Recent Paper Shows Fracking Chemicals In Drinking Water, Industry Attacks It 328
eldavojohn writes: A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences turned up 2-Butoxyethanol from samples collected from three households in Pennsylvania. The paper's level headed conclusion is that more conservative well construction techniques should be used to avoid this in the future and that flowback should be better controlled. Rob Jackson, another scientist who reviewed the paper, stressed that the findings were an exception to normal operations. Despite that, the results angered the PR gods of the Marcellus Shale Gas industry and awoke beltway insider mouthpieces to attack the research — after all, what are they paying them for?
Lives be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Profits above all else.
Hu-mans have turned into Ferengi.
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Re:Lives be damned (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly we're trying as hard as possible to get them nude, given the percentage of coverage.
On the other hand, no clothing at all would be bad for the profits of the fe-male clothing industry. What were those Ferengi thinking? There's a huge market there!
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I think that there was an episode where Quark's mom pointed that out to the Nagus.
Re:Lives be damned (Score:4, Insightful)
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Profits above all else.
From the Better Off Ted [wikipedia.org] episode Racial Sensitivity [wikia.com]:
Veronica: "Money before people," that's the company motto. Engraved on the lobby floor. It just looks more heroic in Latin.
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Ferengi are simply fictional characters reflecting human nature.
Simple Demand. (Score:5, Insightful)
The communities are just following the stupidity of the political view points.
Can we frack in your community? Sure... However we want our water quality (including well water, checked once a month at your expense, for as long as the pumps are active and 10 years after. (This is relatively inexpensive demand). If there is a problem with water quality that has changed sense fracking. Then you need to supply us with clean water for 150 year or until the water quality returns.
If your method is as safe and clean as you state, then you shouldn't have to worry about it.
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This chemical is generally considered safe. Im not sure if you're posting in the correct topic, though its possible you fell for the media hysterics baiting.
Re:Lives be damned (Score:5, Informative)
Have you priced the safe disposal of hazardous waste recently? Much cheaper to flush it down a fraking well. Free, in fact, thanks to the laws.
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The reason these chemicals are expensive to dispose of is that they are difficult to destroy by any means other than sweet, cleansing flame — and a whole hell of a lot of it. Throwing it in your campfire won't do it. Anything that can't be gotten out of your water by relatively simple means isn't filtered out by your municipal water department.
Re:Lives be damned (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone enlighten me as to why funky chemicals are needed to break rocks?
They are not needed to break the rocks, but to dissolve the hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are not normally soluble in water, so you need detergents or other chemicals to form an emulsion that can be pumped to the surface. After the hydrocarbons are separated, the "funky chemicals" are mostly recycled and pumped back down the hole. But they are temporarily stored in holding ponds, which can leak if not properly sealed. Some of the chemicals also leak because of bad seals on the pumps and pipe joints. It is unlikely that there is leakage directly from the shale, so the groundwater contamination is not an inherent problem with fracking, but rather with sloppy practices and corner cutting.
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I don't know if sloppy practice explains the earthquakes in Oklahoma, though.
The groundwater contamination is a serious issue, that needs to be resolved, probably through more frequent inspections and higher fines. The earthquakes are a trivial problem. They are small, and transitory. Once the frackers move on, the earthquakes will stop. Fracking has generated over a million jobs, adds hundreds of billions of domestic production to the US economy every year, and, by replacing coal with gas, has done more to reduce CO2 emissions than all other efforts combined. If the price of t
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I don't know if sloppy practice explains the earthquakes in Oklahoma, though.
Apparently the common practice of injecting waste water (which predominantly originated from waste water used to help reactivate conventional oil wells, and only sloppy hydro-fracking waste water processing to a lesser extent because it is more recent) deep underground into other depleted oil wells which were targeted for storage can explain the uptick in earthquakes in Oklahoma and around the Midwest.
The theory goes that when this injection practice started years ago the storage wells were empty, but as th
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Most of the stuff being re-injected into wells is water that came up with the oil and was separated. It's not a fracking only thing and has been going on for decades not years. Gets severe when a field is near exhausted.
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Tell that to this guy [wikipedia.org].
