Research Paper

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

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Lomborg, Bjørn. “A Fracking Good Story.” Slate 15 Sep. 2012, Project Syndicate. Web. 23 Apr. 2014

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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.

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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.