fracking is fine
No. I was merely given guidance on that issue by an advisor who regularly is called in as an expert witness on climate and hydrology issues. I'm am currently working on data analysis pertaining to litigation but there's no way I'd get called in to testify. I'm far down on that totem pole. It has nothing to do with oil and gas, though. Its water use/rights related.
I know that feel. What kind of litigation, if you don't mind me asking?
Water rights. I'm doing analysis on historical water usage based on remote sensing data.
How Fracking Is Exposing People to Radioactive Waste
In small, dispersed quan ies low-level radiation is not life threatening, but what happens when those quan ies start increasing in the environment, and getting into the water we drink, the fish we eat, and the soil in which our food grows?
Scientists are trying to figure that out. But it’s a difficult process to track since fracking isn’t regulated under most federal environmental laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. That means industry is charge of policing itself a lot of the time.
Another problem is that it’s really hard to keep track of all the stuff that may become tainted by radioactive materials in the drilling process. Millions of gallons of soupy wastewater that flow back from wells after drilling and fracking can end up in a number of places. Sometimes the wastewater is simply left in lined or unlined pits to either evaporate or sink back into the ground. Other times it is sent to water treatment plants and eventually released back into rivers and streams. At times it is simply spilled or illegally dumped. It also ends up contaminating drilling mud (a more solid waste from the process), storage tanks, and equipment.
“Radionuclides in these wastes are primarily radium-226, radium-228, and radon gas,” reportsthe Environmental Protection Agency. “The radon is released to the atmosphere, while the produced water and mud containing radium are placed in ponds or pits for evaporation, reuse, or recovery.”
The fact that drilling for oil or gas increases radiation is not news. Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry at Duke University told Bloomberg News that we’ve know that since the 1970s, but the pace and intensity of drilling now, combined with the huge amount of wastewater, is taking the issue to a new level of concern. “We are actually building up a legacy of radioactivity in hundreds of points where people have had leaks or spills around the country,” he said.
Vengosh was part of team of researchers that turned up some troubling findings in Pennsylvania, ground zero for hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale. Their study,published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology, took samples over a two-year period from Blacklick Creek just below the discharge from the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility, which accepted water from drilling operations. They found that radium levels of wastewater from fracking operations had been reduced in treatment by about 90 percent, but what was coming out of the plant still exceeded upstream levels by 200 times.
“Such elevated levels of radioactivity are above regulated levels and would normally be seen at licensed radioactive disposal facilities, according to the scientists at Duke University's Nicholas school of the environment in North Carolina,” reported Felicity Carus for the Guardian.
The biggest threat is the bioac ulation of radium. Small quan ies can build up in the environment, eventually posing a health hazard (especially if it ends up in food we eat).
It also means that even if you don’t have a drilling rig in your backyard or even your neighborhood, you may still face some risks. As Carus wrote:
From January to June 2013, the 4,197 unconventional gas wells in Pennsylvania reported 3.5m barrels of fluid waste and 10.7m barrels of "produced" fluid. Most of that waste is disposed of within Pennsylvania, but some of it is also went to other states, such as Ohio and New York despite its moratorium on shale gas exploration. In July, a treatment company in New York state pleaded guilty to falsifying more than 3,000 water tests.
The Duke study came just two years after the New York Times did an exhaustive search of thousands of government and industry do ents to try and assess how risky radioactive wastewater from fracking may be.
“The do ents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle,” Ian Urbina wrote for the Times.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/...age=1#bookmark
While BigOil pockets, will pocket $100Bs from fracking, Human-Americans pay for, suffer from fracking's externalities.
Will you tell water not to be so dense it's starting to tear up IH-37 as well.
I need to get my kayak down there in one piece.
I guess eventually there will be no need for water for all the cotton and milo maize I see on the way down to the coast... The growth of South Texas from all this is absolutely astounding. There is a new trucking station going up every week it seems.
Somebody might eventually make a lot of money if they can figure out how to recycle that water it seems.
Frackers should clean the water themselves, water taken out of the water cycle, and eat the costs.
Water issue is huge.
