Black, Foamy Water Worries Fracking Neighbors

[Meg]

Black, Foamy Water Worries Fracking Neighbors | USA | English

Pennsylvania residents blame illness on natural gas extraction

McIntyre never worried about her water before. When she looks out on the wooded rural landscape from her front porch she talks about her well water liked a cherished lost friend. “We never ran out of water. We never had a problem with our water. It was cold coming out of the spigot just as if you went to a regular spring and got it. It was gorgeous water.”

Then one night McIntyre got sick. She had a bad headache and vomited. When her husband Fred went for a glass of water and turned on the spigot, it spewed out smelly foam.
“He hollers back, I think I know why we’re sick," she remembers. "There’s something wrong with our water.”

The McIntyres stopped drinking the well water.
Neighbor Kim McEvoy says her water turned black and she got sick too. “My fingernails were growing downward. My hair was falling out. I’d get dizzy.”

Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Shale Campaign director with the Pennsylvania Chapter of Clean Water Action, advises a closer look at the industry. He says in 2010 alone, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection cited gas drillers 1,200 times for operational violations.

“Some of those are generic administrative stuff like paperwork. But the other half are for serious things that can lead to environmental problems. We’re talking about improper construction of frack pits. We’re talking about improper disposal of wastewater. We’re talking about improper cement casing jobs which are designed to protect our groundwater aquifers. We’re talking about venting of hazardous gas. Now those things to me signify that we have some serious issues going on.”

All this worries University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health professor Bernard Goldstein. He says fracking has already been linked to higher levels of bromide in the water, which is highly toxic.
He believes fracking might also release more radioactivity and arsenic into groundwater. He advocates for baseline studies before drilling and for taking a more comprehensive look at the Marcellus Shale activity.

[Robert]

"Fracking" is not safe at all; in addition to the potential to release radioactive elements and arsenic into groundwater and water tables, it can also cause earthquakes.

The USGS reports here:

Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the use of reservoirs for water supplies. Most of these earthquakes were minor. The largest and most widely known resulted from fluid injection at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. In 1967, an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 followed a series of smaller earthquakes. Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established. (Nicholson, Craig and Wesson, R.L., 1990, Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection--A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1951, 74 p.)

FAQs - Earthquakes, Faults, Plate Tectonics, Earth Structure

[froggy]

God designed an ingenious filter called the earth to strain out contaminants from rainwater runoff as it percolates through the soil--giving us a constant supply of fresh water. Bypassing that filter and injecting waste water etc. into our water table is suicide--especially as the availability of fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce worldwide. If our administration would only open up our nation to conventional drilling--the fracking method wouldn't be needed!

[SonSeeker]

It's been reported there was a 4.0 earthquake in Ohio initially being blamed on fracking. Me thinks this practice should be stopped.

[Momof3angels]

Good Lord. If the Lord doesn't return soon, we're going to end up poisoning ourselves to death.

[David T. McKee]

Deep underground are the remains of the "Wells of the Deep" whence water once flowed and bubbled up onto the earth - through broken up, they are still there... And fracking breaks them up even more. Basically we are turning solid earth into a "plastic" that will have flow properties. Not good if your neighborhood skyscraper is sitting on top of that...

-DTM

[billym]

I will let you know what impact it has. I live in north Louisiana, they drilled a deep well (14 thousand feet) 600 feet from my house. Unfortunately it is not in my section and I will not get any money for it. A lot of people are making a lot of money but not me. Usually if you have one of these wells in your section, they pay you 800-1000 a month. That's one reason so many people are for it. I have not really seen any problems so far other than after they drilled the well, muddy water came up thru my well but it turned clear again and appears to be fine. I guess I need to have the water tested.