Fracking Is Already Straining U.S. Water Supplies

[cprise]

http://www.alternet.org/fracking/fracking-already-straining-us-water-supplies?paging=off

Some of America's most intensive oil and gas development is occurring in drought-prone regions where water is scarce.

June 15, 2013 |


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Every fracking job requires 2 million to 4 million gallons of water, according to the Groundwater Protection Council. The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has estimated that the 35,000 oil and gas wells used for fracking consume between 70 billion and 140 billion gallons of water each year. That’s about equal, EPA says, to the water use in 40 to 80 cities with populations of 50,000 people, or one to two cities with a population of 2.5 million each.

Some of the most intensive oil and gas development in the nation is occurring in regions where water is already at a premium. A paper published last month by Ceres, a nonprofit that works on sustainability issues, looked at 25,000 shale oil and shale gas wells in operation and monitored by an industry-tied reporting website called FracFocus.

Ceres found that 47 percent of these wells were in areas “with high or extremely high water stress” because of large withdrawals for use by industry, agriculture, and municipalities. In Colorado, for example, 92 percent of the wells were in extremely high water-stress areas, and in Texas more than half were in high or extremely high water-stress areas.

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[Dustlawyer]

1. Tell those companies to bring their own damn water! This is ridiculous!

[cprise]

8. Problem is, there's no "bring your own"

...when it comes to a resource like water. It has to be extracted from someone's environment.

[durablend]

2. And the teabagger response?

"Uh, they sell drinking water in the store now you stupid libs so kwit yer bitching!"

[ashling]

9. And inLieuof Goobert saw someone buying water with foodstamps

no doubt to wash down those King Crab Legs

[Champion Jack]

3. This needs to stop

Where is the logic in poisoning our fresh water supply for future generations just so that multinational corporations can make a profit

[Crowman1979]

4. We're energy independent, but we're now out of water.

Drought baby drought! This has about as much logic as sending a large army to invade two countries in order to find a terrorist leader that is in Pakistan.

[AndyA]

5. Not to mention the link between fracking and earthquakes.

The oil and gas companies deny such a link exists, but studies indicate there is indeed a connection.

Also, excessive use of water for commercial irrigation also seems to lead to sinkholes in areas of Florida. Conservation doesn't seem to be much of a concern.

[They_Live]

6. Destroying ourselves through lack of imagination

fracking should be illegal. This is an environmental emergency. It's really unfortunate that our priorities allow money to do whatever money wants, instead of using common sense and thinking about our survival in the future. Water is life and we are poisoning our only supply (forever).

[A Little Weird]

7. Fracking

I rank fracking right up there with mountaintop removal mining in terms of stupid, irreversibly damaging things done to the environment to enrich the greedy.

Off-topic:
There's a proposal to build a pipeline from Pennsylvania through Ohio and Kentucky so the gas can be shipped down river to the gulf coast. I posted some info about it in the Kentucky forum (not trying to hijack your thread but I thought it might be of interest):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1053124

[limpyhobbler]

10. This is right I think. They frackers have no idea how much damage could be done to water, public

public health, global warming. It's stupid so many different ways.

[limpyhobbler]

11. Frackers vs. Farmers: The Fight for H2O ---> It's on.

In time of drought, fracking competes with farmers

...
The persistent U.S. drought wreaked havoc on American agriculture, raising food prices and forcing farmers to make record high insurance claims on lost profits for 2012.

As farmers struggle to make ends meet, limited fresh water reserves across the country are being diverted for fracking. The fossil fuel industry has identified deposits of oil and gas within shale rock formations deep underground, formerly inaccessible. In this new, ‘unconventional’ drilling process, water mixed with sand and chemicals is injected into horizontal wells running through the shale. The injection cracks apart the rock, releasing the oil and gas and allowing it to rise to the surface for extraction.

Fracking requires enormous quantities of water. Estimates put water usage at between 3 and 5 million gallons per fracking of a single well, and each well can be fracked several times.

According to information accessed in 2012 from FracFocus, a national fracking chemical registry managed by the Ground Water Protection Council and Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, states have already seen over 65 billion gallons of water used in 26,339 fracking operations.

See more at: http://tcktcktck.org/2013/06/in-time-of-drought-fracking-competes-for-limited-water/53736


PS Also please save some for the fish. Seriously. Don't drain lakes for industry when we need them because we need fish.