Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling - ProPublica

[Bozita]

Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling
by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2011, 7 a.m.


This story was published as part of Amazon's Kindle Singles program, and is available for reading on that device. ProPublica's first Kindle Single,"Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks: The Untold Story," is also available.


There are few things a family needs to survive more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly, jowled Vietnam War hero who had long ago planted his roots on these sparse eastern Wyoming grasslands, was drilling a new well in search of it.

The drill bit spun, whining against the alluvial mud and rock that folds beneath the Wind River Range foothills. It ploughed to 160 feet, but the water that spurted to the surface smelled foul, like a parking lot puddle drenched in motor oil. It was no better — yet — than the water Meeks needed to replace.

Meeks used to have abundant water on his small alfalfa ranch, a 40-acre plot speckled with apple and plum trees northeast of the Wind River Mountains and about five miles outside the town of Pavillion. For 35 years he drew it clear and sweet from a well just steps from the front door of the plain, eight-room ranch house that he owns with his wife, Donna. Neighbors would stop off the rural dirt road on their way to or from work in the gas fields to fill plastic jugs; the water was better than at their own homes.

But in the spring of 2005, Meeks’ water had turned fetid. His tap ran cloudy, and the water shimmered with rainbow swirls across a filmy top. The scent was sharp, like gasoline. And after 20 minutes — scarcely longer than you’d need to fill a bathtub — the pipes shuttered and popped and ran dry.

Meeks suspected that environmental factors were to blame. He focused on the fact that Pavillion, home of a single four-way stop sign and 174 people, lies smack in the middle of Wyoming’s gas patch. Since the mid 1990’s, more than 1,000 gas wells had been drilled in the region — some 200 of them right around Pavillion — thousands of feet through layers of drinking water and into rock that yields tiny rivulets of trapped gas. The drilling has left abandoned toxic waste pits scattered across the landscape.It has also disturbed the earth itself. One step in the drilling cracks and explodes the earth in a physical assault that breaks up the crust and shakes the gas loose. In that process, called hydraulic fracturing, a brew of chemicals is injected deep into the earth to lubricate the fracturing and work its way into the rock. How far it goes and where it ends up, no one really knows. Meeks wondered if that wasn’t what ruined his well.

more, lots more...

http://www.propublica.org/article/hydrofracked-one-mans-mystery-leads-to-a-backlash-against-natural-gas-drill/single

[appleannie1]

1. The new Rethug governor of Pennsylvania had lifted all the regulations on gas drilling and Marcellus

Shale was having a field day drilling in the last couple months. Then the other day he had no choice but to ban the gas industry from sending their waste water to public sewage plants because the water in most of the rivers began having high concentrations of Bromides. They had almost reached the critical stage in the Pittsburgh area. The rivers produce the water supply for millions of people and it was fast becoming unsafe for consumption. Marcellus at first insisted it was a natural problem but finally admitted they were to blame.

We had a very good well for years and years and then they drilled a gas well on the property next to us. All of a sudden we had water polluted with iron bacteria and sediment. We had to drill a new water well. Then they drilled a gas well across the road from us. Our new water well starting producing red water that permanently stained everything in the house that it came in contact with. Complaining got us nowhere. We now buy water for cooking and drinking.

[drm604]

2. K&R

This can't be allowed to continue.

[Nihil]

3. That is a horribly frightening story ...

Everyone should really read the entire article.


They found one hell of a "leakage" when drilling for fresh water:
> An explosion of white foam and water, chased by a powerful stream of natural gas,
> shot out of the ground where Meeks had drilled his well. It sprayed 200 feet
> through the air, nearly blowing the 70-foot-tall drilling derrick off its
> foundation, crystallizing in the frigid winter air and precipitating into a giant
> tower of ice.
> The blowout, roaring like a jet engine, continued for 72 hours, until a judge
> ordered EnCana engineers to use their equipment to control it. In that time,
> according to one estimate a gasfield worker gave Meeks, 6 million cubic feet of
> natural gas shot out of his 540-foot-deep water well, more than many gas wells in
> that part of Wyoming produced in an entire month.


> “It is common knowledge that the lower layers are full of irregularities,” said
> Patrick Jacobson, a rig worker who manages drilling-fluid pumps on gas rigs.
> The concrete can crack as it dries and expands, Jacobson says, or it can slip
> into cavities eroded by the turbidity of the injected drilling fluids or into
> large natural gaps or cracks in the earth, never filling the well annulus at all.

As was apparent in the Deepwater Horizon episode last year ...


And check out some of the greed-fueled hatred from the gas supporters:

> And some of us, sitting on a pile of gas, we’re gonna get very very rich
> and move away ...
> “Winning” might not be a possibility. Societies needs can totally trump yours.
> But you remain free… you remain free to act in your own best interests,
> be informed, offer support and if necessary, get out of the way.

:grr: