My former landlady several years ago(she retired three years ago and is a HUGE Obama supporter(or at least she was)) was the head of WV’s Underground Injection Program and a Groundwater Hydrologist.
We used to discuss Fracking even then. The overwhelming Scientific Consensus (Hemmm…where have I heard that term before) is Fracking is about as harmless an extraction technique as you will find. This is NOT to say there aren’t issues that need to be and are being addressed but the good overwhelmingly outweighs the bad IMPO.
The formations being Fracked are thousands of feet and numerous impermeable confining layers deep, assuming the gas company properly cases the well, a technology no different for fracking and other oil and gas drilling activities, a well-understood technque that is exceptionally mature technology, there is simply no way any activity at that depth that can affect the freshwater table, which you generally find perched on top of an impermeable shale layer in the top 200-300 feet of strata.
The danger lies from the wastewater generated by the process (moreso the brine water and bits of the formation being fracked than the fracking chemicals themselves) during the wells construction(not an issue during production). This water can be high in salts, heavy metals and stuff like Strontium, Uranium and Barium. If this is mishandled, it can cause problems when this is spilled onto the surface in high concentrations such as from leaking or failing surface holding and treatment ponds.
I was at a conference this spring where Marcellus Fracking was discussed and the Inspectors from the northern part of the state put on a slide show. The impacts are largely caused by poor site development, lack of sediment control and failure to vegetatively stabilize the ares of disturbance, not to mention shitty access roads. I saw a slide where a pad area on a steep hilltop mass wasted because the construction crew stacked the unconsolidated spoil at an angle much greater than the natural angle of repose. This is a greenhorn mistake that a jounir engineering student should have caught, all th ewishing in the world would not have kept that material up there long term. The industry is lacking enough engineers to police all of their construction activities at the moment it appears. These are areas the industry can easily address and seem to be in the process of doing so. The so-called “Haliburton Exemption’ for frack fluid from the clean water act does not apply to surface disturbance issues, the State Code addresses these anyways so what the Federal Law says is moot. Other states are similar in this regard. The underground effects were not discussed simply because nobody in a room full of over 100 Environmental Professionals who understand the issue consider whet is going on well below the water table to be an area of significant concern.
The process water was being fed into sewage treatment plants. Other than some oxidation of the heavy metals, all this does is dilute things. The biology in a sewage plant breaks down nitrogenous organic wastes primarily and generally does not interact with this stuff. This was causing high chlorides issues in the Monongahelia drainage(salts) that was causing problems for industrial and municipal water plants that dreww on the river for a source. And it was imparing aquatic life to a extent too.
Now most of this process water is being recycled on-site an being reused or being taken to deep well injection sites where this stuff is being injected into ultra-deep porous (sandstone) formations. The drill cuttings are a problem stil being worked as they can only dispose of so much in the pad area. In fact some landfills are being overwhelmed with the stuff. Air space in a municipal landfill is a valuable commodity to be maximized whenever possible and it is kind of stupid to use it up for dirt and rock. Landfills have a finite lifetime and re expensive to replace. The issue of Radioactivity can come into play here and we are trying to get a handle on this. The ideal long-term solution would be to construct several regional drill waste only landfills tailored specifically to accomadating this unique product.
Sorry to be so long-winded. To wrap this up: Even my ultra-lib gorebull warming buying landlady, when confronted with the sceintific evidence regarding a subject she in intimately familiar with (BTW, she is now working part-time for a drilling company as a Geo-consultant (geocon? LOL!) thinks the enviro-hysteria is way greatly overblown.
If the liberals own Science, why don’t they bow to the scientific consensus here I ask? Sure looks like the science is settled to me!
The problem is the shoddy job of drilling and sealing the wells for production. This is what contaminates groundwater wells. The problem is having improperly trained operators and welders installing the casing.
Part of the problem is the arrogance of the drilling companies saying “we always drill correctly” or “the casing is triple sealed”. Ever hear of the law of averages? Nobody is perfect dude!