Re:Lives be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I would blame the regulator, and the regulations, and the congresscritters who voted for there not to be any. By the time the product reaches the final point of sale, we are powerless to discriminate between ethically-extracted and unethically-extracted fuels. The only way to get companies to behave ethically is to require that they behave ethically. This isn't because the people who run them are unethical bastards (maybe they are, maybe they aren't). It's because it's a commodity, and no producer can afford to do anything that costs more than what any other producer is doing, no matter how good their intentions.
To move the higher-priced ethically pure stuff to the customer the ethical producer would have to control the entire distribution chain, all the way to the customer. That's not as practical as it might sound. The major market for natural gas is in gas-fired generation, and those buyers then wholesale the electricity to the grid, and then we purchase it from our power company. So we are two or three steps removed from where we could vote with our wallet. We have no power to affect this market.
We customers of the grid are actually, a lot of us, paying a premium for clean power, but that power isn't coming from burning natural gas, because natural gas is not a clean source of power. So while we can reduce the total demand for natural gas, and we have, we aren't affecting the functioning of the natural gas market.
Because it's a commodity market, because producers really don't have any choice, the only way to make it possible for them to behave ethically is through regulation. Regulation prevents the race to the bottom: prevents the producers who would prefer to behave ethically from being forced to behave unethically in order to keep their prices at the same level as the producers who don't mind behaving unethically. This idea of just letting the market take care of it, and blaming the customer when they don't make choices they can't make, is futile and absurd.
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Well great. I wager I can produce really cheap toys by manufacturing out of substandard materials. Sure, the materials might be toxic, might even be highly flammable, but hey, all that fucking counts is profits! We should just let companies fuck everything and everyone up because MONEY!!!! We should let them lie and distort and attack anyone who questions because MONEY!!!! Fuck every single human being on earth, because MONEY!!!!
hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the authors thinks the problem may have been due to a leak at a storage tank on the surface. Emphasis on the "may".
Plus there's the concentration issue - parts per trillion doesn't make for much of a problem in any case. Even the authors didn't make this out to be a health problem....
Of course, I could be mistaken, and the companies involved could be part of a massive conspiracy to slaughter Pennsylvanians by the millions.
Yeah, on second thought, I'll have to go with the conspiracy thing. After all, everyone knows that even one part per trillion is too much, and the spill at the storage tank was probably just meant to cover up the deliberate poisoning of the water supply in three counties in rural PA....
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One of the authors thinks the problem may have been due to a leak at a storage tank on the surface. Emphasis on the "may".
Plus there's the concentration issue - parts per trillion doesn't make for much of a problem in any case. Even the authors didn't make this out to be a health problem....
So you are saying it was a pretty balanced and non-alarmist report then. That still didn't stop the industry shills from attacking it with their over-the-top "fact..fact..fact" format.
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And similarly, it doesn't stop the anti-fracking protesters from launching the usual counter-attacks.
I guess the logic goes that the fracking folks are evil, and since they're complaining about the report, it must be good. Enemy of my enemy, right?
Two Way Street (Score:2)
Odds are you will see this report used in some anti-fracking publication as a reason to completely ban fracking.
So, extremism goes both ways.
Re:hmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
There are plenty of contaminants in water that would be a serious problem at the parts per trillion level. Whether these chemicals are or not is, I think, not yet demonstrated.
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Shame on you, you bad man. I don't know if fracking is actually good or bad*, but I do know that agreeing with fracking is bad.
*Note: It doesn't seem like a good idea, but that is in no way based on hard science.
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Re:hmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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So you wouldn't mind drinking parts per trillion of heroin for your whole adult life? Or are you assuming that fracking chemicals are somehow safer, so that's not a fair equivalence?
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Or it may have been contamination from the fracking process. Emphasis on the "may". It would be nice to do a little more investigation to determine where the contaminants actually came from. If it was a one-time accident (the leak in the storage tank) then the levels of the contaminants are unlikely to rise (assuming the accident doesn't recur) and the further investigation should show that. In that case, there doesn't seem to be any further action required (other than making sure the accident doesn't recur
Re:hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Malice doesn't need to be part of the motivation in order for harm to be done. Simple negligence suffices.