Waiting for the big blow up. I imagine manny will have work for some time to come.
won't happen. TX won't even shut down the rice farmers on the arid TX coast, never mind BigOil.
64 Groups From Across U.S. Demand Federal Limits on Air Pollution From Fracking Wells
“More than 150 million Americans now live near oil and gas wells or above shale areas where companies are looking to drill or engage in hydraulic fracturing, and EPA needs to set standards that restrict the hazardous air pollutants they put into the air,” said Earthjustice attorney Emma Cheuse, who filed the pe ion on behalf of the groups. “Oil and gas wells release chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, and respiratory disease, and EPA should protect our communities, especially our children, from exposure to these hazards.”
With fracking and other extraction methods encroaching onto urban, suburban and other populated areas, the groups say it is vitally important for the EPA to regulate the energy sector’s hazardous air pollution. The pe ion states that at least 100,000 tons per year of dangerous air pollution from oil and gas well sites—such as benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, methanol, naphthalene and more—are currently being released freely into the air. These pollutants have been linked to respiratory and neurological problems, birth defects and cancer.
http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/13/group...racking-wells/
Kock Blokked by Kock Bros/BigCarbon, ain't gonna happen. If any rules, Repugs will defund EPA and defund enforcement.
How Green Energy Won Out Over Fossil Fuels in a Red State
Texan wind power is set to take off in a major way. From 2013 to 2014, ERCOT estimates that wind capacity will increase by 33 percent. Wind-power potential is projected to jump another 25 percent from 2014 to 2015—a sharp uptick in installation that comes on the heels of a half decade of relatively slow growth. (From 2008 to 2013, installations averaged a 7 percent increase each year).
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It's also on track to command an outsized share of newly minted power potential in the Lone Star State. And wind is trouncing natural gas in early estimates of capacity set to come online over the course of the next decade.
Wind-power projects are poised to make up nearly 70 percent of new power capacity in the deregulated market, according to ERCOT. The grid operator projects that more than 8,600 megawatts of wind power—enough energy to keep the lights on for hundreds of households across Texas—will be up and running by 2024.
Natural gas won't fare nearly as well. About 3,580 megawatts of gas-fired power potential are slated to come online in the same interval. If that forecast holds true, gas would make up only 28 percent of fresh power potential in the state.
What's causing wind production to soar?
In a word: infrastructure. Texan wind had been plagued by a major problem in the past. The windiest parts of the sprawling state are hundreds of miles away from its largest population centers. And the options for sending electricity from areas with the best wind potential like West Texas and the northernmost part of the state—known as the Panhandle—to cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio have historically been limited.
In 2005, the Texas legislature approved a sprawling network of transmission lines designed to solve exactly this problem. After years of construction, the power lines—known as Compe ive Renewable Energy Zones—started shipping electrons across the state in December.
Developers say the power lines are key to unlocking the state's wind-power potential. "For the longest time there was nothing there," said Jim Swafford, the CEO of Scandia Wind Southwest. Scandia is one of several companies backing a large-scale wind-power project in the Texas Panhandle. Swafford says the power lines made it all possible. "I had people coming from all over the country who wanted to build. But they'd walk away every time, because before there was no way to get the wind from point A to point B," he said.
Statistics tell the same story. Eighty percent of the total wind capacity estimated to come online by the end of 2024 will originate from the spinning blades of wind turbines set to spring up in West Texas and the Panhandle.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/new-e...state-20140522
"well" of course they would screw a community to protect frackers
Railroad Commission Sides With Driller on Well Protest
The Railroad Commission on Thursday sided with Marathon Oil Company’s bid to dismiss a groundwater conservation district’s protest of its application to inject waste into part of South Texas’ Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. But the three-person commission did not address the driller’s broader argument that no groundwater district has standing to protest a disposal well application.
The Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation District, concerned about potential impacts on its water resources, had challenged Marathon’s plans to convert a well — that had been drawing brackish water for oil and gas production — into a resting place for drilling waste. Marathon asked the commission to dismiss the protest, citing the well’s location — it sits four miles outside the district’s boundaries — and arguing that no groundwater district should have standing to protest a disposal well, because such moves created regulatory uncertainty.
