What the Hell is 'Fracking' and How Does it Poison Our Groundwater? [View All]

[ensho]

http://blog.buzzflash.com/greenisgood/007


Water: two hydrogen, one oxygen...and the crystalline compound adamantane? With 2-butoxyethanol, or 2-BE?

That's what citizens in states like New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and Colorado are finding in their drinking water. The culprit? Fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process used by natural gas and oil companies. Fracking allows the oil and gas in reservoir rock to move more freely from the rock pores. A chemical mixture of sand and fluids is injected under high pressure, which creates or enlarges fractures in the rock to unlock the deposits buried deep underground. Then the oil and gas is able to move to a production well where the it can be brought to the surface.

According to the investigative Web site ProPublica, fracking has vastly increased the amount of natural gas drilling in the United States. In 2007, there were 449,000 gas wells in 32 states, thirty percent more than in 2000, and by 2012 the nation could be drilling 32,000 new wells a year. Today, according to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, nine out of 10 gas wells in the United States currently use fracturing fluids.

But at what cost?

The same chemicals used in fracking have been found contaminating the precious drinking water supply in rural areas across the United States, and with many harmful results. In some cases chemical compounds, those of most concern being adamantes and 2-BE, have been found in streams, springs and water wells that provide for neighboring towns. These compounds are not only dangerous to ingest, but they're potentially volatile. In one case, a house exploded after hydraulic fracturing created underground passageways and methane leaked into the residential water supply.

-snip-

The FRAC Act

Thankfully, Democrats in Congress are looking to change all this.

The Fracking Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, or FRAC Act, was introduced early this June in the Senate by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) as well as in the House by Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Jared Polis (D-CO).

While the EPA allows companies to make "every effort...to maximize the production of oil and gas", the FRAC Act would "require these companies to disclose the chemicals they are using in our communities -- especially near our water sources," DeGette said in a press release, vice chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
-snip-
---------------------------