The purpose of the report was only and simply to state "hey, we detected some of the stuff in the water supply". It's a first step, but an important one as the biggest refrain we hear from the fracking companies is "it wont get in the water supply", "it's too deep", "we're taking precautions", etc.
this paper, while not alarmist itself, rather pointedly proves that the companies are wrong, knowingly or not.
and since they are wrong, further study will be warranted. particularly into the effects their chemicals can have, since most of them haven't been tested (most industrial chemicals aren't required to be tested for human safety), and are even considered trade secrets and thus in many instances its not even known (to the public) what chemicals are even being used.
We've known about this for a decade now (Score:2, Insightful)
obviously nobodys going to do anything about it.
The oil industry wont stop until they can sell us water for $3 a gallon.
Price of bottled water (Score:3)
The oil industry wont stop until they can sell us water for $3 a gallon.
That would be a discount from what people already are paying for water. People are voluntarily buying bottled tap water at $7.57 per gallon right now. Approximately 2000X what it would cost from the tap.
Trace Amounts (Score:5, Informative)
From Article:
The chemical, which is also commonly used in paint and cosmetics, is known to have caused tumors in rodents, though scientists have not determined if those carcinogenic properties translate to humans. The authors said the amount found, which was measured in parts per trillion, was within safety regulations and did not pose a health risk.
Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait, only the ones that cut corners will be able to afford to survive so it will be a problem.
Go tell your congressman to get off the Saudi teat and work for his own country and maybe we won't see so much of these problems.
Make them drink it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think any PR person, CEO, and other mouthpiece who says this stuff is perfectly safe should be forced to drink it. Daily. For a year. Their family included.
If the PR clowns are going to claim it's safe, put their money where there mouth is. If they refuse to drink it, assume they're lying and feed them to bears.
Hold these guys to some standard of truth instead of their accustomed truthiness, and see what they do.
I'm so tired of these "think tanks" who are nothing more than paid shills who spout this crap just to obfuscate the truth -- it's no different than the tobacco lobby did. It's slimy and dishonest, and should carry a huge penalty.
Re:Make them drink it ... (Score:5, Informative)
I think any PR person, CEO, and other mouthpiece who says this stuff is perfectly safe should be forced to drink it. Daily. For a year. Their family included.
If the PR clowns are going to claim it's safe, put their money where there mouth is. If they refuse to drink it, assume they're lying and feed them to bears.
Hold these guys to some standard of truth instead of their accustomed truthiness, and see what they do.
I'm so tired of these "think tanks" who are nothing more than paid shills who spout this crap just to obfuscate the truth -- it's no different than the tobacco lobby did. It's slimy and dishonest, and should carry a huge penalty.
As noted before from Article:
The chemical, which is also commonly used in paint and cosmetics, is known to have caused tumors in rodents, though scientists have not determined if those carcinogenic properties translate to humans. The authors said the amount found, which was measured in parts per trillion, was within safety regulations and did not pose a health risk.
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Those are some of my favorite weasel phrases in this type of article.
"Just because the chemical strips paint and causes mammals to dissolve into puddles of toxic goo does not mean it's unsafe for humans."
So drink up, Mr Koch.
Re:Make them drink it ... (Score:4, Informative)
Why would I drink it? I'm not the one injecting it into the water supply and claiming it's safe as milk.
Re:Make them drink it ... (Score:5, Informative)
They won't because they know something like this would happen...
On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL. In this demonstration, he poured TEL over his hands, then placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose and inhaled its vapor for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems whatsoever.[5][8] However, the State of New Jersey ordered the Bayway plant to be closed a few days later, and Jersey Standard was forbidden to manufacture TEL there again without state permission. Midgley sought treatment for lead poisoning in Europe a few months after his demonstration at the press conference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org].
That guy was the poster child for Hanlon's razor. Probably one of the single biggest environmental villains of all time, intentional or not.
Random Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
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Should Be (Score:2)
more conservative well construction techniques should be used
Ahhh, techniques that should be used.
That phrase is used quite a lot regarding anything to do human health and safety.
How often are those more conservative ways of making money used?
And people wonder why things like the FDA and OSHA exist.
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25g is the WHO's recommendation, which they recently changed from 50g. Why? Science, of course! (that was sarcasm)
Government has a lousy history setting nutritional standards. High sugar consumption is due in large part due to government subsidies and government promotion of low fat diets.
2-Butoxyethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the chemical.
They found it (a very small amount) in the water. Parts-per-trillion levels.
