Earthquakes, water contamination, and
air pollution: these are some of the dangerous and environmentally devastating
side effects of fracking, also known as, hydraulic fracturing. Fracking has
been implemented at the Fayetteville Shale, which stretches across Arkansas, to
access natural gas buried deep below the surface of the earth. Fracking
enthusiasts tout the economic benefits of this method of tapping our natural
resources and are quick to dispute any argument from environmentalists.
However, a close examination of the facts proves that Arkansans stands to lose
more than they will gain from fracking. Fracking does not only waste water, but
contaminates the water supply. Fracking pollutes the air by means of methane
emissions, use of fossil fuels, and methods that release toxic gases into the
air. Fracking has been linked to increased seismic activity. The emotionally
charged media attention that fracking has received has, in fact, detracted from
the need for this practice to be banned. Fracking, the most pressing
environmental issue in Arkansas, is destroying air and water in the Natural
State.
The ProPublica article, What is Hydraulic Fracturing, reports
that “nine out of ten gas wells in the United States” use fracking. Given such
severe side effects, why are there so many fracking wells? With hydraulic fracking,
gas companies such as Halliburton can access gas that was previously considered
too deep to be profitable. Now that these companies can reach these gases,
there has been a gas boom throughout the United States. Arkansans have been
quick to jump at the economic bandwagon. Research by Kathy Deck, the director
of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas,
concludes that the natural gas industry generated $18.5 billion in total
economic activity between 2008 and 2011. Landowners all across the state have
welcomed gas companies into their backyards. But the sums these landowners
receive today may soon seem too little for the permanent damage that is being
done.
Unfortunately, it is hard to find
valid evidence of the dangers of hydraulic fracking because journalists often
write emotional articles about fracking out of bias without checking the facts.
Misguided criticisms of hydraulic fracturing give “pro-fracking” companies and
politicians a useful weapon. They can easily disprove many critics, thus
distracting attention from the real dangers of hydraulic fracturing. An example
of this is the “myth” that fracking causes earthquakes. The process of
hydraulic fracturing does not cause seismic activity. Rather, earthquakes are
often activated by the injection of wastewater from fracking into disposal wells.
Since many critics of fracking do not take the time to understand the
difference, their claims are easily proven false. The supporters of fracking
need not bother to say that earthquakes can be caused by byproducts of
fracking. They can simply, and validly, state that fracking does not cause
earthquakes.
Another example is found in editor
Rob Port’s article “Video: Man claims to be able to tap water on fire.” Port
claims that in the anti-fracking movies, Gasland
and its sequel Gasland 2, there are
scenes in which people light water on fire to show how harmful fracking can be
to water quality. However, the scene in the first movie could not be connected
with hydraulic fracturing because flammable water had been observed in that
area long before fracking was even possible. Also, the scene in the second
movie was proven to be a hoax. These inaccurate scenes undermine the valid parts
of the movies. Even if fracking cannot be proven to make water flammable, it is
still very destructive to the environment.
Fracking wastes water. With
fracking, anywhere between 1,000,000 and 8,000,000 gallons of water are mixed
with sand and chemicals and shot into the ground in order to create fissures in
shale formations more than a thousand feet below . Approximately 40 percent of
this water is either reused in a gas well, or trucked away and injected into
sandstone disposal wells. The water that is not recycled can only be buried
because it is not biodegradable. The remaining 60 percent of the water is lost
in the well. Regardless of where the water ends up, it is effectively wasted.
It is too complicated and expensive to completely purify water used in fracking
because of all the chemicals. Therefore, the water can never be safe to replace
in streams. Up to 8,000,000 gallons of water, therefore, is taken out of the
water cycle. Environmentalist Roger Drouin argues that this may be one of the
causes for droughts in Arkansas and Texas during the past few years.
Another way that hydraulic
fracturing ruins Arkansas’s water supply is by pollution. Even though evidence
points against water becoming flammable due to fracking, and water radiation
has proven to not be as harmful as some critics propose, fracking,
nevertheless, does contaminate water. A water quality study in Pennsylvania
shows that wells in close proximity to fracking cites can have impressively
increased amounts of methane dissolved in the water. As Sid Perkins, writer for
Science News, Stars and Stripes, and the Columbia Missourian, reveals, “wells
located more than 1 kilometer from fracking operations averaged about 1.1
milligrams of dissolved methane per liter. But in water taken from 26 wells
within 1 km of one or more fracking operations, methane concentrations averaged
19.2 [milligrams of dissolved methane per liter]”.
Air pollution is also a great
concern in hydraulic fracturing operations. On one hand, fracking provides
alternatives for harmful fossil fuels, thus reducing carbon emissions.
