of a resource.

Horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — the drilling method that is expected to propel a natural-gas boom across eastern Ohio — has a tremendous appetite for water. The technique involves drilling a long horizontal shaft in shale layers thousands of feet below the surface, and blasting chemical-laced water into it at high pressure to shatter the shale and release the trapped gas and oil.

Taking precautions

Shale-drilling is expected to revitalize some of Ohio’s most economically depressed communities, and state officials are right to make a priority of creating regulations that will allow the industry to flourish. So far, that has included appropriately strict controls on drilling, paying for wear and tear caused to local roads and disposal of the tainted water that comes back up after drilling.

It also should include safeguards against damaging a water source by allowing too much to be drawn off; that will require accurate analysis of water-use proposals.