It's used in fracking fluids - and also in a LOT of other places, like paints, sealants, cleaning products, et bloody cetera. The shocker would be if they didn't find the stuff. Here's a partial list of chemicals that use it:
http://hpd.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/search?tbl=TblChemicals&queryx=111-76-2
It's used in many Simple Green products, a LOT of Rustoleum paints, and a lot of others. Minwax, Goo-Gone, Zep, Windex... the list is pretty long. And all it would take would be a home mechanic spilling a bottle of one of those products to get to that same parts-per-trillion levels in their own well water.
The paper suggests that the chemical may have come from a surface-level leak at a nearby well - and that they can't actually tie the chemical to the actual fracking chemicals used at that well.
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What I want to know is why they use this shit in fracking at all. I assume it's because it makes the process more efficient - but how much more? If it's not by a huge amount - say 50% or more - then maybe it's worth using safer materials in the fracking process and having the resulting natural gas cost somewhat more. Currently, I think, drillers don't even have to disclose what they pump into the ground. Why should fracking get a pass on safety? Our cars, etc. have mandated safety features that make th
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Before railing on safety as it relates to 2-butoxyethanol, you may want to look it up on wikipedia. Aside from being used just about everywhere as a surfectant, it is approved by the FDA as a food additive; Im pretty sure that means its not a safety hazard.
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For the same reason they use it in cosmetics and food: it's cheap, it's safe, and it gets the job done.
The composition of fracking fluids is well documented; go look it up on the web.
The problem with it is not the composition, it's hysteria.
http://sharonspringsspa.com/fr... [sharonspringsspa.com]
Re:2-Butoxyethanol (Score:4)
That is an interesting and completely baseless theory, but Im not sure what anyone is supposed to do with it. If you have evidence to support it I imagine it would make for a pretty juicy story, though.
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That is an interesting and completely baseless theory
It's the very first thing I thought when I read the first-released list of fracking chemicals, years back.
If you have evidence to support it I imagine it would make for a pretty juicy story, though.
The list of chemicals they have announced supports it.
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Waste disposal wells are common, but are all far deeper than any aquifers. Oil is pretty toxic, so pumping crud down in place of former oil makes all kinds of sense. They have nothing in particular to do with fracking. Water separated from oil is almost always injected down a disposal well. Water from that deep is very acidic and useless as water from the start.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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You're giving your readers a lot of credit for understanding satire ;-)
Exxon Mobil CEO: No fracking near my backyard (Score:5, Informative)
Exxon Mobil CEO: No fracking near my backyard
Exxon Mobil's CEO has joined a lawsuit to stop construction of a water tower near his home that would be used to in the fracking process to drill for oil...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/02/22/exxon-mobil-tillerson-ceo-fracking/5726603/
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Here we go again.. The guy was opposed to the WATER TOWER being built and spoiling his view. His argument was about the TRAFFIC that fracking would produce and not an opposition to the practice. He was opposed to the water tower and the traffic it would produce ruining his peaceful backyard. He was saying build the tower lower or some other place, which doesn't have anything directly to do with fracking.
Correlation != causation (Score:5, Informative)
From the wikipedia entry on the chemical:
2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. Products that contain 2-butoxyethanol include acrylic resin formulations, asphalt release agents, firefighting foam, leather protectors, oil spill dispersants, degreaser applications, photographic strip solutions, whiteboard cleaners, liquid soaps, cosmetics, dry cleaning solutions, lacquers, varnishes, herbicides, latex paints, enamels, printing paste, and varnish removers, and silicone caulk. Products containing this compound are commonly found at construction sites, automobile repair shops, print shops, and facilities that produce sterilizing and cleaning products. It is the main ingredient of many home, commercial and industrial cleaning solutions. Since the molecule has both non-polar and polar ends, butoxyethanol is useful for removing both polar and non-polar substances, like grease and oils. It is also approved by the U.S. FDA to be used as direct and indirect food additives, which include antimicrobial agents, defoamers, stabilizers, and adhesives.
So, basically, this stuff can be found pretty much EVERYWHERE and pretty much everywhere in or around a home. But, nope, nope, nope, these samples HAD to come from fracking wells.
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Thank you. That makes me feel a LOT better.
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Maybe that 2nd to last sentence will help:
It is also approved by the U.S. FDA to be used as direct and indirect food additives
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Now you've REALLY made me feel better!