The commissioners voted unanimously to dismiss the protest, but only because the well sits outside of the district.
http://www.texastribune.org/plus/wat...h-on-disposal/
because the well sits outside of the district
because putting the well somewhere else woudl INCONVENIENCE BigCarbon
Energy Department Bombs : LNG Has No Climate Benefit For Decades, IF EVER*
An explosive new report from the U.S. Department of Energy makes clear that Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is likely a climate-destroying misallocation of resources.
That is, if one uses estimates for methane leakage based on actual observations.
This is the same conclusion I reached back in 2012, based on
- Emerging analyses of how even a relatively low leakage rate in the natural gas production and delivery system negate its climate benefit, and
- A 2009 EU report on how the energy-intensive liquefaction process and transportation further increase LNG emissions.
Again, natural gas is mostly methane, and some 86 times (to as much as 105 times) better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
One of the country’s leading experts on natural gas leaks told me, “a close reading of the DOE report in the context of the recent literature indicates that exporting natural gas from the U.S. as LNG is a very poor idea.”
So you may wonder why the Financial Times had this headline on its story: “US LNG exports could help countries curb emissions.”
To make LNG a climate winner, you’d have to assume levels of methane leakage that are a factor of 2 to 3 lower than what recent observations reveal. That is exactly what DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) does in its analysis, “Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Perspective on Exporting Liquefied Natural Gas from the United States.”
Here is the stunning (if confusing) chart from the DOE report:
FIGURE 6-9 depicts the life cycle GHG emissions for the U.S. LNG and Russian natural gas scenarios as a function of the methane leakage that occurs during extraction, processing, and transport on a 20-year basis. It also includes a reference line for the coal power scenario. The diamond-shaped data points represent the modeled leakage for each scenario and the circular data points represent the breakeven leakage at which the life cycle GHG emissions for natural gas power would equal those for the coal reference case.
Yes, despite multiple studies to the contrary, the DOE is asserting that the leakage rate is very low in the U.S. (but not in Russia, of course) — so low that U.S. LNG just happens to be better for Europe than its own coal:
“The high modeled leakage rate for the U.S. LNG scenarios (1.6 percent) is still less than the breakeven percentage for the European scenario (1.9 percent), but slightly higher than the breakeven for the Asian scenario (1.4 percent)…. As previously noted, the calculated breakeven points are the most conservative, so these results do not indicate that natural gas has a higher GHG than coal on a 20-year basis in all cases.”
The DOE is actually asserting that the absurdly low leakage rate of 1.6 percent is conservative! How conservative? Look at this table:
For DOE, 1.6 percent leakage is the highest leakage rate they considered!! And 1.4% is what they expect for shale gas.
In fact, leakage rates are almost certainly at least double that! Yes, the EPA has lowered its estimate to about 1.5 percent — based solely on industry-provided numbers. But multiple studies in the last two years based on actual observations have made clear the EPA was simply wrong.
Back in November, fifteen scientists from some of the leading ins utions in the world — including Harvard, NOAA and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — published a seminal observation-based study, “Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States.” The authors took the unusual step of explicitly criticizing the EPA: “The US EPA recently decreased its CH4 emission factors for fossil fuel extraction and processing by 25–30% (for 1990–2011), but we find that CH4 data from across North America instead indicate the need for a larger adjustment of the opposite sign.”
How much larger? The study found greenhouse gas emissions from “fossil fuel extraction and processing (i.e., oil and/or natural gas) are likely a factor of two or greater than cited in existing studies.” In particular, they concluded, “regional methane emissions due to fossil fuel extraction and processing could be 4.9 ± 2.6 times larger than in EDGAR, the most comprehensive global methane inventory.”
This suggests the methane leakage rate from natural gas production is in fact 3 percent or higher.
A comprehensive Stanford study from February suggested things might even be worse: “A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates. Leaks from the nation’s natural gas system are an important part of the problem.” Their analysis finds:
“… an excess percentage leakage of 1.8% to 5.4% of end use gas. Coupled with the current estimate of 1.8% leakage of end use gas consumed, this generates a high-end estimate of 7.1% gas leakage.”
Ouch.