“Carbon-dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped to their lowest
level in 20 years,” says fracking supporter and former director of the
Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, Bjorn Lomborg. But this does
not necessarily mean that fracking helps the environment. Scientists at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth Systems Research
Laboratory in Denver claim that natural gases such as methane pollute the air
near gas wells. NOAA associate scientist Gabrielle Petron explains that the
main way that gases are released into the air is “leaking from the
infrastructure”. In other words, methane escapes during drilling. In 2013,
energy industry analyst, Andrew Nikiforuk observed that five approximately six
percent of new gas wells leaked. Six percent sounds like a relatively small
number, but consider that in 2013 the Marcellus Shale operation planned to
construct 150,000 to 200,000 new wells. 10,000 leaky wells could be in
operation in one year. Jeff Tollefson, international journalist for Nature,
warns about methane pollution in the air claiming, “There is hard evidence that
the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it
comes to climate change”. Tollefson ominously explains, “Methane is some 25
times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere”.
Thus, any environmental gain from the drop in carbon emissions is quickly being
destroyed by methane gases released during fracking.
Another reason why fracking
pollutes the air is that hydraulic fracturing depends on fossil fuels to
operate. For instance, in order for the water to be transported to the drilling
site, it must be carried in approximately two hundred trucks. Obviously, each
truck uses lots of diesel to carry such a heavy load. “About 22.38 pounds of
CO2 are produced by burning a gallon of diesel fuel,” says the U.S. Energy
Information Analysis. If each truck used ten gallons of diesel, then about 45,000
pounds of CO2 would be produced per well. That in time creates a large carbon
footprint.
The methods used in fracking are
very harmful to air quality as well. To clean and maintain the wells, the gas
has to be released. Venting is one of the greatest problems with fracking. The
process of venting the gases releases gasses such as; methane, ethane, propane,
butane, and pentanes as well as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes and
hexanes, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide. Another technique used when drilling
for gas is flaring, burning of dangerous or useless gases. This also
contaminates the air by releasing a variety of harmful gases. However, flaring
is not nearly as bad as venting. Though methane is a greenhouse gas, The Ohio
Environmental Protection Agency claims that it is “a clean-burning fuel”.
Therefore, it would be better to use flaring as a substitute to venting
whenever possible. It is clear, however, that air quality suffers because of
fracking.
Hydraulic fracturing has boosted
the economy in Arkansas. But at what cost? Injection of wastewater from
fracking operations into storage wells has been known to reawaken, so to speak,
dead fault lines. According to attorney Stuart H. Smith, this phenomenon has
been proven to be the catalyst for thousands of earthquakes throughout Arkansas.
Fracking is extremely damaging to the environment; in fact, it is probably the
largest threat to the environment in Arkansas. It wastes massive amounts of
water by lacing water with toxic chemicals and contaminating groundwater
supplies. To transport water to the drilling sites, trucks must carry it. These
trucks burn great amounts of diesel, thereby releasing carbon dioxide gas into
the atmosphere. The gas wells often leak methane and other greenhouse gases.
Hydraulic fracturing techniques such as venting and flaring release even more
harmful gases into the air. To prevent this devastation, hydraulic fracturing
should be banned. Even though it is extremely lucrative, it will not bring in
enough money to purchase a new planet.
Sources
Air Pollution and Fracking.
Catskill Mountainkeeper, 2014. Fracking: Air Pollution. Web. 23 Apr. 2014
Dong, Linda. “Dangers of Fracking.”
www.Gaslandthemovie.com. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Drouin, Roger. “As Fracking Booms,
Growing Concerns About Wastewater.” Yale Environment 360. Yale U, 18 Feb. 2014.
Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Lomborg, Bjørn. “A Fracking Good
Story.” Slate 15 Sep. 2012, Project Syndicate. Web. 23 Apr. 2014
Nikiforuk, Andrew. “Shale Gas: How
Often Do Fracked Wells Leak?.” The Tyee 9 Jan. 2013, News. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Ohio, Environmental Protection
Agency. Understanding the Basics of Gas Flaring. Columbus: Ohio Environmental
Protection Agency, May 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. Perkins, Sid. “Methane threat
to drinking water.” Nature 9 May 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Port, Rob. “Video: Man Claiming To
Be In North Dakota Lights Tap Water On Fire.” Sayanythingblog 30 Dec. 2013.
Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Smith, Stuart H. “Earthquake
Outbreak: Arkansas Bans Fracking Operations Inside Thousand-Square-Mile Area.”
The Stuart Smith Blog. Functional Interactive, 10 Aug. 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Songer, Joe. “Can Natural Gas Bring
Back U.S. Factory Jobs?.” National Geographic 31 Jan. 2014, Daily News. Web. 27
Apr. 2014. 8
Tollefson, Jeff. “Air sampling
reveals high emissions from gas field.” Nature 7 Feb. 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
What Is Hydraulic Fracturing?.
ProPublica, 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