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They are pumping this stuff by the thousands of gallons into the ground. But, no, it must be something other than fracking, anything but fracking.
Even though its used by cleaners, doesnt mean its not toxic, many things are toxic which are found in consumer applications, even lethal.
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You didnt even read what he posted. The thing that means its not toxic is that the FDA has approved it as direct and indirect food additives. Read the 2nd to last sentence of his quote.
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Well actually, an entire peer reviewed research paper was written on what possible methods contamination from fracking wells can get into drinking water. It includes historical records of chemicals found in the water table dating back to the 60's and also methods of determining which contaminates came from which well. It also notes that 2-Butoxyethanol is found in cosmetics etc. and you can read it here: http://www.marcellus.psu.edu/n... [psu.edu]
Its also the first link in the summary.
Seems the "industry" may be correct about this one (Score:3)
1) a problem with the pipe further up near the surface. When you have an oil well (even a regular old one) you get all sorts of stuff that comes up water, the gases we call "natural gas", nasty deadly gases and "oil".
2) some other source of contamination completely unrelated to drilling which given their measurement of the concentration at parts per trillion seems likely..
Even if the problem is the first one I imagine there would be nastier compounds I would be more worried about.
Re:Seems the "industry" may be correct about this (Score:4, Informative)
Many of the concerns about the safety of fracking relate to the drill shaft and riser pipe that comes up from the pay dirt, through the groundwater supplies, to the surface. When the riser pipe is installed, a drill shaft is made and the pipe is inserted into it, there is a space between the pipe and the wall of the drill shaft that is supposed to be filled in with cement. If the cement flow is blocked for whatever reason, the annular space may not be filled in, you will end up with an open channel that could run for thousands of feet between the pay dirt and the groundwater supply. Since you cant really see if the cemented went okay, its many thousands of feet underground, its hard to tell if this is happening. When the high pressure drilling fluids are injected, they would easily flow right up that channel into the groundwater supply. They say in the propoganda that there is many thousands of feet of impermeable rock between the pay dirt layer and the groundwater, but this doesnt mean much as you just drilled a hole through it all.
In other news (Score:2)
Carcinogenic (Score:2)
This chemical has been shown to cause liver cancer in animals and to be a probable human carcinogen. It also can cuase reproductive issues along with many other problems
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It is severely disappointing when the discussion around something turns out to be highly misleading based on a simple wikipedia search:
2-Butoxyethanol has a low acute toxicity, with LD50 of 2.5 g/kg in rats.[3] Laboratory tests by the U. S. National Toxicology Program have shown that only sustained exposure to high concentrations (100-500 ppm) of 2-butoxyethanol can cause adrenal tumors in animals.
The only bias in the author on Slashdot (Score:2)
Some perspective on a one-sided summary (Score:2)
Before reading any further, I thought it would be a good idea to see what 2-butoxyethanol was. According to wikipedia, in addition to fracking...
2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. Products that contain 2-butoxyethanol include acrylic resin formulations, asphalt release agents, firefighting foam, leather protectors, oil spill dispersants, degreaser applications, photographic strip solutions, whiteboard cleaners, liquid soaps, cosmetics, dry c
Mmm, Delicious, Delicious Chemicals! (Score:3)
Nearly 100% fracking chemical (Score:2)
Quick summary of the papers involved here. (Score:5, Informative)
The summary conflates two papers, a review paper in Science which summarizes the state of knowledge about fracking the Marcellus Shale (Vidic et al. 2013), and a study of an individual incident published this month in PNAS in which researcher purport to have found a single instance of minor contamination from a fracking well (Llewellyn et al. 2015). Neither paper is particularly damning or inflammatory, so at first blush it's not immediately obvious why the fracking PR flacks have gone to DEFCON 3 on this. The key is to read the review paper first. This is almost always the best way to start because review papers are supposed to give a full and balanced overview of the current state of scientific knowledge on a topic. TL;DR, I know, but stick with me for a few paragraphs and I think I can make the problem clear.
Vidic paints a rather favorable picture of the fracking industry's response to problems that have arisen during the fracking boom in the Marcellus shale. It absolves them of any responsibility for the infamous "burning tapwater" we've all seen in Youtube videos. It states they have been quick to respond to wastewater leaks and well blowouts before contamination could spread. It says the industry has redesigned wells in response to concerns that they might leak fracking water as they pass through the aquifer. And it says that fracking water that returns to the surface ("flowback") is treated and re-used for more fracking -- an expensive environmental "best practice".