After discussing the matter with the lead author, Stanford’s Adam Brandt, I wrote that given the risks to humanity from climate change, it seems conservative to take the middle of the range, 5.4%. That’s particularly conservative given that 3 separate studies by NOAA found leakage rates just from NG production of 4%, 17%, and 6-12%!
[In case you wondered if the Stanford study was too recent for NETL to include in its May 29 report, NETL released another report on natural gas emissions the same day that cites it several times.]
If one were to use 3 percent as the leakage rate, LNG-fueled power plants would be worse than coal from a climate perspective for decades. If you use 5.4 percent, then Figure 6.8 makes clear LNG-fueled power plants are worse than coal for a century!
Finally, the recent observation-based calculations of methane leakage are quite similar to that estimated in the much-maligned (but apparently correct) 2012 Cornell study led by Cornell’s Bob
Howarth. So I asked Howarth for comment on NETL’s report. He replied:
The NETL report seems determined to prove that LNG export from the US is desirable from a climate perspective, and the authors have torqued their analysis in several ways to reach this conclusion. A big omission is their failure to consider methane emissions from the LNG tankers and storage tanks: “boil off,” or the purposeful release of LNG that provides evaporative cooling to maintain the liquid status of the LNG. LNG tankers try to capture most of this boil off, but even small losses are highly significant and can make LNG a disastrous fuel from the standpoint of global warming. I find it remarkable that the NETL report does not even mention methane emissions from boil off.
Despite these shortcomings, a close reading of the NETL report in the context of the recent literature indicates that exporting natural gas from the US as LNG is a very poor idea.
For instance, their figure 6.9 shows that coal has a lower greenhouse gas footprint than exported LNG if the upstream methane emission rates are greater than 1.6% to 1.9%, when considered over an integrated 20-year time period following the methane emission, even when though they are ignoring the boil-off emissions. Because of risk of hitting tipping points in the climate system due to climatic warming from methane emissions over the cover few decades, this shorter time frame of analysis is critical. And current upstream methane emissions from shale and other unconventional natural gas are almost certainly greater than these break-even values of 1.6% to 1.9%, as shown by much recent literature summarized in my paper published last month (online here).
Precisely.
One final point: Contrary to the implication of NETL’s analysis, natural gas doesn’t just displace coal — it also displaces carbon-free sources of power such as renewable energy, nuclear power, and energy efficiency. A recent analysis finds that effect has been large enough recently to wipe out almost the entire climate benefit from increasing natural gas use in the U.S. utility sector if the leakage rate is only 1.2 percent.
BOTTOM LINE: Investing billions of dollars in new shale gas infrastructure for domestic use is, as we’ve seen, a bridge to nowhere — especially until we put in place both a CO2 price and regulations to minimize methane leakage. The extra emissions from LNG completely eliminate whatever benefit there might be of building billion-dollar export terminals and other LNG infrastructure, which in any case will last many decades, long after we need a nearly carbon-free electric grid.
At best, investing billions in LNG infrastructure is a waste of enormous resources better utilized for deploying truly low-carbon energy. At worst, it helps accelerate the world past the 2°C (3.6°F) warming threshold into Terra incognita — a planet of amplifying feedbacks and multiple simultaneous catastrophic impacts.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/04/3443211/energy-department-lng-no-climate-benefits/
so, what to you BigCarbon deep breathers have to expel about the DoE report?
I expect Barry will bring the EPA hammer down on fracking/gas leakage anyway. Could be part of the EPA authority over greenhouse gases, of which methane certainly is.
Up To A Million Abandoned Wells In Pennsylvania Spew Heat-Trapping Methane
Another week, another bombs study supporting the conclusion that natural gas has no net climate benefit in any timescale that matters to humanity.
This time it’s a Princeton thesis, which finds “Methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas [AOG] wells appear to be a significant source of methane emissions to the atmosphere.”
Natural gas is mostly methane, (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 timesas much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. So even small leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system can have a large climate impact — enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas. Study after study, however, finds that the leaks are anything but small.
The research involved “first-of-a-kind direct measurements of methane fluxes” from 19 AOG wells in Pennsylvania. Doctoral candidate Mary Kang found methane leaks in every single one of the wells — even the ones that were supposedly plugged — and 3 of them were “super-emitters.”
