The rhetoric was flying this week when the Pennsylvania Environmental Council held its first forum on Marcellus Shale drilling at Duquesne University. Apparently, there was lots of heated debate -- which is wonderful. That means all views were likely represented, and everyone got their turn to talk. After all, even though a few would rather it weren't true, almost everyone (including most of those evil drillers) want to develop the Marcellus responsibly.
But the Duquesne event was also yet another opportunity for well-meaning environmentalists to, either intentionally or unintentionally, mislead the public through a media that searches for sensationalism and refuses to do its homework on the natural gas story. A perfect example is a story that ran on KDKA-TV, in which the station interviewed, among others, environmentalist David Masur, who is concerned about the drinking water contamination issue.
In the story, Masur says the drilling already has impacted local water.
"Contaminated drinking well water, drinking water advisories issued here in Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh area, toxic chemical releases," he said.
I can understand concern over some of the problems drillers have experienced -- they show some sloppiness and at times a level of arrogance. That needs to change through proper regulations and enforcement. What those instances do not show, however, is water contamination.
In his quote above, Mr. Masur is actually addressing more than one issue, and his statement hardly tells an entire story. Let's start with the first insinuation: contaminated drinking well water. Its an accusation that has been made over and over again by people around the state. Even around the country. But an accusation does not a contamination event make. Regardless of the cases that have been reported to proper authorities or documented only in ProPublica articles, the fact remains that NO DRINKING WATER CONTAMINATION HAS EVER BEEN DIRECTLY LINKED TO HYDROFRACING CHEMICALS. EVER. It doesn't matter how many times we study it -- DEP even has press releases on their Web site that exonerates fracing in specific instances -- the scientific connection does not exist.
Masur's second statement, about the drinking water advisories in the Pittsburgh area must be a reference to the high TDS levels in the Monongahela River in late 2008. Initial theories on that issue suggested fracing water "dumped" in the Mon was the culprit. Further study by Tetra Tech showed it was unlikely frac water was the cause at all. High TDS is apparently quite common in the Mon at that time of year. That study wasn't heavily covered by media, so Masur might have missed that.
The third, toxic chemical releases, could mean just about anything. He could be talking about cases where small amounts of chemicals have been spilled on the surface. He could be talking about Cabot Oil & Gas's fracing line break ups in Dimock that killed some fish and required a wetland cleanup (but still never managed to contaminate the drinking water aquifer). Or he could be talking about hydrofracing itself -- after all, some contend the process itself is an unleashing of toxics into the environment (just like when you use the same stuff in soap, shampoo, conditioner, bug spray, household cleaners or lawn chemicals).
Its funny in a way. Albeit at a much slower, lower-profile fashion, more traditional wells have been being drilled around the Western and Central portions of the Commonwealth for years. Most of those done in the last 60 years or so have used hydrofracing. Most of those occur in much shallower formations, much closer to drinking water aquifers than any Marcellus well -- to the tune of thousands of feet closer. Logically speaking, if fracing had any real chance to contaminate an aquifer, it would be in shallower cases. Without a major source of energy to force frac water left in the Marcellus upwards thousands of feet, there's little possibility of those additives getting into anyones water. Think about the pressure it takes for completions teams to fracture the Marcellus with the technology they already have. It would take even more -- much more -- according to geologists I've asked, for that water to travel from the deep Marcellus, through geological boundaries to reach drinking water level. Hence, the one in 2 billion chance that fracing fluid could contaminate water supplies.
All that said however, we live in a world where Abraham Lustgarden of ProPublica -- an investigative journalist -- is noted as source of documentation of water contamination events. I've actually had activists tell me that because a water contamination allegation was in one of his stories, it was "documented." Nice try -- a documented case is one studied by a state or government agency and determined to be true by proper scientific method. Yet, people with good intentions who treasure the earth and water but hate science and math continue to repeat allegations as fact, and do apples and oranges comparisons of incidents -- the original Dimock, PA, water well explosion was caused by a release of natural gas into water wells, not fracing chemicals as many believe. By the way, while natural gas in your well will allow you to light the water flow on fire if your stupid enough to try it, it is not toxic to humans who ingest it. And most animals, including the infamous horses loosing their fur, have instinct that tells them not to ingest water that contains it.
Yet, due to the repetition of "facts" put forward in poorly researched news articles and shared by mayors who sell the naming rights to their town to satellite television, confusion remains about fracing. There are some who think the process -- already used for about 60 years -- is evil just because it has roots at Halliburton, where former VP Dick Cheney was once employed. (By the way, Cheney was never an oil and gas man -- he's a politician who was hired to get government contracts for a company while he waited for his party to come back into favor. I bet he couldn't even tell us exactly how frac jobs are engineered.)
It'll be interesting to see how EPA's current study of fracing comes out (they and DOE have studied the process ad nauseum already with the same results -- fracing is not a problem). Will have to be sure to check the sources and list of references in the final document. If ProPublica or the Associated Press is listed as an information source, you can be sure the conclusions are suspect.
