Investigation Confirms Widespread Fears about Fracking
March against hydraulic fracturing and gas well drilling on the Rachel Carson Bridge in Pittsburgh on November 3, 2010. (Photo: AP/Keith Srakocic)
by Sarah Lazare
The Associated Press has confirmed what residents have long known and the oil and gas industries have sought to hide: the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, as well as conventional oil and gas drilling, is polluting and contaminating well drinking water supplies.
In an investigation published Sunday, AP reporter Kevin Begos—drawing upon hundreds of complaints made by residents, as well as admissions from state officials and even drilling companies—verifies well water contamination in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Texas.
The AP summarizes:
— Pennsylvania has confirmed at least 106 water-well contamination cases since 2005, out of more than 5,000 new wells. There were five confirmed cases of water-well contamination in the first nine months of 2012, 18 in all of 2011 and 29 in 2010. The Environmental Department said more complete data may be available in several months.
— Ohio had 37 complaints in 2010 and no confirmed contamination of water supplies; 54 complaints in 2011 and two confirmed cases of contamination; 59 complaints in 2012 and two confirmed contaminations; and 40 complaints for the first 11 months of 2013, with two confirmed contaminations and 14 still under investigation, Department of Natural Resources spokesman Mark Bruce said in an email. None of the six confirmed cases of contamination was related to fracking, Bruce said.
— West Virginia has had about 122 complaints that drilling contaminated water wells over the past four years, and in four cases the evidence was strong enough that the driller agreed to take corrective action, officials said.
— A Texas spreadsheet contains more than 2,000 complaints, and 62 of those allege possible well-water contamination from oil and gas activity, said Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees drilling. Texas regulators haven’t confirmed a single case of drilling-related water-well contamination in the past 10 years, she said.
Begos reports that his investigation was impeded by a lack of transparency at state levels. He writes:
The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems. Texas provided the most detail, while the other states provided only general outlines. And while the confirmed problems represent only a tiny portion of the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled each year in the U.S., the lack of detail in some state reports could help fuel public confusion and mistrust.
In some cases, this amounted to state attempts to prevent the media from obtaining information. Begos explains, “For example, starting in 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection aggressively fought efforts by the AP and other news organizations to obtain information about complaints related to drilling. The department has argued in court filings that it does not count how many contamination ‘determination letters’ it issues or track where they are kept in its files.”
Aleph Null comments:
Since Gasland, much of the concern about fracking has centered on water contamination – an extremely serious issue for local people which Obama’s EPA has done its damnedest to cover up.
But an equally serious concern about fracking, affecting everyone in the world, is the issue of how much methane the fracking boom releases into the atmosphere. This is also an issue where the very agencies expected to protect the general welfare, Obama’s hacks at the EPA, are complicit in massive criminal dumping.
An independent study last year* found that the amount of methane leaking from fracked wells in the US alone is ten times the size of methane discharges from the East Siberian Sea (a story which probably garnered ten times more notice).
* U.S. Methane Emissions Vastly Underestimated
OldTulsan comments:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/…
Study Shows Fracking Is Bad for Babies – Bloomberg
“The energy industry has long insisted that hydraulic fracking — the practice of fracturing rock to extract gas and oil deep beneath the earth’s surface — is safe for people who live nearby. New research suggests this is not true for some of the most vulnerable humans: newborn infants.
In a study presented today at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia, the researchers — Janet Currie of Princeton University, Katherine Meckel of Columbia University, and John Deutch and Michael Greenstone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — looked at Pennsylvania birth records from 2004 to 2011 to assess the health of infants born within a 2.5-kilometer radius of natural-gas fracking sites. They found that proximity to fracking increased the likelihood of low birth weight by more than half, from about 5.6 percent to more than 9 percent. The chances of a low Apgar score, a summary measure of the health of newborn children, roughly doubled, to more than 5 percent.
The study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed or posted online, comes at a time when state and federal officials are grappling with how to regulate fracking and, in the case of New York State, whether to allow the practice at all. Much of the available research has been sponsored either by the energy industry or by its critics. Independent studies have found evidence of well-water contamination in areas close to fracking activity. Establishing a direct link between fracking and human health, though, has been complicated by a lack of information on the chemical substances used in the process and the difficulty of obtaining health records that include residence data…”