Hey dude, you can have the world’s best design but if you install it incorrectly it’s worse than useless.
So, because you state “nobody’s perfect”, then no company should be allowed to attempt the process? How many other industries and endeavors should we apply this logic?
A: The solar cell industry has had arsenic problems. Obama’s EPA will shut them down in 3, 2,… Oh.
I’m saying that the drilling companies are playing it like Professor Harold Hill … Everything is perfect, there are never any problems, it’s all wine and roses.
Monorail … Monorail … Monorail!!!!
I’m just saying that too many people are playing it fast and loose with unqualified and barely trained workers at the drill rigs.
Well, certainly somebody is playing it fast and loose and is unqualified. That was the whole point of the WSJ article.
The way to deal with that is a sufficient bond.
You’re assuming that the politicians are thinking logically …
Coming from Eastern Kentucky, I laugh at their worries. Where do bulldozer operators drain their hydraulic and transmission fluid? Directly into a municipal water reservoir, as it turned out. What do you do with the containment ponds for runoff? You let the mining waste plow through a city during a heavy rainfall.
This is actually a vast improvement. What we used to do is take high-sulfur, high-mercury, high-thorium coal and toss it in the fireplace all winter so we could breathe the fumes and leave a toxic residue on the furniture.
Yet we are still here.
Our mining makes fracking look like a controlled laboratory clean-room operation, yet Obama is determined to stop it because fracking is so revolutionarily productive that it threatens his future of $10 a gallon gasoline and $0.50 cent a kWhr electricity.
Go look at the mining in the Upper and Lower Anthracite Fields in Northeastern PA … that made Eastern Kentucky look like a clean room.
Still cleaning up the mess from when before Kentucky was even a state 🙂
Been there, Done that, have the T-Shirt (in Spades!)
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
George is right. Compared to Mining and Refuse Piles, this is clean room surgery.
You know they have underground injected refuse for decades? And inisde the fresh water table into old mine works too!
Here is something a friend of mine gave me:
My former landlady several years ago(she retired three years ago and is a HUGE Obama supporter(or at least she was)) was the head of WV’s Underground Injection Program and a Groundwater Hydrologist.
We used to discuss Fracking even then. The overwhelming Scientific Consensus (Hemmm…where have I heard that term before) is Fracking is about as harmless an extraction technique as you will find. This is NOT to say there aren’t issues that need to be and are being addressed but the good overwhelmingly outweighs the bad IMPO.
The formations being Fracked are thousands of feet and numerous impermeable confining layers deep, assuming the gas company properly cases the well, a technology no different for fracking and other oil and gas drilling activities, a well-understood technque that is exceptionally mature technology, there is simply no way any activity at that depth that can affect the freshwater table, which you generally find perched on top of an impermeable shale layer in the top 200-300 feet of strata.
The danger lies from the wastewater generated by the process (moreso the brine water and bits of the formation being fracked than the fracking chemicals themselves) during the wells construction(not an issue during production). This water can be high in salts, heavy metals and stuff like Strontium, Uranium and Barium. If this is mishandled, it can cause problems when this is spilled onto the surface in high concentrations such as from leaking or failing surface holding and treatment ponds.
I was at a conference this spring where Marcellus Fracking was discussed and the Inspectors from the northern part of the state put on a slide show. The impacts are largely caused by poor site development, lack of sediment control and failure to vegetatively stabilize the ares of disturbance, not to mention shitty access roads. I saw a slide where a pad area on a steep hilltop mass wasted because the construction crew stacked the unconsolidated spoil at an angle much greater than the natural angle of repose. This is a greenhorn mistake that a jounir engineering student should have caught, all th ewishing in the world would not have kept that material up there long term. The industry is lacking enough engineers to police all of their construction activities at the moment it appears. These are areas the industry can easily address and seem to be in the process of doing so. The so-called “Haliburton Exemption’ for frack fluid from the clean water act does not apply to surface disturbance issues, the State Code addresses these anyways so what the Federal Law says is moot. Other states are similar in this regard. The underground effects were not discussed simply because nobody in a room full of over 100 Environmental Professionals who understand the issue consider whet is going on well below the water table to be an area of significant concern.