Vidic does raise some important concerns, however, and the most important is this. At present recycling flowback into more fracking water is practical because production is booming. But at some point production will level off and begin to decline, and when that happens the industry will be producing more flowback than it can use economically. In Texas, where fracking was pioneered, flowback was disposed of in deep wells -- a process not without its drawbacks, but better than leaving the contaminated water on the surface. Pennsylvania doesn't have enough disposal capacity to handle today's flowback, which helps make recycling fracking water attractive at the present time.
We now have enough context to understand Llewellyn, and why Llewellyn is so upsetting to the industry. Llewellyn's paper documents a single instance of minor contamination which matched the chemical fingerprint of flowback from a nearby well. This contamination was well below a level that would be cause for any concern. Llewellyn concludes the most likely cause was a small spill from the flowback holding pit, although it can't rule out the possibility that the contamination occurred inside the well. Taken with the picture Vidic paints of an industry that is generally on top of stuff like this, the occurrence of a single mishap with negligible consequences is hardly damning. So why has the fracking industry unleashed its flying PR monkeys on this?
Because the fracking industry apparently has made no plans for when the day comes it can no longer recycle all the flowback it uses, and it doesn't want the public to think about that.
It would be sensible for them to prepare for the flowback problem now on the upswing of the boom, for the same reason the industry has been able to be so responsive to date: these are good times for the industry in the Marcellus Shale. They're flush. Although preparing for the problem now would be expensive, it wouldn't slow the boom appreciably, and it would add jobs. But... if the industry can kick the flowback can far enough down the road, we'll have to ask it to fix the problem while production and probably the regional economy is in decline. Doing something about the problem then will cost jobs and require money nobody will have.
So if the industry isn't forced to do something about the looming problem soon, it will become politically if not financially impossible to make them do that ever. That's why the industry is allergic to the very mention that surfa
Re:Industry attacks it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Industry attacks it (Score:5, Insightful)
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If that were truly the case, then why would the "no responsibility for our actions on others" group support a police force and other government-backed methods of coercion to impose such responsibility on thieves, violent assailants, etc? After all, the victims are the ones who failed to take sufficient personal responsibility to protect themselves.
Let's be honest here - the difference is not a matter of general principle, but of degree.
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There are a couple of ways to answer that:
Of course, the
Re:Industry attacks it (Score:5, Insightful)
Water is a basic necessity of life. It's not a product.
In other news, it's up to the fracking companies to protect themselves against nukes from orbit.
Basic Concept Fail (Score:5, Informative)
Industry attacks what? Drinking water?
Its up to the companies that market the water to filter it properly
Do you understand the concept of a well that provides water to a home?
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Re:Industry attacks it (Score:5, Informative)
Who markets the water for the drinking well at a person's home?
You're thinking of the local water company with it's water filtering plants and pipes that lead directly to your home. That is not where fracking is happening. Fracking is done out where there isn't public water and sewer. People have drinking wells for their homes.
This article is saying that fracking chemicals are getting into the same water that is feeding the wells to people's homes. It is the fracking companies' responsibilities to keep their chemicals out of our drinking water wells.
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This article is saying that fracking chemicals are getting into the same water that is feeding the wells to people's homes.
If it is getting into peoples drinking water supplies, then I would suspect that it is also potentially getting into the water supplies of livestock, as well as other animals.
Re:Industry attacks it (Score:5, Interesting)
You're thinking of the local water company with it's water filtering plants and pipes that lead directly to your home. That is not where fracking is happening. Fracking is done out where there isn't public water and sewer.
Hate to break it to you, but yes, fracking very much IS happening right in the middle of where there are water and sewer service. Both Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the 31st and 23rd largest MSA's in the country are right in the middle of the shale boom and both states have their department of natural resource (exploitation) overruling local control so there's plenty of drilling happening in the middle of communities (my town of 30k took the DNR to the state supreme court to try to block projects after we had several leaking wells contaminate drinking water and local streams)
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Indeed, these frack-jobs are ~1500' away from Morgantown, WV's water system intake: http://wvpublic.org/post/more-... [wvpublic.org]
Re:School me on well water (Score:4, Insightful)
My understanding is that modern household water wells generally use reverse osmosis systems. Water quality from drinking wells varies widely depending on the location and quality of the well. But (1) they aren't 100% effective, nor can they be against unanticipated chemicals that weren't being pumped into the ground en masse at the time the well was designed, and (2) I shouldn't have to pay to upgrade my drinking water well filter to handle chemicals used in fracking. Fracking companies should be not contaminating my drinking water.
