A Second Government Report Links Groundwater Contamination To Fracking
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It's the second government-backed study to assert such a link published in the past seven days.
Last week, the EPA said a USGS study had confirmed an earlier study concluding fracking contaminated in a small Wyoming town.
The latest study found drilling activity by Cabot Oil and Gas in Dimock, Penn. had caused methane to seep into the water table.
In a 2010 consent order, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found that 18 drinking-water wells in the area were “affected” by Cabot’s drilling, Bloomberg writes.
Oil companies have argued it is difficult to differentiate between naturally occurring methane and methane produced by fracking.
For example, Lisa Molofsky, an environmental geologist at GSI Environmental Inc., an environmental-engineering consulting firm in Houston, established a range of chemical signatures in the form of the ratio of heavier to lighter carbon, and heavier to lighter hydrogen molecules in the gas.
In the recently published EPA samples from Dimock, Bloomberg reports, two households had methane that fell within that range. Three others had values nearby.
The driller is disputing the findings.
Read the full story on Bloomberg.com
Now get this. If we run out of ground water to drink, we will have to invest ENORMOUS amounts of money in desalination plants all along every coast. Those plants require huge, huge amounts of energy, which we will get from coal burning electric plants which will increase air pollution, which will increase global warming, which will increase droughts and floods, which will increase food costs and our national debt....do you see where I am going with this???? Is this a risk we can afford to take??
Last week, the EPA said a USGS study had confirmed an earlier study concluding fracking contaminated in a small Wyoming town.
The latest study found drilling activity by Cabot Oil and Gas in Dimock, Penn. had caused methane to seep into the water table.
In a 2010 consent order, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found that 18 drinking-water wells in the area were “affected” by Cabot’s drilling, Bloomberg writes.
Oil companies have argued it is difficult to differentiate between naturally occurring methane and methane produced by fracking.
For example, Lisa Molofsky, an environmental geologist at GSI Environmental Inc., an environmental-engineering consulting firm in Houston, established a range of chemical signatures in the form of the ratio of heavier to lighter carbon, and heavier to lighter hydrogen molecules in the gas.
In the recently published EPA samples from Dimock, Bloomberg reports, two households had methane that fell within that range. Three others had values nearby.
“The EPA data falls squarely in the Marcellus space” established by Cabot’s scientists, said Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist at Duke University.
That evidence backs up his findings linking gas drilling and water
problems in the town of Dimock, applying the very methodology that Cabot
established to try to debunk it, he said.
Cabot maintains that its operations
haven’t contaminated homeowners’ wells, and its scientists say further
analysis shows this gas isn’t from the Marcellus, a mile-deep formation
running from New York to the southwestern tip of Virginia.
Now get this. If we run out of ground water to drink, we will have to invest ENORMOUS amounts of money in desalination plants all along every coast. Those plants require huge, huge amounts of energy, which we will get from coal burning electric plants which will increase air pollution, which will increase global warming, which will increase droughts and floods, which will increase food costs and our national debt....do you see where I am going with this???? Is this a risk we can afford to take??
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