I didn't know there was anything to ask. I just assumed, and took my assumption at face value,
OK then, your assumptions were incorrect, hopefully some of my explanations have helped.
that if they are using chemicals to break apart the rock, then it would make sense those chemicals would end up in the water table, and the groundwater.
Not really. In the PA instance, the deepest part of the aquifer is at 500ft. The PA shales are at 5,000ft and isolated from the wellbore by a number of casings and nearly a mile of other rock formations. The argument that fraccing extends 4,500ft is just wrong. Also, it makes no sense to frac a formation so that the fluids you're after migrate away from your producing wellbore. The point is to get the fluids to drain into your wellbore so that you can produce it to surface.
Oh, I knew it wasn't used for initially creating the well bore. I always thought it was used for breaking apart some of the shale in order to get to the gas. I should probably read that wiki article completely and thoroughly.
What is the other 1%? I know that if you were to compose a cupful of water that contains 1% arsenic, it will kill you straightaway. 1% out of thousands upon thousands of gallons of water is a lot of chemicals that can do quite a bit of harm.
But since it is not migrating into the groundwater not an issue. What IS an issue is surface disposal and containment. If this is inadequate you will get water contaminiation and practically all of the incidents that have been brought forward here are just such incidencts. Loss of containment of fraccing and produced fluid at surface.
lol, you don't need to tell me! I had to search around pretty extensively, and ran across a PDF that was a report on chemicals found in some of the groundwater that was tested. Unforuntely, I couldn't d/l the PDF. My computer got hung-up, and crashed. I'll try again later, and link ya when I reach my 15 posts.
The pamphlet wasn't anywhere on the internet. I physically held it in my hands. They were handing these things out like candy up in Rickett's Glen this past June, though. (You ever get a chance to come to PA, I HIGHLY, HIGHLY, HIGHLY suggest you go to Ricket's Glen, btw!)
I'll continue my search for exact specifications, since you are asking. I'll take a few days, maybe a week or so to gather some materials if you wish. But my hypothesis using common sense, is that any chemicals found in some of those waterways way out there in the deep wilderness is from fracking fluids. I know the waters in the PCV was perfectly fine for more than twenty years. And like I said, there isn't any real agriculture or human habitation in some of these areas. Particularly further west. The only conclusion I can think of where these chemicals (which didn't seem to exist before the discovery of the Macellus Shale) comes from, is the fracking.
I can't deny that they do not. But at the moment we don't know. Certainly the few reports I've read (except for that specific one in Dimock) have pointed to methane in water being generated within the aquifer itself and other contaminations by surface spills.
It was pretty facetious. There are more than just three incidents of note, of course.
Any specific reasons why some of these "surface spills" should not migrate to the water table, and hence on into the aquifers?
No. Of the reports I have read it is the surface spills that are the problem and the source of contamination.
The leak in Lyco County, one of the incidents that I talked a bit about, was just that: A leak. It wasn't a surface spill, per se. And we were given a "water advisory" which lasted a couple of weeks. I can only assume with the advisory that it must have entered, or was in danger of entering, the area's water supply.
It was a surface spill.
The account I read said that a valvle on a storage tank was left open and produced water leaked from the system instead of going into the surface storage tank. It was not frac fluid flow back as originally reported.
And one operator is all it takes to completely destroy the local environment. And this is not the only incident either, unfortunately.
The BP GoM well is testament to that, even in the perspective of 32,000 odd wells being drilled last year in the US.
Mostly through geology. The aquifers at 500ft are isolated from the oil/gas reservoirs at 5,000ft by (literally) tons of impervious rock. Fraccing just does not extend this far. Now not everything is cut and dried in the natural world, there is the possibility of migration through natural faults that may be opened up by deep formation fraccing. But I've never read of this being and issue in PA, or with th 10s of 1000s of wells that have undergone frac jobs in the past decades.
Even if you are correct, the aquifers aren't the only thing of concern here. The Delaware river is the most endangered river in North America. It is absolutely filthy. And the pollution reaching the Chesapeake Bay has much more far-reaching effects than just the local areas. The Chesapeake Bay affects literally millions of people, and the economies of 5 states, and several fishing industries.
A different issue to aquifer contamination by fraccing, but a concern that should not be overlooked, and it applies to agriculture, industry, mining and even residential waste.
Yeah, and Macondo was the man-made environmental disaster I can think of. Worse even than Exxon-Valdez. A blow-out is only one danger we have to contend with out of a myriad others.
Then why have they been happening in Pa, then? I'll have to find the exact numbers, but it seems to happen on a far too regular basis around here.
I think that this may also be a misunderstanding of what is being reported. I'd be interested to know if there are more well failures in PA than "normal", which are very few indeed.
Lucky for us, we are not nearly as dry as Australia.
Conversely, there is much more drilling activity, so more potential burden on your aquifers.
But still, the price of water on the utility bill has been on the rise.
Other concerns relate to the wear-and-tear of the roads that are paid for by the state tax payers....
Always a problem when a new industry starts up in a region and I'd be pretty pissed if I lived there.
And still others are the unsightliness of once-peaceful and beautiful areas that people purposely moved into because of the natural beauty. The loudness of the operations. In Dimock, for example, Haliburton or one of them companies just came and plopped like 30 big trucks, started drilling, which is a very loud process, and transporting dangerous chemicals, mere yards from people's homes with children. They planted a drill directly between two homes in one video.
... and were only did this to because the local or state authority allowed it.
I don't claim to know the answer, either. Which is why there are protests going on in Harrisburgh fairly often these days. The sad thing is, these large companies are from Texas. They bring their workers with them from Texas. And transfer their profits back to Texas. Basically, Texas is coming into Pennsylvania, tearing apart this state, and our state budget is STILL in the red with the worst roads on the East Coast. I honestly have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, but I smell a rat in all of this.
Usually round about now the argument turns to accussation of NIMBYism, but frankly, I'd be on the side of the NIMBYs.
Heh, and what they do with the cash they are supposedly taking, God only knows. As stated above, the roads are in terrible repair. It feels like you are driving along in an African safari, only with vehicles that cannot take the punishment and not built for such a terrible bumpy ride. The education system in this state ranks about 28th in the nation. And the state budget is still in the red. All of these, despite the fact that the state has pretty much done away with most gambling laws, which was supposedly to cause huge cash infusion into the state coffers as well. Between gambling and drilling profits, roads that are not being maintained, and the education system not up to par, something is most definitely wrong.
Sounds like you've got more problems than just the shale gas drilling.
