This new-found emery source comes at ENORMOUS RISK!!!
The landscape of our country is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new gas wells and drilling rigs...
...using the relatively new drilling method — known as hydrofracking — which carries with it significant environmental and public health risks.
Wells can produce over a million gallons of waste-water often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which occur naturally thousands of feet underground... dangers to the environment and health are far greater than previously understood.
Shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re producing massive amounts of toxic waste-water with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.
Pennsylvania has allowed drillers to discharge much of their waste through sewage treatment plants into rivers. Plants not capable of adequately treating such hazaradous waste. Most of this water was sent to treatment plants not equipped to remove many of the toxic materials in drilling waste. Sewage treatment plants in three states accepted gas industry waste-water and discharged waste that was only partly treated into rivers, lakes and streams.
“There are business pressures” on companies to “cut corners,” John Hanger, who stepped down as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in January, has said. “It’s cheaper to dump waste-water than to treat it.” And any fines imposed as miniscule compared to the profits.. (just another business expense).
Industry officials say dangerous waste is handled in compliance with state and federal laws, and that hydrofracking is well regulated by the states and that it has been used safely for decades.
With the track record all these 'public agencies' have in fact protecting the public (being on the side of corporate giants).. why should they now all of a sudden be believed.
Nearly half a million active natural-gas wells in the US in 2009, double the number from 1990... and 90 percent have used hydrofracking... air pollution caused by natural-gas drilling is a growing threat.
Anyone with an average amount of savvy can determine this 'process' is contaminating the water supply and the atmosphere. There's little doubt, it is doing irreparable harm, and we don't have a clue to just what extent we are 'doing ourselves in.'
We had been having our water tested very few years by an independent lab... think we'll be doing it allot more frequently from now on.
Note:
Shale gas is going the exact same way as coal...
Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers - NYTimes.com
