In Pennsylvania, the closer you live to a well used to hydraulically fracture underground shale for natural gas, the more likely it is that your drinking water is contaminated with methane. This conclusion, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in July, is a first step in determining whether fracking in the Marcellus Shale underlying much of Pennsylvania is responsible for tainted drinking water in that region.For relevant background, see my 2011 post on fracking (with videos "My water's on fire tonight" and a trailer for "Gasland.")
Robert Jackson, a chemical engineer at Duke University, found methane in 115 of 141 shallow, residential drinking-water wells. The methane concentration in homes less than one mile from a fracking well was six times higher than the concentration in homes farther away. Isotopes and traces of ethane in the methane indicated that the gas was not created by microorganisms living in groundwater but by heat and pressure thousands of feet down in the Marcellus Shale, which is where companies fracture rock to release gas that rises up a well shaft.
From Scientific American, via Reddit.
Only a myth:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-five-myths-about-fracking-%281%29.aspx
How convenient it is to answer to a comment about "God’s glorious Creation"... Leftists with us, we are on science's side!
DeleteDefinitely a myth- created, funded and perpetuated by the gas companies:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dangersoffracking.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/03/epa-fracking-study-pavillion-wyoming_n_3542365.html
"In private conversations, however, high-ranking agency officials acknowledge that fierce pressure from the drilling industry and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill – as well as financial constraints and a delicate policy balance sought by the White House -- is squelching their ability to scrutinize not only the effects of oil and gas drilling, but other environmental protections as well."
"Now the EPA will instead hand the study over to the state of Wyoming, whose research will be funded by EnCana, the very drilling company whose wells may have caused the contamination."
When you really want to get to the truth and heart of the matter: self investigate, self regulate, self mythologize...
but, but, but! everyone KNOWS that fracking is not only perfectly safe, but that it is the one key only to financial prosperity for all of america!!!
ReplyDeleteYup- just like the last war we started lasted a coupla months tops, and more than payed for itself in only a coupla days...
DeleteI live just across the border NY. Upstate NY, like Pennsylvania, is in the natural gas rich Marcellus Shale formation. However, NY unlike PA, has chose a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. For years there have been cases on the local NY news where NY residents can light their well water on fire, much like they showed in Gasland.
ReplyDeleteIf fracking causes the drinking water contamination, and NY does not allow fracking, then why all the reports about methane in the NY well water? The correlation is not with fracking and well water. The correlation is with the Marcellus Shale formation and a high amount of methane. Methane, after all, is the main component of natural gas.
Natural methane migration aside, 70mg/L of methane for whatever reason in your drinking water is harmless.
ReplyDeleteBefore I choose sides on this, I'd like to know whether there was already methane in that water before fracking, and also point out that obviously they'll frack in places where there's a lot of gas to be found, so I'm not surprised there's more methane in the water in areas where they frack than in further areas. I'd really like to sympathize with fracking opponents but they need to show us causation and not just correlation.
ReplyDelete