Did Fracking in Ohio Contribute to the Recent EarthQuake?

CTTV: This recent article by AP’s Julie Carr Smyth advances the discussion about the Truth About Fracking.

 

OhioFracking: Earthquakes Could Incite Policy Shift

BY JULIE CARR SMYTH   01/ 3/12 07:12 PM ET   AP

COLUMBUS,Ohio– In Ohio, geographically and politically positioned to become a leading importer of wastewater from gas drilling, environmentalists and lawmakers opposed to the technique known as fracking are seizing on a series of small earthquakes as a signal to proceed with caution.

Earthquakes caused by the injection of wastewater that’s a byproduct of high-pressure hydraulic fracture drilling, aren’t new. Yet earthquakes have a special ability to grab public attention.

That’s especially true after Saturday’s quake nearYoungstown, at magnitude 4.0 strong enough to be felt across hundreds of square miles. Gov. John Kasich, a drilling proponent, has shut down the wastewater well on which the quake has been blamed, along with others in the area, as the seismic activity is reviewed.

“Drilling’s very important for our economy and to help us progress as a state, but every single person in theMahoningValleyfelt this earthquake,” said state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, a Youngstown Democrat who on Tuesday called for a public hearing.

“I wouldn’t deem it as an emergency, but when you live in a place that you’re not used to earthquakes and you have 11 earthquakes, you’re concerned,” he said. “We need to give them some sort of confidence or security that this is going to be OK.”

Fracking involves blasting millions of gallons of water, laced with chemicals and sand, deep into the ground to unlock vast reserves of natural gas, a boon both for energy companies and a public hungry for cheap sources of fuel.

That process, though, leaves behind toxic wastewater that must be expensively treated or else pumped deep into the earth. The wastewater is extremely briny and can contain toxic chemicals from the drilling process – and sometimes radioactivity from deep underground.

The practice of dumping underground has been controversial in light of scant research done on potential environmental dangers, highlighted by reports of contamination of aquifers in some communities inPennsylvaniaandWyoming. Some states are reconsidering it.

A coalition of environmental groups is preparing a protest for next week’s return of the Ohio Legislature. Activists opposed to increased oil and gas drilling activity across Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia – where the Utica and Marcellus Shale formations are believed to hold vast quantities of gas – see trouble with the Ohio injection well. It took wastewater from fracking, as well as other forms of drilling.

 ”What other business or industry isn’t held accountable for its full cradle-to-grave processes?” said Deborah Nardone, director of the Sierra Club’s Natural Gas Campaign. “They need to be responsible for the waste stream that they’ve created.”

Ohio’s closure of the well will have little to no impact on drilling, said Travis Windle, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group based in Pennsylvania. Four of the five wells thatOhioshut down were not operational, Windle said.

This medicine reduces stress and prepares the mind for levitra order the big game. When your conversation has lot of reasons for dissatisfaction and conflicts, it may be an indication cialis generika that something has gone wrong to their relationship. The essential compound part of viagra uk is Sildenafil Citrate, which is known to be a vaso dilator. Jeff and Leena viagra cheap canada got married 30 years ago, but due to the impotency problem in Sam they were not able to have a baby. Pennsylvania’s drillers have turned in recent months to deep-well injection of millions of gallons of wastewater because of a voluntary state moratorium last year on dumping of waste at treatment plants where the partially treated liquids are discharged into rivers and streams that drinking water is taken from.

Most drillers inPennsylvaniaaccepted a voluntary state moratorium last year on dumping of waste at treatment plants, which had discharged the partially treated mix into rivers and streams that supply drinking water. Many drillers now recycle the drilling fluid, and some turned to deep-well injection of millions of gallons of the wastewater.

Pennsylvaniahas six deep injection wells that currently accept fracking fluid, said Amanda Witman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection. But some of its waste is trucked intoOhio, where the geology allows for more injection wells.

Ohio’s willingness to accept the fracking leftovers amid a drilling boom in states to the east, south and west worries some residents and environmental advocates who say the science isn’t proven – and point to the earthquakes as evidence.

The Ohio Petroleum Council, an industry group, says any public anxiety is misplaced.

“Injection wells have worked well to protect public safety for decades, and a situation like the one in question nearYoungstownis very rare,” executive director Terry Fleming said in a statement.

Kasich told reporters over the weekend that he doesn’t believe the energy industry should be blamed for issues arising from disposal of their byproducts. That would be like blaming the auto industry for improper disposal of old tires, the first-term Republican said.

Scientists have known for decades that drilling or injecting water into areas where a fault exists can cause earthquakes, said Paul Hsieh, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey inMenlo Park,Calif.

“That’s widely documented and accepted within the science community,” he said. “It’s seen all over the world.”

Injection wells have also been suspected in quakes inArkansas,ColoradoandOklahoma.

Oklahoma’s sharpest earthquake on record, of magnitude 5.8 on Nov. 5, was centered on a county that has 181 such wells, according to Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees oil and gas production in the state and intrastate transportation pipelines.

However, a study by the Oklahoma Geological Survey released earlier in 2011 found that most of the state’s seismic activity didn’t appear to be tied to the wells, although more investigation was needed.