The process water was being fed into sewage treatment plants. Other than some oxidation of the heavy metals, all this does is dilute things. The biology in a sewage plant breaks down nitrogenous organic wastes primarily and generally does not interact with this stuff. This was causing high chlorides issues in the Monongahelia drainage(salts) that was causing problems for industrial and municipal water plants that dreww on the river for a source. And it was imparing aquatic life to a extent too.
Now most of this process water is being recycled on-site an being reused or being taken to deep well injection sites where this stuff is being injected into ultra-deep porous (sandstone) formations. The drill cuttings are a problem stil being worked as they can only dispose of so much in the pad area. In fact some landfills are being overwhelmed with the stuff. Air space in a municipal landfill is a valuable commodity to be maximized whenever possible and it is kind of stupid to use it up for dirt and rock. Landfills have a finite lifetime and re expensive to replace. The issue of Radioactivity can come into play here and we are trying to get a handle on this. The ideal long-term solution would be to construct several regional drill waste only landfills tailored specifically to accomadating this unique product.
Sorry to be so long-winded. To wrap this up: Even my ultra-lib gorebull warming buying landlady, when confronted with the sceintific evidence regarding a subject she in intimately familiar with (BTW, she is now working part-time for a drilling company as a Geo-consultant (geocon? LOL!) thinks the enviro-hysteria is way greatly overblown.
If the liberals own Science, why don’t they bow to the scientific consensus here I ask? Sure looks like the science is settled to me!
The problem is the shoddy job of drilling and sealing the wells for production. This is what contaminates groundwater wells. The problem is having improperly trained operators and welders installing the casing.
Part of the problem is the arrogance of the drilling companies saying “we always drill correctly” or “the casing is triple sealed”. Ever hear of the law of averages? Nobody is perfect dude!
Hey dude, you can have the world’s best design but if you install it incorrectly it’s worse than useless.
So, because you state “nobody’s perfect”, then no company should be allowed to attempt the process? How many other industries and endeavors should we apply this logic?
A: The solar cell industry has had arsenic problems. Obama’s EPA will shut them down in 3, 2,… Oh.
I’m saying that the drilling companies are playing it like Professor Harold Hill … Everything is perfect, there are never any problems, it’s all wine and roses.
Monorail … Monorail … Monorail!!!!
I’m just saying that too many people are playing it fast and loose with unqualified and barely trained workers at the drill rigs.
Well, certainly somebody is playing it fast and loose and is unqualified. That was the whole point of the WSJ article.
The way to deal with that is a sufficient bond.
You’re assuming that the politicians are thinking logically …
Coming from Eastern Kentucky, I laugh at their worries. Where do bulldozer operators drain their hydraulic and transmission fluid? Directly into a municipal water reservoir, as it turned out. What do you do with the containment ponds for runoff? You let the mining waste plow through a city during a heavy rainfall.
This is actually a vast improvement. What we used to do is take high-sulfur, high-mercury, high-thorium coal and toss it in the fireplace all winter so we could breathe the fumes and leave a toxic residue on the furniture.
Yet we are still here.
Our mining makes fracking look like a controlled laboratory clean-room operation, yet Obama is determined to stop it because fracking is so revolutionarily productive that it threatens his future of $10 a gallon gasoline and $0.50 cent a kWhr electricity.
Go look at the mining in the Upper and Lower Anthracite Fields in Northeastern PA … that made Eastern Kentucky look like a clean room.
Still cleaning up the mess from when before Kentucky was even a state 🙂
Been there, Done that, have the T-Shirt (in Spades!)
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
George is right. Compared to Mining and Refuse Piles, this is clean room surgery.
You know they have underground injected refuse for decades? And inisde the fresh water table into old mine works too!