The natural gas boom is the "gold rush" of the 21st century.
Although natural gas has been promoted as "clean energy," the business of extracting it carries serious environmental hazards that threaten ecosystems and public health. New deep-drilling technologies have caused a rapid expansion in the natural gas industry reminiscent of the California Gold Rush of the 1850s and the Texas Oil Boom of the 1920s and '30s.
Hydraulic Fracturing
The Marcellus Shale covers parts of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.
Hydraulic fracturing, commonly called "fracking," refers to a process of extracting natural gas from rock. Great volumes of water, salt and a mixture of toxic chemicals are injected deep underground to break apart rock formations. Where these vast amounts of water will come from, the dangers related to the exposure to toxic chemicals and what happens to the tainted, toxic-laden wastewater, are all pressing environmental concerns. Fracking contaminates the groundwater with radioactive chemicals such as arsenic, benzene and radium-226 (a derivative of uranium). The New York Department of Environmental Conservation investigated fracking that was being done in the Marcellus Shale, a mile-deep rock formation that stretches from Ohio to New York. It found radium-226 levels in the wastewater there that were 267 times the level considered safe and thousands of times the level that is safe for human consumption.
Horizontal Drilling
Horizontal drilling releases toxic chemicals and flammable gasses into the water supply.
Since 2002, a natural gas drilling boom has taken place thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling. Horizontal drilling drills down and then turns to runs parallel to the zone containing the natural gas. These technologies have allowed drilling stations to be located in urban environments and within housing subdivisions. Natural gas companies lease a small portion of land from property owners and offer them royalties on the gas that is extracted. While the property owner gets an economic benefit, his neighbors have to deal with the mess. In some areas where this type of drilling has occurred, flammable chemicals flow out of household faucets, to the extent that the water can catch fire. As these practices expand into sensitive watershed environments, the populations of major urban areas that depend upon that water are put at risk.
Compression Stations
Natural gas extraction releases toxins into the air as well as water.
Compression stations at natural gas drilling sites are known to emit carcinogens into the air that far exceeded safety levels. In August 2009, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) conducted an analysis of natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, a rock formation that covers 8,000 square miles in northern Texas. It found benzene levels 55 times higher than the legal limit. Disulfide, a neurotoxicant; naphthalene, a blood toxin; and pyridines, potential carcinogens, were found to be as much as 384 times the safety level.
Regulation
The relationship between the regulator and the regulated compromises environmental safety.
The number of state regulators to inspect these sites is wholly inadequate to deal with the boom. In Pennsylvania there is a staff of 193 to enforce compliance on over 70,000 wells; in Colorado, there are 15 inspectors for 43,000 wells and the other states fare no better. Environmentalists warn against the inherent conflict of interest that exists between the state regulatory agencies and the industry that pours vast amounts of money into the state political system.
Tags: natural drilling, toxic chemicals, deal with, formation that, Marcellus Shale