“It’s a real mystery,” seismologist Austin Holland said in November. “At this point, there’s no reason to think that the earthquakes would be caused by anything other than natural” shifts in the Earth’s crust.

New Yorkstate’s Department of Environmental Conservation is wrapping up an environmental impact review and proposed new regulations for gas drilling. Permitting for new gas wells has been on hold since the review began almost four years ago.

Mark Ruffalo Speaks His Truth About Fracking

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The Truth About Fracking

CleanTekTV Commentary / The Truth About Fracking

By Sidney Wildesmith: CEO and Founder / CleanTekTV

December 1 , 2011

Maybe you’ve got the same problem I do with the Internet. When I do a Google search on background on an issue, I am able to find very persuasive arguments on both or even many perspectives. Of course that is also the power of the Internet, giving unfiltered voice to diverse opinions and views. But as a mere mortal decision maker seeking bankable info, I’d need a month-long sabbatical just to get caught up and keep up with my current quest.

To make my point. . . fracking, the process used to unleash the underground resources for natural gas and geothermal, is a hotly debated issue and of particular interest to me, as a player in the world of sustainability.

Those in the extractive industry make the case that natural gas development brings hundreds of thousands of jobs and a cleaner and abundant source of energy to our large-scale power plants. That is true and a powerful message with broad appeal.

On the other hand, there are powerful voices with deep concerns about fracking’s role in earthquakes. The recent 5.6 Oklahoma quake is a case in point. There are lots of questions being raised about fracking’s role in this sudden unexpected aberration of seismic proportions in the heartland, a land being plotted, probed and punctured with thousands of fracking wells, many within screaming distance of the epicenter of the quake.

Add to that the horror stories of fire-breathing faucets in kitchen sinks and foul-tasting well water that make sensational stories on the evening news and fodder for YouTube success. But, according to myriads of reports and stories in smalltown papers, not to mention mainstream media, many of these incidents are true as well.

You can verify this yourself by doing your own Google searches, if you have the time.

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The truth is that fracking, by its very nature, generates plenty of measurable seismic events, albeit thousands of very small ones associated with the high-pressure cracking of our foundational rocks thousands of feet below the surface. The extractive industries readily admit this to be the obvious, but assuredly inconsequential, byproduct of their processes. And they state boldly that such could never contribute to a seismic event of any consequence. That is true as long as you brush off stories from Blackpoll, England, San Antonio and Dallas/Ft. Worth. There’s hours of reading waiting to be had.

And then there’s the saturation ad campaigns promoting natural gas as the new energy god who has come in time to save us. Watch TV these days and you’re bombarded by ads touting the safety of natural gas . . . because the industry drills deep below water tables. True again, as long as you ignore the settlements to homeowners whose wells and water tables are contaminated, the result of well casings which were designed to isolate the drilling from water tables, failed and fouled drinking water with the hydrochloric acid, glycerol and the other 400 plus undisclosable chemicals, many of which are highly toxic, that make up the slurry that is pumped under high pressure into these underground shale deposits to cause the fractures.

The truth about fracking is that we need to tell the truth and discuss whether the dangers are worth the payoff, not just to the industry, but to us all. Creating hundreds of thousands of jobs is a giant incentive. Providing a cleaner alternative to coal is in fact a demonstrable factor what drives the natural gas campaign as it does clean technologies such as wind and solar, the good clean energy sources.

The truth also must contain the realization that we really cannot know the degree to which fracking can be responsible for a significant seismic event, until it happens. But rest assured that if and when a US town or city lies in shambles with people trapped and dead with broken fingers pointing at a nearby fracking field, that town and those people will have made the ultimate sacrifice in this war for energy independence. And that is the truth that must be told, that fracking could cause a disaster, sometime in our future. Let us always remember the assurances of the impossibility of a major catastrophe from offshore deep-water oil production. In the case of the BP disaster, thank god only billions of sea creatures were destroyed. A fracking disaster in New York, New Jersey, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming and perhaps recently in Oklahoma, where seismic activity has grown from 2-6 earthquakes per year between 1972 and 2008, suddenly jumping to 50 in 2009 and over a hundred in 2010, seems a reasonable bet. Yes, people and communities now live with yet another fear that forces beyond their control could trash their hopes and dreams of security.

As a fairly advanced culture, we have a long record of tolerating death, injury and disaster as acceptable to a point in our society. We justify 75,000 deaths a year so that we can drink alcohol. We tolerate 443,000 deaths per year as a direct result of smoking. And it would be hard to make the case that these habits serve the betterment of our society. And yet we factor them in. The truth may feel more like “how many people would likely die from a serious fracking-related earthquake that drops homes and buildings on innocent people.” And the truth needs to be told that those who die in these disasters can be you, your father, sister or friend. That’s bringing it home. It’s easy for me to accept the collateral damage of this quest for better energy, until I’m lying trapped under rubble for two days.

There are dangers and downsides, some of which indeed could be deadly from fracking, as there are as a direct result of the auto industry, workplace injuries and fighting to maintain our nation’s security.

The truth about fracking will be revealed in time. Now is the time to have a very serious discussion about its appropriate advance into our backyards and outback.

The truth is, we need the truth. That’s the truth.