Confirmed: fracking can pollute is a new article in Salon that reports on a new study by the National Academy of Sciences, a group that is not wholly funded by Chinapeake Energy, like the Buffalo University Shale Shamstitute of Frackademics
Shale gas wells can leak all sorts of ways – either by contaminating natural up-flows of water, like those that drive thermal and mineral springs into ground water and water wells , or by simply leaking up the outside of the casing. They are in fact, a textbook way of mobilizing gas into groundwater. This new peer-reviewed research suggests – that deep water formations that could be contaminated by a frack or leaking (‘fugitive’) gas from a well do in fact communicate with shallow aquifers that are tapped for drinking water. As they say, “Let the scientists decide.” You know like this: National Academy of Science Fracking Study
Note that the study simply pointed out that there is communication from lower strata of water exposed to fracking, and aquifers tapped by water wells. (This communication is something the fracking apologists have either ignored or downplayed.) The actual migration of fracking fluids is another matter – a matter of time and volume. If the communication is manifested in the form of a thermal spring (Old Faithful at Yellowstone) then a matter of hours. These are geological and hydrological vectors. The more prosaic pathway is the wellbore itself; the outermost casing separates from the rock and gas goes up the wellbore. All wellbores will leak sooner or later, simply a matter of how much how soon, because gas wellbores leak
MONDAY, JUL 9, 2012 03:00 PM EDT
Confirmed: Fracking can pollute
A new study explodes the gas industry’s claim that fracking won’t contaminate local drinking water
BY SARAH LASKOW
TOPICS: ENVIRONMENT, FRACKING
Ron and Jean Carter hold a bottle of well water outside their home in Dimock, Pennsylvania. The Carters are suing Cabot Energy for allegedly poisoning their well with toxic chemicals and water. (Reuters/Les Stone)
One of the key arguments in the case for fracking rests on an appeal to common sense. The hydraulic fracturing process — pushing gallons upon gallons of chemical-laden water into shale rock in order to bubble up natural gas — takes place deep in the ground, thousands of feet below the earth’s surface and thousands of feet below the shallow aquifers that provide drinking water. Given the distance between the water and the fracking fluid, there’s just no way fracking could contaminate aquifers, the gas industry and its allies argue. So many layers of rock lie between noxious fracking fluid and water that the risks of chemical-laced drinking water don’t compute.
But that is not how it works down there . . . deeper water that can be contaminated moves upwards
Study: Fluids From Marcellus Shale Likely Seeping Into PA Drinking Water
ProPublica, July 9, 2012, 3 p.m.
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