Re:School me on well water (Score:4, Insightful)
My understanding is that modern household water wells generally use reverse osmosis systems.
Your understanding is incorrect. There is no standard template for a modern household water well. Modern household water wells generally use one or more mesh filters in the pump house, and usually one big carbon filter inside the house, commonly followed by a water softener. There may be an RO filter involved for drinking water, but there often is not.
Most people don't use RO because of the high amount of waste water. If you don't have a grey water system, that's just additional cycling your pump has to do for no benefit.
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Your understanding is wrong. Reverse osmosis is used in places where the well water isn't safe to drink, but that's the exception, not the rule. Ever heard of the phrase "poisoning the well?" Used to be one of the worst war crimes there was.
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My understanding is that modern household water wells generally use reverse osmosis systems.
Nope. Reverse osmosis is highly inefficient.
Re:School me on well water (Score:5, Informative)
First of all people have been drinking water out of wells for several thousand years prior to the invention of reverse osmosis systems. In general it's completely safe, in specific areas it could be unwise.
Second of all there's a difference between: is it safe to drink water from an arbitrary well, and why does this well that used to be safe to drink now contain fracking byproducts.
If in fact the well had been perfectly fine to drink until recently and is now contaminated with fracking byproducts then I think it's reasonable to ask the drilling companies to stop and fix their system.
Re:School me on well water (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem there is that when the well is contaminated, it's WAY too late to do anything. Even if the responsible company immediately stops fracking completely, the well will continue to provide polluted water until the aquifer gets cleaned out somehow. That may be anytime from years to millenia.
I think it's more reasonable for the landowner to be able to force the fracking company to "fix what they broke" and to ensure the landowner has a supply of clean water equal to their current well production available to them for free until the well runs clean again. Or the frackers pay for all the land at pre-fracking market value.
Yeah, I'm a dreamer.
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The problem there is that when the well is contaminated, it's WAY too late to do anything. Even if the responsible company immediately stops fracking completely, the well will continue to provide polluted water until the aquifer gets cleaned out somehow. That may be anytime from years to millenia.
Might want to check on the particular chemical in question;
2-Butoxyethanol biodegrades in soils and water, with a half life of 1–4 weeks in aquatic environments.[6]
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And people have been dying from drinking contaminated water for several thousand years as well.
From a UK perspective so much angst about contaminated water wells is odd, because practically nobody here has them, and frankly if it where a problem if/when fracky starts in the UK then a simply solution would be to put in proper mains water for the handful of properties effected.
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To be fair it's not at all clear that in this particular case the contamination came from fracking or is in fact even a health problem. Never the less the philosophical point still stands, the onus should be on the contaminator to stop, not the effected party to accommodate it.
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Um. Have you ever heard of "natural spring water?" Mostly a marketing ploy, but it's based on the idea that water filtered down through hundreds of feet of rock is amazingly pure and good. I have been living on well water for the past four years, and it's the best water I've ever had. There is no need to filter it, because mother nature already took care of that. The idea that I could be obligated to add expensive post-processing to my well in order to render unsafe water safe is deeply offensive.
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"You're drinking it wrong!"
Re:Yes but (Score:5, Funny)
$0.003/gallon surcharge for value added chemicals to ensure no stray shale clogs their piping.
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What's their evidence it came from fracking and not, say Windex?
Interesting list of uses from wkpda;
2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. Products that contain 2-butoxyethanol include acrylic resin formulations, asphalt release agents, firefighting foam, leather protectors, oil spill dispersants, degreaser applications, photographic strip solutions, whiteboard cleaners, liquid soaps, cosmetics, dry cleaning solutions, lacquers, varnishes, herbicides, latex paints, enamels, printing paste, and varnish remo
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Its a food additive, too, so that may actually not be too bad.
Got to love how many people took the "media hysterics" bait, though.