Correction on that Fence

It seems in my posting yesterday about EPA's Canonsburg meeting, I made a little error.

Apparently, the man who put the fence up around his pond did so not to stop contamination, but to stop his animals from drinking from it. He said he had lost some animals who were drinking from the pond, and that he was no longer losing animals after he fenced the pond.

I got that part wrong -- but that doesn't mean that fracing fluid caused him to lose animals. In order for fracing fluid to have entered that pond, it would have had to climb about 6,500 ft into the water table, through natural geologic barriers and other non-permeable geologic strata.

Some people believe that's possible. If you do, consider this. In order to frac the Marcellus, fluid is pumped at very high pressure. To pull back the produced water, an even higher amount of pressure is used, and even at that rate, drillers are unable to retrieve it all. The point being this: to move fluid out of the Marcellus, which acts something like a sponge, and raise it thousands of feet into the aquifer takes a lot of energy. Something not naturally occuring in the necessary amount at that depth.

Fence or no fence, its likely something else was in that water if animals died drinking it. As a livestock owner myself, I've seen animals die from a variety of causes -- but most commonly on my farm from fertilizers used on neighboring properties. Still thinking frac fluid? Think about the cows recently "quarantined" for study. They have allegedly been drinking frac fluid laced water. They're still alive.

I may have gotten the story a bit confused, but one way or another, something here still doesn't add up.