Fracking Has Not Had Big Effect on Water Supply, E.P.A. Says While Noting Risks | Hacker News Reader

Fracking Has Not Had Big Effect on Water Supply, E.P.A. Says While Noting Risks

nytimes.com

37 pointsemgeee23 comments

Most of the discussion about fracking misses the forest for the trees.

Yes, there's a rather significant amount of groundwater contamination due to poorly operated and/or improperly abandoned wells.

However, the vast majority of the contamination has nothing to do with whether or not hydrofracturing was applied. It's far more frequently due to bad casing jobs, etc.

In other words, most of the contamination is due to sloppy work. It would happen regardless of whether it was a convention or unconventional well.

There are situations where fracking can directly lead to contamination. After all, you're deliberately creating permeability in an aquitard. However, these are not anywhere near as common as the cases where a bad casing job, etc can lead to groundwater contamination (every well).

In a nutshell, we're seeing an increase in groundwater contamination because of the spike in the number of wells drilled in the areas. It's not directly related to the completion method used in the well (e.g. fracking).

However, it doesn't help that there are highly variable state/local regulations and a huge number of sloppy operators.

Yes, but... There are now a huge number of new wells being drilled precisely because of the fracking boom. So if no fracking, then the water doesn't get contaminated. It's not the actual fracturing of rock thousands of feet below that does it, true, it's the pipe that goes there and back. But the responsibilty does roll up to "the driller" which are the guys getting gas out of the ground.

Where is the evidence that there are a huge number of sloppy operators? That isn't in the NY Times article.

People in the industry seem to universally agree that there are some sloppy operators.

FTFA: But environmental groups pointed to what they saw as holes in the report. In particular, they said, the report’s authors relied on data supplied by companies and wrote that limitations in data “preclude a determination of the frequency of impacts with any certainty.”

So, i guess that report is next to worthless then if it solely relies on data that comes from a group that is interested in "proving" the safety of fracking?

Except it doesn't solely rely on that data. From earlier in the article:

"In conducting the study, the agency evaluated more than 3,500 previously published reports, studies and data sources, including articles published in science and engineering journals; and reports by federal and state governments, nongovernmental organizations and industry groups.

The agency also conducted additional scientific research, resulting in more than 20 peer-reviewed reports and papers. The draft report will now be made available for public comment and peer review by an independent board of scientists before being finalized."

No more than if it relied on data that comes from a group that is interested in "proving" that fracking is unsafe.

I'm a bit skeptical of what the EPA says, because it has been documented to suffer from regulatory capture.

http://www.amazon.com/Poison-Spring-Secret-History-Pollution...

But lets assume the EPA is doing its job. At minimum, there needs to be more inspectors - currently there is a huge backlog where high-risk wells are not being inspected. So this problem will just keep getting worse.

http://www.foreffectivegov.org/blog/massive-fracking-federal...

Also, just a few weeks ago from the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/science/earth/fracking-che...

From Aljazeera:

>the EPA was not able to legally force cooperation by fracking companies, almost all of which refused

and

>One of the companies, Chesapeake Energy, "chipped away at the scope of the plan over two years of talks, limited when and where the EPA could monitor water,"

[0] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/4/epa-says-frac...

Read "Trust me, I'm lying" by Ryan Holiday. Tracing the sources mentioned in this article is a good first exercise.

Questions about the truth of the results aside, I would say that the title of the study should maybe be, Fracking Has Not Had Big Effect on Water Supply Yet. This stuff is still pretty new, after all.

This stuff is still pretty new, after all.

On a geologic time scale, sure.

Fracking in one form or another goes back between 80-150 years.

"Worrying over fracking is like seeing an upper middle class family who are $6,000 in debt, and freaking out because one of their kids bought a gumball from a machine."

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...

You are taking that quote wildly out of context. That quote refers to the use of water as part of the drilling process, not the contamination of water-sources by fracked wells.

You're absolutely right. I guess I was misled by the title that talks about the "water supply" when they really mean "the quality of water" or something along those lines.

Riiiiiggghht https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBjSXWQRV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9-tmudFg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A There are THOUSANDS of similar reports from fracked areas all over North America. That isn't the only problem either, when they do what's called "venting" there is large release of carcinogenic chemicals(although some large scale operations mitigate this by capping the vent stack to collect the gases in practice this is the exception not the rule) We are doing it in Canada as well, absolute insanity! Here is a great documentary http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/The+Nature+of+Things/ID...

OK I downvoted this. And I'm stating that even though I know it's not kosher to have a meta-debate about upvoting/downvoting, but just to dissuade the reflexive suspicion that the downvote is because HN is secretly owned by drilling companies.

I don't necessarily disagree with the skepticism, but linking to a bunch of Youtube videos without context is not helpful evidence. And then going on to refer to a vague "THOUSANDS of similar reports" claim without some kind of link to source...that's kind of lazy. I think it's safe to say that the EPA is aware of a high quantity of reports of contaminated water...and that's why they've (belatedly) undertaken this study. The critique should be focused on their assertions and the evidence they use (I mean, they did the courtesy of drafting a report to make such a point by point critique easier), not on generalizations.

They have NO evidence, I downloaded their full report in search of the "official" total of cases where drinking water has been contaminated due to hydraulic fracturing and it is omitted from the report they simply make the assertion that "the number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells" This study doesn't serve to advance our understanding of the hazards of hydraulic fracturing in the least, it's 999 pages of nothing! Down vote all you want

I wouldn't have downvoted this comment...because it actually refers to the report at hand and directly critiques it. I'm not anti-anti-fracking, just anti-anti-anti-fracking generalizations.

Also this "A 2009 ProPublica investigation found that contamination was far more prevalent than indicated in the report, citing more than 1,000 cases tied to drilling and fracking that had been documented by courts and state and local governments." http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fracking_and_water_poll...

In at least some of those areas where those "flammable tapwater" videos have been made, the tapwater has always been flammable, because the natural gas deposits we are fracking have been leeching into the groundwater for millions of years.

Yes and now enjoy methane concentrations 17x higher(I view that as the difference between being potable and not)...http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-for-natur...

This is the response I received(astonishingly fast) after writing an email inquiring about the total figure of drinking water contamination cases:

"Thanks for your email. To clarify--the purpose of the study was not to count every instance of impacts to drinking water resources. The purpose was to follow the water and to better understand the potential vulnerabilities. In the draft assessment we looked at all the hydraulic fracturing activities that may have had potential impacts to drinking water resources and make mention of specific events throughout the chapters that serve as examples and illustrate vulnerabilities.

Based upon the information brought together for the assessment – information drawn from over 950 citations– we did not identify widespread impacts on drinking water resources due to hydraulic fracturing operations. The information available is adequate to qualitatively characterize the frequency of occurrence as being small, particularly relative to the number of wells that are hydraulically fractured each year. That same information, however, is not sufficient to quantitatively measure occurrence nationwide. That was one of the information gaps highlighted by the assessment.

I hope this is helpful!

Dayna

202-564-7983

gibbons.dayna@epa.gov

Communications

Office of Research and Development

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency"

So they would have you believe that they don't know how often it happens, however, they do know it doesn't happen often. Yeah, this is the type of science, no fuck that, pseudo-science, that leads to dubious legislation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com