Turns out that that's
not so true.
Some background:
Fracking into underground drinking water sources is not prohibited by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted the practice from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. But the industry has long held that it does not hydraulically fracture into underground sources of drinking water because oil and gas deposits sit far deeper than aquifers.
Well, it should probably be covered by something called the
Safe Drinking Water Act but at least they've assured us that that won't happen. What's that,
Stanford University science people?
The study, however, found that energy companies used acid stimulation, a production method, and hydraulic fracturing in the Wind River and Fort Union geological formations that make up the Pavillion gas field and that contain both natural gas and sources of drinking water.
“Thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and millions of gallons of fluids containing numerous inorganic and organic additives were injected directly into these two formations during hundreds of stimulation events,” concluded Dominic DiGiulio and Robert Jackson of Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences in a presentation Tuesday at the American Chemical Society conference in San Francisco.
The good news is this research is ongoing and does not necessarily mean that fracking is contaminating underground drinking water. The industry says it doesn't and they would know since:
“The extent and consequences of these activities are poorly documented, hindering assessments of potential resource damage and human exposure,” DiGiulio wrote.
We know about these underwater resources because part of the
Safe Drinking Water Act is to locate them. The idea is that we might
need them.
To drink from.
Someday.
It's kinda a "better safe than sorry" attitude that only nerds and scientists believe in. Of course, the oil and fracking industry pooh-poohs any talk of drinking water issues because they say that fracking wells are far deeper underground and have no physical chance of contact with those resources.
“It's true that fracking often occurs miles below the surface,” said Jackson, professor of environment and energy at Stanford. “People don't realize, though, that it's sometimes happening less than a thousand feet underground in sources of drinking water.”
Please feel free to read the rest here.