and chemicals. The rest is left behind. Fracking a gas well once requires 2 to 8 million gallons of fresh water, 10,000 to 40,000 gallons of chemicals and at least 1,000 diesel truck trips. Wells can be fracked multiple times before they run dry.
Between 34,000 and 95,000 wells
are envisioned for New York State alone, according to Cornell University Engineer- ing Professor, Anthony Ingraffea, with 77,000 likely over the next 50 years. While New York residents are watching the result of fracking in other states and have elected a temporary moratorium on fracking, Pennsylvania has issued thou- sands of permits since 2004. Continued unknowns stir debate.
Meanwhile, scientists across leading institutions are certain of five universal impacts. First, fracking industrializes rural landscapes, clearing and frag- menting vital woodlands and wetlands. Second, fracking brings urban-style air pollution to the rural countryside. Third, accidents happen, necessitating the evacuation of surrounding com- munities. Fourth, fracking makes huge volumes of Earth’s limited fresh water disappear forever. Fifth, sooner or later, the gas will run out, while the environ- mental damage remains.
Known and Unknown
Dangers Beyond these certainties lie questions. Drilling proponents may claim that there have been no confirmed cases of drinking water contaminated by fracking. Yet in Pavillion, Wyoming, residents noticed a few years ago that their water was yellow, cloudy and oily, bubbled and smelled like chemicals. Some people felt sick. A joint investigation by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found petrochemicals— including diesel fuel, benzene, cyclohex- ane, methane, propane and ethane, plus traces of arsenic and a microbe-inhibiting pesticide—in 20 water wells. The EPA recommended that residents not drink their water. Turning on a fan while show- ering to avoid possible methane explo- sions was also suggested. Fracking enjoys special exemp- tions from many regulations—the
22 NA Twin Cities Edition
“Wherever Marcellus Shale natural gas
development has occurred in Pennsylvania, reports of poisoned water, sick kids and dead animals have followed.”
~ Marcellus Protest, a Pennsylvania alliance to halt fracking operations
Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Super- fund Act and National Environmental Policy Act—that govern other types of industrial activities. Fracking also gets a pass on federal right-to-know laws, because natural gas operations do not report their air and water emissions under the EPA Toxics Release Inven- tory. A special amendment to the 2005 Energy Policy Act grants fracking exclu- sion from the Safe Drinking Water Act, which authorizes the EPA to regulate all injection of toxic chemicals into the ground. Thus, a drilling company doesn’t have to disclose the formulation of its fracking fluids.
Eco-Horrors and Economics Biologist Theo Colborn and her re- search team at The Endocrine Disruptor Exchange report that of the 353 chemi- cals tested as presumed ingredients of fracking fluid, 60 percent can harm the brain and nervous system, 40 percent are endocrine disrupters and one-third are both suspected carcinogens and developmental toxicants.
What should we do with this lethal fluid—a million or more gallons with every wellhead? The trend, say gas industry service providers like Hallibur- ton, is to recycle it, but flowback water gets more poisonous with every reuse. At some point, this highly concentrated toxic liquid still has to be disposed of via designated underground wells or municipal sewage-treatment plants or else it’s clandestinely dumped. Then there’s the lure of fracking’s economics. In many cases, a home- owner can receive $5,000 per acre, plus 12 to 20 percent royalties, from leasing land to a gas company. The Marcellus Shale may be worth a trillion
natwincities.com
dollars and possibly provide enough natural gas to supply the nation’s consumption for six years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Admin- istration’s most recent estimates. (It’s unknown how much gas is recoverable or how often wells may need to be refracked to stimulate production.) No study of the cumulative im-
pact of fracking on public health or agriculture, including its full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, has been conducted; it’s an economic gamble and a bona fide environmental crime.
A Community Speaks Out In New York’s Tompkins County, 40 per- cent of the land acreage covering the Marcellus Shale is leased to gas drillers. Local feelings are mixed. Some people just wish the whole practice would go away. Some find fracking such a vile and preposterous idea that they don’t believe it will really happen. Others, seeking personal gain or believing that it’s inevitable, plan to “ride the tiger,” hoping for greater future oversight. At a recent community meeting, candidates for mayor and the village board declared their unified opposition to fracking. Soon afterward, at a packed town meeting on fracking at the village library, someone noted that a nearby community had successfully turned away frack waste trucked in from Penn- sylvania that was headed to an old well for disposal. An elderly man declared passionately, “We have to be ready to lie down in front of the trucks.”
Take a stand at
Tinyurl.com/FrackMedia,
Tinyurl.com/FrackingMap and Tinyurl. com/FrackAction (scroll to petitions).
Note: Find films at GaslandTheMovie. com; and
Tinyurl.com/FilmPromisedLand.
Biologist Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., is the acclaimed author of Living Down- stream, now also a documentary film, and Having Faith, on the threat of envi- ronmental toxins to infant development. A visiting scholar at New York’s Ithaca College, she often testifies at hearings. She adapted this article from Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, reprinted courtesy of Da Capo Press.
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