I have been following the development of Marcellus shale gas drilling and the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in my state for almost a year now and the news keeps getting worse and worse.
For a little more background, you can see the my New Year's Eve diary on the subject. For the purposes of today's diary, the main thing readers need to know is that fracking involves the injection of millions of gallons of water with additives such as benzene, toluene, and glycol ethers. The water is under very high pressure and causes fracturing of the rock, releasing natural gas trapped in the shale. Much of the fracking water remains in the ground but some of it returns to the surface, now containing even more contaminants than before. Lovely stuff like the toxic heavy metal barium and the radioactive element radium.
Today, ABC News, Huffington Post, and other sources are running an AP story about the disposal of fracking wastewater in Pennslvania. Unlike most states, PA doesn't always require drillers to dispose of this highly polluted water safely away from humans and wildlife.
There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
There are two important parts to this story. The first is the concern over how much water has been and is still being dumped and the associated hazards. According to the article, this is being investigated in several studies.
The second part of the article, and the one that disturbs me even more than the idea of corporations trying to maximize their profits by minimizing disposal costs (after all, profits are the raison d'etre for corporations), is that our legislators and regulators sold the citizens of PA down the river right along with the fracking water. The AP article describes regulators as being "caught flat-footed" by the drilling boom. Yet PA is only the most recent state to face this situation; the risks and hazards of shale gas drilling are well known. The state has now banned this disposal method for new wells, but existing operations are still allowed to continue dumping the (minimally) treated wastewater as they have been.
I and many others in this state are doing our damnedest to raise awareness and lobby for stronger regulations but when your legislators are owned by the corporations, what power do we really have?