Can Shale Gas Go Green?

• Report this Comment On April 02, 2010, at 6:28 PM, Shalewatch wrote:

  Ok, so here's the problem. There are several of issues with shale gas fracking. You have the chemicals that are used, many of which are toxic. The cement casing that's supposed to protect the aquifer doesn't always hold - you've got fissures under the ground into which the cement can seep and the sheer amount of pressure under which the fracking mixture is pumped can crack the cement casing. A friend of mine had fracking done on her farm and the cement casing blew out. So, groundwater contamination is an issue. Of course it doesn't help that the gas company workers aren't particularly careful with where they dump the frack water - around here they've been seen dumping in streams, on roads - you get the picture. We just had a well fire the other day in a neighboring community. The frack pond caught fire and the liner of the pond was burnt away. This let enormous amounts of frack water seep into the soil, on its way to the groundwater.

  Gas companies will say that there is no confirmed case of water contamination. When the baseline tests that were done tested for e-coli and other bacteria, and the water shows up polluted with toluene and formaldehyde, they tell the residents that they can't prove that their well water wasn't always contaminated with toluene and formaldehyde.

  The other thing is that when the fracking is done, a lot of chemicals are released from underground - benzene, toluene, ethylene, xylene - two are carcinogens, two are neurotoxins. This comes up in the frack water, and it also comes up in the air. The airborne gases settle in low-lying areas which means that it's not uncommon for people to be "gassed" especially early in the morning when the air is cool and heavy and they're going in or out of their homes. The town of DISH, Texas - where a lot of drilling has been going on for a number of years - recently had a series of air tests run. The ambient air showed high levels of toxicity of methane and the BTEX chemicals listed above. Oh, and by the way, the Marcellus Shale is radioactive. Stimulation of the Marcellus prompts the release of radioactive materials up through the soil (& into the basements of homes above, if you're unfortunate enough for horizontal drilling to be going on under your home). Radioactivity also shows up in the frack water. A test done by the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation showed concentrations of radium-226 at levels as high as 267 times the safe limit to be discharged into the environment, and thousands of times beyond the safe limit for human consumption.

  People who are concerned about shale gas drilling are not alarmist tree-huggers. They're people who like to breathe, and people who like to drink safe water. They're people who want their children to grow up and not suffer from leukemia or other diseases that are associated with long-term exposure to the BTEX chemicals.

  I believe that whatever position any of your readers begin from, if they were to live in a community where shale gas drilling is going on they would be horrified. They'd also want to sell their homes and move, and be pretty surprised when they find out that their homes and farms have no property value because of all the toxicity in the air, in the soil and in the water.

  This isn't a financial issue, folks. This has crossed the line into being a human rights issue. I would strongly urge those of you with investments in natural gas companies to do some pretty solid research on your own - don't buy what the gas companies tell you, learn for yourself. Then ask yourself if this is truly something you want to support.

  The crazy thing is that they can do this in a much more environmentally-sound way. They just choose not to.

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