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Page added on May 12, 2014
The greatest threat to our water is fracking for natural gas
I recently wrote to David Black, newspaper owner/manager, in response to his support for the oil/gas pipelines and refinement industry. After watching the ‘Gasland 2′ documentary on Youtube, even he had to admit the toxicification of our aquifers by fracking for natural gas is, quote, “Alarming”.
I recommend taking the time to view ‘Gasland 2′ which is a documentary about the horrific danger of hydraulic fracturing used in the natural gas extraction industry.
When hydraulic fracturing shafts are immediately completed, 20% of the concrete casings which encase the fracking shaft are known to leak due to imperfect mix. This breakdown of the concrete casing acts as a conduit for toxic fracking fluid, methane, and sulfur gas to escape into aquifers, wells, ponds, and rivers as it makes its way to the surface due to high underground pressure.
Over fifty years, the amount of casing breakdown and leakage rises to fifty percent of fracking shafts. With a million and a half fracturing sites in North America to date, the damage and contamination to surrounding land and aquifers has been horrendous.
The oil/gas industry is planning to frack another 2 million sites in the next ten years. Hundreds of thousands of wells and aquifers have already been contaminated…contamination which doesn’t go away.
Farmland, and even homes of the wealthy, and entire towns have become worthless overnight because the water supply is contaminated from the hydraulic fracturing processes used to obtain natural gas.
Do we really want to deny our children and grandchildren fresh water on our farms and property? Can we justify the short term, dollar-gain for the loss of our drinking water?
It is important to understand what ‘fracking’ is and why drilling for natural gas contaminates aquifers…. Here is a worthwhile documentary titled: Gasland 2
Another worthwhile documentary presentation is titled: Tar Sands, Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
5 Comments on "The greatest threat to our water is fracking for natural gas"
GregT on Mon, 12th May 2014 11:18 am
The biggest threats to our water supplies are overpopulation, and climate instability. Future water insecurity was very well understood, long before the current fracking craze began. We studied it back in the 70s.
Boat on Mon, 12th May 2014 12:12 pm
GregT,
At the other end of the process is refining process. The fracked gas is used to heat the oil being refined and the CHP tech takes out a lot more emissions and uses much less water. You also get more oil and products out of a barrel of oil with this combination. How it all washes out with the numbers I don’t know. Has been hard for me to find numbers that track the difference.
GregT on Mon, 12th May 2014 12:27 pm
Boat,
We don’t frack here, and water supplies are already an issue. The more we keep growing our populations, the worse the problem will become. As I just pointed out in another thread, we experienced drought-like conditions here in the Pacific Northwest last summer. If climatic, and population trends continue, water supplies are going to be a very serious problem within the next few years. Of course we should all already be aware of this, considering the number of reports that have been written.
drwater on Mon, 12th May 2014 1:57 pm
I suspect there are probably water quality issues at a few sites and probably some transient air quality issues at more sites, but Gasland 2 was over 90% B.S. Its not unusual to run into natural methane in groundwater given the right geochemistry and organic deposits.
Here’s the flip side of the Gasland story:
http://energyindepth.org/national/debunking-gasland-part-ii/
synapsid on Mon, 12th May 2014 3:30 pm
drwater,
Thanks for the link.