Eco WatchAs federal policy makers decide on rules for fracking on public lands, a new report calculates the toll of this dirty drilling on our environment, including 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated by fracking in 2012—enough to flood all of Washington, DC, in a 22-foot deep toxic lagoon. The Environment America Research & Policy Center report, Fracking by the Numbers, is the first to measure the damaging footprint of fracking to date.
“The numbers don’t lie—fracking has taken a dirty and destructive toll on our environment,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney for Environment America. “If this dirty drilling continues unchecked, these numbers will only get worse.”
“At health clinics, we’re seeing nearby residents experiencing nausea, headaches and other symptoms linked to fracking pollution,” said David Brown, a toxicologist who has reviewed health data from Pennsylvania. “With billions of gallons of toxic waste coming each year, we’re just seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of health risks.”
The report measured key indicators of fracking threats across the country, including:
- 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated in 2012—enough to flood all of Washington, DC, in a 22-foot deep toxic lagoon
- 450,000 tons of air pollution produced in one year
- 250 billion gallons of fresh water used since 2005
- 360,000 acres of land degraded since 2005
- 100 million metric tons of global warming pollution since 2005
Fracking also inflicts other damage not quantified in the report—ranging from contamination of residential wells to ruined roads to earthquakes at disposal sites.
Reviewing the totality of this fracking damage, the report’s authors conclude:
Given the scale and severity of fracking’s myriad impacts, constructing a regulatory regime sufficient to protect the environment and public health from dirty drilling—much less enforcing such safeguards at more than 80,000 wells, plus processing and waste disposal sites across the country—seems implausible. In states where fracking is already underway, an immediate moratorium is in order. In all other states, banning fracking is the prudent and necessary course to protect the environment and public health.
At the federal level, the report’s data on land destroyed by fracking operations comes as the Obama Administration considers a rule for fracking on public lands, and as the oil and gas industry is seeking to expand fracking to several places which help provide drinking water for millions of Americans—including the White River National Forest in Colorado and the Delaware River basin, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million Americans.
Along with the new numbers in today’s report, Environment America’s John Rumpler added one more: the more than 1 million public comments submitted this summer to the Obama administration rejecting its proposed rule for fracking on public lands as far too weak. Environment America is urging President Obama to follow the recommendation of his administration’s advisory panel on fracking to keep sensitive areas as off-limits to fracking.
“We need decisive action from Washington to protect our communities,” said John Fenton, a rancher from Pavillion, Wyoming who last week appealed to federal officials to re-open an investigation into contamination of drinking water there.
“The bottom line is this: The numbers on fracking add up to an environmental nightmare,” said Rumpler. “For our environment and for public health, we need to put a stop to fracking.”
Of particular concern are the billions of gallons of toxic waste created from fracking, which threaten the environment, public health and drinking water. Environment America is calling on federal officials to close the loophole that exempts this waste from our nation’s hazardous waste law. Rep. Matt Cartwright (PA-17) has introduced the CLEANER Act, H.R. 2825, to close that loophole.
“The data from today’s report shows that fracking is taking a dirty and destructive toll on our environment and health,” concluded Rumpler. “It’s time for our federal officials to step up; they can start by keeping fracking out of our forests and away from our parks, and closing the loophole exempting toxic fracking waste from our nation’s hazardous waste law.”
http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/03/report-calculates-damage-by-fracking/
Good article Susan. Fracking is not good, but neither is where they get all of that sand that they use for fracking. It goes well beyond these fracking wells, it also involves the sand mines – and those sand mines create major air polution, ruins our water ways, destroys the roads, and they realy do ruin the land scape and everything else. There is nothing enviromentally freindly at all about either those oil wells or those sand mines at all.
There are at least 2 types of fracking: coal bed methane and shale. This article describes the pitfalls of shale fracking. Coal bed methane fracking is a lot less offensive. Ted Turner has over 900 coal bed methane wells on just one of his properties and you don’t hear him complaining. So before this whole process gets shut down en masse, be sure to get the facts on what kind of fracking is being done, how it affects people and nature, and what can be done to protect both.
Pennsylvania has problems that do not exist anywhere else. They cannot set the regulatory standard for other states that do not have their mess.
To the best of my knowledge, fracking is done below the water table and the drills are totally encased. Water sampling must be done withing a half mile of all proposed fracking sites prior to drilling. Otherwise there is no way to know if the complaints are legitimate.
If roads are ruined, it is because the county officials failed to provide guidelines for the drilling concerns in regard to restoration, including county roads.
Some states have good laws on the books to address these issues, others are quite lax. These issues need to be addressed at the state level, not by the collection of blithering idiots currently occupying Congress.
Because of cheap energy the USA once took a leading role in the world. Now it seems that the minions of the oligarchs seek to destroy what’s left of the middle class by denying access to cheap energy.
As for Environment America… It’s probably funded by Big Oil, yet another wild-eyed gaia-worshipping NGO, hell bent on pulling the plug on America and moving Agenda 21 forward.