GAZETTE COLUMN: FIRE WATER IN YOUR SINK by John P. Flannery

Perhaps you’ve seen those videos where a person turns on the faucet and fire spills into the sink.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMS8VsG2LSY

There’s something unsettling about a lit match that ignites water. 

Water ordinarily quenches fire.

So why is this happening? 

It’s because the energy industry is mining natural gas in a new and perilous way – and the pipe to that faucet carries an unexpected mixture of water and natural gas.

Energy moguls have been trying to capture and collect bubbles of natural gas, as much as 516 trillion cubic feet worth, found in a 573 square mile expanse of shale 8,000 feet below the surface running from Alabama to New York, and running along Virginia’s western border.  

Energy CEOs are getting a rush at new technology that can shatter the shale so they can harvest the gas and huge profits as well.

The rub is how do they do it – how they get at the gas.

They’ve found a cheap method of extraction called “fracking” – short for hydraulic fracturing. 

They drill down vertically as far as two miles into the earth and then the drill turns at right angles (horizontal drilling) parallel to the surface (and perhaps even under your retirement ski cottage off I-81). 

They then put a high pressure pump with a mixture of crushing sand, hazardous materials, chemicals that are carcinogens, and millions of gallons of water, and force fractures in the shale so that gas may escape into the drill bore.

There have been complaints from Alabama, Virginia and West Virginia of impaired or polluted drinking water near these gas wells. 

The wastewater contains terrible by-products including reproductive toxicants, arsenic, hydrogen sulfide, mercury, barium, radium, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene and xylene – so we are haunted by the possibility of a latter day disaster like the Hooker Chemical Company’s Love Canal - if we don’t get smarter.

Worse, this drilling takes millions of gallons of water from existing streams, compromising farmers and the ecosystem. 

There’s no good way to handle the highly salted toxic wastewater that comes up with the drill. 

Normal municipal treatment facilities don’t treat for carcinogens or remove radioactive materials. 

Dumping wastewater into streams used by nearby communities is no answer. 

Pumping wastewater back into the earth is very likely to compromise our underground aquifers. 

As a matter of law, we are almost defenseless.

We are not protected by the Clean Water Act, the Superfund law (CERCLA), the Safe Drinking Water Act, or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.  The Oil and Gas Industry lobbied and won exemptions from all these safety regulations.  Nor does the public have any right to know what these gas companies are doing under the Federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Acts.

How did we do to this to ourselves?  Nothing new here!  Our public officials are “too compliant,” compromised by their large contributors, and covering up the health hazards with a goulash of industry disinformation and false promises to reassure curious constituents.

The most important question we should ask ourselves about this industry debacle is simple.

Is our health more important than a 10 year supply of natural gas? 

I think it is! 

But there are those taking profits who heartily disagree.