Fuel vs. Drinking Water

Fuel vs. Drinking Water
In a temperate climate in the Midwest, water is easy to take for granted. It falls from the sky routinely, conglomerates in huge puddles we call lakes, and spurts from a faucet after a slight turn of the knob. It is essential for the existence of every living organism on Earth, but yet its importance is still easily overlooked. Throughout the last couple centuries, we have been determined to degrade, dilute, and contaminate water in a variety of ways. To name a few, we have negatively affected our water quality in ways such as indoor plumbing, runoff from poorly managed land surfaces, and most recently, hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing is a relatively new method for extracting natural gas from hard to reach areas, specifically gas that is “locked up” within shale deposits. It involves drilling a well and injecting millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and certain chemicals under pressure to fracture the shale and allows the released natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. In today’s world, energy is king. And it is no surprise that even though this process takes a lot of resources and effort, there is still big money to be made by companies who are drilling for the increasingly scarce natural gas. The problem with this process is beginning to become apparent in fracking locations throughout the United States. Documentaries are illustrating faucets that literally act like methane torches near fracking locations along with studies from researches that are indicating contaminates such as methane and other chemicals associated with fracking are being found in groundwater. At what point did fuel become more important than drinking water, the compound that is indefinitely essential for existence on this planet?

There are many problems with the fracking process in general and the fact that there is little to no regulation further magnifies those problems. In 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed by congress to protect drinking water from both natural and man-made contaminates. But, under what is commonly referred to as the Halliburton loophole, the Bush/Cheney energy bill exempted natural gas drilling from the safe water act. Essentially, the Environmental Protection Agency has no regulation over the fracking companies and they are not required to disclose the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Natural gas wells are typically deeper than the depth of drinking water aquifers, and typical problems involve well casings leaking natural gas and fracking fluid into water wells. Combine that with the fact that 1-8 million gallons of water are used to frack a well and a well may be fracked up to 18 times. In a world where water is on its way to becoming one of the most valuable and scarce resources, is it smart to continually and more destructively degrade and contaminate our water quality? This fall we were informed on our energy bill that natural gas prices would be slightly cheaper for this winter, and I was wondering if that was because of the intense fracking going on throughout the country. It is nice to pay less for services, but that is exactly the problem. We do get what we pay for and cheap natural gas will likely result in expensive water.
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking
http://www.theoec.org/Fracking.htm?gclid=CO-rk4WIm6wCFYHe4AodQSZM1w