OpEd: Natural gas drilling contaminates water, air

[Robbien]

When people recklessly endanger the lives of others we call them criminals. When people who run corporations do, they call it cost cutting. British Petroleum comes to mind here.

But in the infinite wisdom of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, the criminals are the environmentalists “who prevent us from drilling in safer places.” I suggest they watch the HBO documentary “Gasland” to learn how that drilling in safer places is going.

Among the many enduring environmental gifts of Dick Cheney is an exemption from the Clean Water Act for the natural gas drilling technique of “fracking.” Fracking has opened up enormous natural gas reservoirs previously locked in deep shale formations reaching into 37 states.

Gas companies consider shale gas a “natural gas ocean” worth trillions of dollars. Halleluja! But there’s one small downside.

Fracking a well requires injecting millions of gallons of water and hundreds of chemicals, many of them well-known carcinogens and neurotoxins, into the well bore under intense pressure to fracture the shale and release the gas.

Single wells may be “fracked” repeatedly. Across America 450,000 of these wells are being drilled. The waste water is contaminated, unusable, and toxic to plants and animals. The chemicals can spread into geologic cracks far beyond the well.

Not only are the chemicals not prohibited, their use is not regulated. The gas companies don’t even have to disclose what chemicals are used. Perhaps you’re thinking the same thought you were when you heard that BP was drilling a mile under water with no plan for stopping a spill, “What could possibly go wrong?”

If it occurred to you that the aquifers, rivers and creeks that provide drinking water for millions of people could be poisoned by this technique, that same thought occurred to people who noticed their drinking water smelled like turpentine, looked like mud and could be lit on fire. There are now thousands of these complaints, but when asked by a congressional subcommittee, CEOs of the gas companies answered there was no proof they did it.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/49896808-82/gas-drilling-chemicals-fracking.html.csp


Glad to see this being printed in a major newspaper such as the Salt Lake Trib.