Why do leaky abandoned wells matter? Because there are so damn many of them:
“With currently available data, we estimate that there are between 280,000 and 970,000 AOG wells in Pennsylvania, which translates to 4 to 13% of total estimated state-wide anthropogenic methane emissions in Pennsylvania.”
And there are hundreds of thousands if not millions more around the country. No doubt this is one more reason a major 2014 Stanford study concluded, “A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates.” Emissions are so high that natural gas power plants are unlikely to be better than coal plants from a climate perspective for many decades.
Cornell fracking expert Prof. Anthony Ingraffea — who coauthored a key study warning natural gas leakage was higher than official estimates — told Climate Central that Kang’s study “supports what I and many others have been saying for many years, and that’s this: There is methane leaking from oil and gas wells. Period.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...-spew-methane/
Pennsylvania Instructed Its Employees To Ignore Residents Sickened By Drilling
The Pennsylvania Department of Health instructed its employees never to talk to residents who complained of negative health effects from fracking, StateImpact Pennsylvania reportedThursday. Two retired employees of the department detailed restrictions on attending meetings, lists of topics they could not discuss, and a general departmental hostility to the idea of health problems linked to shale gas drilling. The state’s governor, Tom Corbett, declined to comment for StateImpact Pennsylvania’s story.
Pennsylvania has had more than 6,000 hydraulic fracturing wells drilled within the last six years, and zero state studies on their health impacts. In Pennsylvania, and near fracking operations across the country, people have won settlements from fossil fuel companies after being sickened. In many cases the drilling company imposes a gag order to prevent sickened people from spreading the word about what caused their illness and building the case that fracking has negative health effects.
In 2011 Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission recommended a registry to collect health data from people living near fracking operations. Three years later, it still doesn’t exist. Across the country in Colorado, legislators tried to commission a study on the health effects of living near drilling, but fossil fuel advocates ensured its demise. Doctorswant more data on health effects of fracking, but the interests of the drillers usually win out.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s hostility to examining the health effects of fracking is just the latest development in a series of policies and laws that make it easier to make money from fracking — at the expense of public health. For instance, a Pennsylvania law makes it illegal for doctors to tell their patients which fracking chemicals are poisoning them, to protect the secret blends they inject into the earth. Drillers like it because they assert it helps them compete against one another. But it also makes it very difficult for residents to build the case for the health effects of a particular chemical, or even the health effects of fracking generally.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...ck-gag-health/
Demonic!
Can you picture the bought-off politicos crafting this scam?
Four Of 10 Fracked Wells In Pennsylvania Are Projected To Fail, Spewing Methane Into Air And Water
A major new study finds that, as suspected, it is new, unconventional gas wells that are far more likely to leak heat-trapping — and tap-water igniting — methane than older, conventional wells.
After examining the publicly available compliance records of more than 41,000 wells in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Cornell-led researchers have dropped this bombs :
About 40 percent of the oil and gas wells in parts of the Marcellus shale region will probably be leaking methane into the groundwater or into the atmosphere…. This study shows up to a 2.7-fold higher risk for unconventional wells — relative to conventional wells — drilled since 2009.
Study after study has found consistently higher methane leakage rates from natural gas production and distribution than reported by either the industry or EPA (which uses industry self-reported data).
The key point is that natural gas is mostly methane, (CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period. So the leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system that have now been observed are enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas for many, many decades.
Writing this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain:
“These results, particularly in light of numerous contamination complaints and explosions nationally in areas with high concentrations of unconventional oil and gas development and the increased awareness of the role of methane in … climate change, should be cause for concern.”
This study comes just two weeks after Princeton research found “Methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas [AOG] wells appear to be a significant source of methane emissions to the atmosphere.” That research found up to 970,000 AOG wells in Pennsylvania!
There seems little doubt that fracked wells — those that are still producing and those that are abandoned — leak methane into the water and air creating serious health and climate problems. It is time for the industry to move from denial to action.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...wells-methane/
Thanks, BigOil!
So chances are that a newly fracked well will not fail. Thanks!
