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Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process in which high pressured water and chemicals are injected into underground rock to release natural gas. The fracking process uses chemicals such as highly corrosive salts, carcinogens and radioactive elements which pollute water sources when released into the environment without being properly treated. When combined with water these chemicals form a mixture called wastewater. Deep injection wells in Ohio, over the past three years, received about 150 million gallons of wastewater produced in Pennsylvania. However, 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater made in Pennsylvania wells were sent to treatment plants that did not have the technology available to make the water safe enough to be released into the environment.
The Marcellus Shale is an enormous rock found under the earth’s surface which stretches throughout Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio. Roughly the size of Greece, it could produce 489 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. To put this into perspective, New York uses about 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year. Therefore, the Marcellus Shale has greatly impacted the natural gas industry. Fracking brings natural gas that is embedded deep in the earth within shale rock to the surface. Because of the prevalence of this natural gas source, fracking affects Pennsylvania and the other states near the Marcellus Shale.
The New York Times discovered some startling evidence to support the fracking associated dangers. While examining federal, state and company documents, the Times uncovered findings showing that plants, that did not have the necessary technologies to remove the harmful chemicals, received more than 1.3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater from 2008 to 2011 in Pennsylvania. This amount of wastewater could cover Manhattan in three inches of liquid. Another document showed that more than 12 treatment plants across three different US states released only partially treated wastewater back into the environment. When released, wastewater becomes part of a much larger reservoir which makes it much harder to treat. The contaminated water could potentially spread anywhere downstream. Therefore, people all over the country should be aware of the effects of fracking, not just those closest to the operations. Many leading fracking companies, such as Shell, Chesapeake Energy, and Marcellus Shale Coalition and Energy, are denying these claims saying that they do not really use as much water as recorded because they recycle it and that low levels of radiation do not threaten the health of nearby residents. However, wastewater can contain hundreds to thousands of times the allotted radiation levels determined by the federal government for clean drinking water and when mixed with disinfectants at drinking water plants it can form cancer-causing compounds.
Federal and state regulators have not stopped the ineffective treatment of wastewater. According to federal law, drinking water plants are only required to test water for radiation every six to nine years. Of 65 plants located downstream from some of the most prominent drilling sites, none of the drinking water facilities have tested since 2008, most not since at least 2005, which was before a majority of the drilling began. Texas, a prominent site for natural gas drilling, contains about 93,000 gas wells. During a hospital study near some of the drilling sites, the results concluded that about 25 percent of children in the area had asthma which is more than three times the state average rate of about seven percent. A mother of a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old, Kelly Grant, noted that since a gas well was constructed about two years ago near her home her children have experienced asthma attacks, headaches and dizziness. Despite this evidence, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not intervened. Hydraulic fracturing processes need to be cleaned up in order to ensure the cleanliness of drinking water for residents near these facilities.
Recent research shows that fracking may leak more methane emissions than previously thought. The fracking process releases natural gas but technology is not efficient enough to collect all the gas, consisting mostly of methane. Fracking operations emit about 40 to 60 percent more methane than traditional natural gas wells. Two Cornell scientist found that sometime in the next 20 years, methane will produce 44 percent of the US greenhouse gas emissions, with 17 percent coming from natural gas operations. New research conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration near Denver, CO at the Denver-Julesburg Basin found that an estimate of four percent of natural gas is lost to the air during fracking. In this particular basin, fracking extracts the gas, located in firm sand. The estimates found in this most recent study are higher than those previously found by Cornell (2.2 to 3.8%) and the EPA (2.8%). More research in the future could help to clarify these results by obtaining a more certain percentage to help to determine the actual effects of fracking. New equipment that facilitates a process called “green completion” collects much of the methane lost during natural gas operations. This technology could significantly reduce methane emissions minimizing its effect on the environment. However, this equipment is not required and because it does not lessen the cost of producing natural gas, companies have no economic drive to invest in it. Obtaining natural gas through fracking increases the amount of methane released into the atmosphere therefore increasing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted.
Switching to natural gas as a fuel source over coal has been a recent trend because natural gas emits about half of the carbon dioxide that coal does when burned. This helps to reduce air pollution and acid rain. When all the facts are examined natural gas may not come out on top with regards to being the cleanest fossil fuel. Switching from natural gas to coal will actually increase the rapidness of climate change. Natural gas traps about 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than coal. When burned, coal releases carbon dioxide along with sulfates and other particles. Carbon dioxide causes warming of the atmosphere but sulfates reflect direct sunlight therefore cooling the Earth’s surface. According to a study by Tom Wigley, an expert on climate change at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, partially shifting to natural gas could increase the rates of global warming for at least the next four decades depending on how much methane is released. Natural gas may not be less harmful for the environment than coal, as previously thought.
Natural gas operations have also been found to be the cause of earthquakes throughout the world. As discussed, large quantities of wastewater are produced through the fracking process. One of the methods for wastewater disposal is through injections deep into the earth’s layers. On December 24th and 31st, 2011 in Youngstown, Ohio, there were earthquakes with ratings of 2.7 and 4.0 on the Richter scale, respectively. Several earthquakes occurred in the same area between March and November of 2011. Wastewater was likely the cause of these quakes. All the earthquakes were found to be located near an injection well operated by Northstar Disposal Services. A team of Columbia University experts, led by John Armbruster, determined with 95 certainty that the epicenters of the earthquakes were located within 100 meters of each other and 0.8 kilometers away from the injection well. The wastewater does not necessarily directly cause the earthquakes, but it facilitates them. The water injected into the well acts as a lubricant in rock faults below the surface making a slip between faults easier and therefore creating an earthquake. Unfortunately, this kind of reaction is not uncommon. Two earthquakes occurred near Backpool, England in early 2011. The earthquakes, with a rating of 2.3 and 1.5 on the Richter scale, were found near the fracking operation site conducted by Cuadrilla Resources. The company has stopped operations since the second quake. European experts found it “highly probable” that natural gas operations caused the earthquakes due to a combination of “extremely rare” factors. But how rare can these factors actually be if there have already been at least two instances of earthquakes directly connected to fracking operations? Not only does fracking affect the quality of air and water but it is also linked to increasing the likelihood of an earthquake.
After comparing all the research, it is clear that fracking threatens serious risks that impact the environment and people. Much of the potential hazards are not being monitored by the government which is only making matters worse. By delaying the realization that fracking is harmful we are only going to make the problems worse for everyone in the future. Most companies are too caught up in the economics of the situation to care about the effects that natural operations could have on the environment. Although there are benefits to using natural gas to produce energy, such as the fact that it releases less carbon dioxide then coal, it is evident that the methods used to obtain natural gas also inflict negative effects on the environment. With all the evidence pilling up against hydraulic fracturing, hopefully efforts will be made to end the process until safer, cleaner methods of obtaining natural gas are found.
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