Red Queen
drillers drill, walk away, disappear, fracking wells deplete rapidly (compared to traditinal wells), aka Red Queen (running faster just to stay in one place), abandoned, fails, leaks.
Thanks, BigOil!
Don't you agree that 40% failure rate is way better than 60%? Seems like things are headed the right way.
Chevron Admits The Truth: Oil Shale Will Use Huge Amounts Of Western Water
Rob Harris, who led the Western Resource Advocates case against Chevron, said in a prepared statement:
Chevron is the first company in recent memory to admit what Western Resource Advocates, the BLM, the GAO and others have been saying – oil shale development would be a water game-changer in our water strained region.
Time-and-again, companies have downplayed their water demands, yet this new evidence shows that large-scale development would compromise the Colorado River Basin, an overtaxed river system.
The cat is out of the bag, and it is time for other companies to follow Chevron’s lead and disclose their full water demands.
Communities, state agencies, and concerned citizens in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming need to have the facts in hand as they plan for the future in our water-scarce region.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...l-shale-water/
disaster capitalism: (help) create the disaster then profit from it
Right-Wingers Advised to Invest in Water as Fracking in Drought Areas Prompts Activism
As a historic drought grips the U.S. southwest, towns in Texas and California are taking action to make sure precious fresh water is not wasted and spoiled through fracking.
At the same time, some investment advisors are urging right-wingers at the annual libertarian "Freedom Fest" to view drought and skyrocketing water prices as a major investment opportunity.
“Hurricanes, Tornados and Earthquakes: Volatility as an Asset Class”
While activists push to protect precious water resources during the extended drought, others are looking to profit from the crisis.
Participants in this month's Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, an annual libertarian conference, were advised to capitalize on water shortages due to fracking by David Norcom of NorCap Advisors, a Dallas-based investment management firm specializing in energy-related stocks.
"Now, let's have fun," Norcom told the audience near the end of his presentation, which was led “Hurricanes, Tornados and Earthquakes: Volatility as an Asset Class.”
"This is the curve ball I wanted to throw at you. How many millions of gallons of water do you think it takes to frack one well?"
Norcom said that the total amount of clean water that could be spent on a single fracking well over its use is 10 million gallons, Norcom told the audience, "Those of you in California know how bad it's getting there, but you need to have a portfolio of water stocks in your account. If you had bought water stocks at the beginning of this year, they're up without dividends between fifteen and thirty percent."
The cost of water to Americans across the Southwest has risen dramatically since 2000, increasing more than sixty percent in cities like Phoenix, El Paso, and Los Angeles, and over one hundred percent in San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Las Vegas, according to a report by USA Today.
Some see this crisis in one of the essential needs for human life as an opportunity for profit.
"I will substantially argue to you that the water resource problem that we have in this country is very, very likely to continue, part of it being sucked up by the drillers over here," Norcom said.
From his perspective, that means water will have "a great place in a portfolio" of investments.
Whatever value fracking may have for speculators, its costs to those living near drill sites are serious. Fracking has been implicated in the record seven earthquakes that hit Oklahoma in just two days over the past weekend. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, which is investigating possible links between fracking and the quakes, Oklahoma's rate of earthquakes has increased by fifty percent since October 2013.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/25004...ompts-activism
CA Halts Injection of Fracking Waste, Warning it May Be Contaminating Aquifers
California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state's drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers there.
Now, according to the cease and desist orders issued by the state, it appears that at least seven injection wells are likely pumping waste into fresh water aquifers protected by the law, and not other aquifers sacrificed by the state long ago.
A 2012 ProPublica investigation of more than 700,000 injection wells across the country found that wells were often poorly regulated and experienced high rates of failure, outcomes that were likely polluting underground water supplies that are supposed to be protected by federal law.
That investigation also disclosed a little-known program overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that exempted more than 1,000 other drinking water aquifers from any sort of pollution protection at all, many of them in California.
http://www.propublica.org/article/ca-halts-injection-fracking-waste-warning-may-be-contaminating-aquifers?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campai gn=dailynewsletter
stupid, left coast hippies. What's wrong with drinking fracking waste water anyway?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-18-2014 at 01:09 PM.
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