Worry for homeowners who face the threat of fracking

Property prices in some area are being threatened by fracking, a controversial method of extracting shale gas

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  Jill Insley
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 June 2012 17.59 EDT
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A protester shows his feelings about fracking near Ardingly Reservoir, West Sussex. Photograph: Chloe Parker /Alamy

Fracking has already caused small earthquakes in the north-west, but homeowners in the vicinity of shale gas extraction could face an even worse aftershock: falling house prices.

John Johnson, manager of estate agent Farrell Heyworth in the Lancashire town of Poulton-le-Fylde, near one of the main drilling sites, says: "There are a lot of properties coming on to the market, and some of the owners are saying they want to get out before prices start dropping."

Fracking involves drilling a well hundreds of metres into the ground and pumping it full of water, sand and chemicals to fracture the rock and release methane gas. The process was halted in the UK in June 2011 after two earthquakes in two months near Blackpool followed drilling at sites in Lancashire by Cuadrilla Resources. An independent scientific report recently recommended that fracking could resume, subject to stricter controls, but fracking companies are still awaiting the results of a government review.

In the meantime Cuadrilla says it is considering where next to site its drill rig. The company, one of four with a permit to search for shale gas in Britain, has 10 sites so far, most of which are in Lancashire, but the company also has sites in Cowden in Kent, Lingfield in Surrey and has planning permission for exploratory drilling in Balcombe in West Sussex. It says it has no plans to carry out work on the southern sites at this time. Richard Sexton, a director of esurv, the UK's biggest provider of residential valuation services, said levels of public awareness about fracking are still low. He added that as awareness increased, fracking would affect house prices, "blighting properties in the areas perceived to be affected".

He believes the effect would be similar to that of the high speed rail line planned from London to Birmingham, HS2 – painful but relatively short term: "Prices have gone down 10% to 20% within a mile of the proposed route, and prices will remain depressed until the line is up and running. Reality is never quite as bad as we think it is."

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New Jersey State Assembly Votes to Ban Fracking Wastewater

Source: ECOWATCH.ORG

6-22-2012

Environment New Jersey

In the latest state action against fracking, the New Jersey Assembly approved a measure to ban the processing of fracking wastewater. Environment New Jersey and its allies stepped up efforts to build support for Assemblywoman Connie Wagner’s bill after learning that fracking waste had already been shipped to New Jersey and discharged into the Delaware via a DuPont facility in Salem County. Legislators approved the bill (A575) by a veto-proof majority of 56-19.

“Toxic waste from fracking should not be allowed anywhere near New Jersey’s waterways,” said Doug O’Malley, interim director of Environment New Jersey. “The New Jersey Assembly chose drinking water over gas drillers today.”

Fracking is a gas drilling technique that involves pumping a mix of chemicals, sand and water down a well at such high pressure that it cracks open gas-bearing rock formations. When the process is complete, wastewater–often laced with toxics like benzene, heavy metals and even radioactive material-flows back to the surface. Fracking wastewater has contaminated drinking water sources on numerous occasions in other states.

The gas drilling boom in Pennsylvania has already produced more than 1.3 billion gallons of contaminated wastewater, and drilling operators have been increasingly sending that wastewater to surrounding states. In New Jersey DuPont has processed the waste at a facility which discharges into the Delaware River.

“Fracking is the latest source of toxic waste,” said O’Malley. “That is the last thing New Jersey needs.”

Environment New Jersey cited documented cases of fracking waste polluting water and causing other problems:

In Pennsylvania, after fracking wastewater was discharged from sewage treatment plants into the Monongahela River, the state advised 325,000 people in and around Pittsburgh not to use their tap water for more than a week.

In New Mexico, state records show drilling waste has contaminated groundwater at nearly 400 different sites.

In Ohio, deep well-injection of fracking wastewater was linked to a 4.0 level earthquake in the Youngstown area last December

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BAN IT! The liability is enormous and sadly someday, some community, somewhere, will drink the toxic kool-aid. Then what?  Will we say: 'We told you so?" Who will be liable for the catastrophe?  We'd bet anything that the oil and gas industry will be completely indemnified over a disaster like this.

This industry is sick!

Fracking Our Future: Western Resource Advocates

Source: Western Resource Advocates

We are entering a new era in oil and gas development in the West, and nowhere is that more evident than along the Front Range of Colorado. Increased drilling and production near communities and populated areas — much closer to population centers than in previous decades — are raising new questions about potential impacts to water supplies, air and water quality, noise levels, and property values.


This report addresses one of the most important issues: that of water availability for new oil and gas development in Colorado. Specifically, it addresses the questions, “How much water is required for new production, and where will that water come from?” Colorado is a semi-arid state with limited water resources that must be shared by a wide variety of water users. Western Resource Advocates (WRA) — along with communities, businesses, institutions, and citizens throughout the state — have concerns about water needs for oil and gas development and how that demand impacts our water resources. This report will inform elected officials, decision makers, communities, and families about oil and gas industry water needs and the potential impacts and tradeoffs that must be addressed. It provides specific recommendations that decision makers can use in creating policies to make sure that Colorado’s water resources are properly managed along with oil and gas development. 



LINK TO PDF

Report: Volume of water used for fracking in Colorado could serve 79,000 households a year

New study on oil and gas industry released by Boulder's Western Resource Advocates

By John Aguilar, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:   06/20/2012 11:56:54 AM MDT

Updated:   06/20/2012 06:33:12 PM MDT

The volume of water required annually to develop new oil and gas wells in the state could supply up to 79,000 Colorado households for a year based on average residential use, according to a report issued Wednesday by Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates.

The report goes on to say that when re-use of water is factored in at the residential level, the amount of water used by the oil and gas industry could actually serve up to 118,400 homes in Colorado.

"Governments -- local, state and national -- really need to take a look at this and plan out drilling and make sure they do it right," said Jason Bane, spokesman for Western Resource Advocates. "We don't want to look around 10 years from now and say we shouldn't have used so much water."

But Tisha Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the industry's water use is miniscule compared to all water consumption in the state.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association estimates the industry will use 6.5 trillion gallons this year -- just over one-tenth of a percent of total water use in the state.

"I'm not sure it's helpful to single out our industry when there are so many users," Schuller said. "We're still just in the noise of Colorado's water use."

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Fort Collins company releases test kit for fracking contamination

Coloradoan.com
Fort Collins, CO
Bobby Magill

Salud Family Health is taking fracking seriously, and they’re using a new device created by Fort Collins-based Forston Labs to help them discover any of the oil and gas industry’s impacts to patients’ drinking water.

Ed Hendrikson started the environmental health program at Salud Family Health Centers 27 years ago, and Salud’s clinics have been testing patients’ drinking water for various contaminants ever since.

Recently, a new water quality concern has drawn Salud’s attention: Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the energy industry’s technique of injecting millions of gallons of water, toxic chemicals and sand deep into the ground to get oil and natural gas to flow to the surface.

Salud, which has a clinic in Fort Collins, is based in Fort Lupton, near the center of Weld County’s oil and gas drilling boom. When some of Salud’s patients saw a TV news report showing a Fort Lupton resident’s tapwater being lit on fire, they asked Salud staff whether their water is at risk from fracking.

“With our patient population having so much fracking around the area, you wonder if there is contamination, will that cause some problems in our community?” Hendrikson said.

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AP Exclusive: Wyo. got EPA to delay frack finding

Source: SFGate.com
By Mead Gruver, Associated Press
May 3, 2012

In internal emails that followed the Nov. 4 briefing, state officials expressed support for fracking as critical to oil and gas extraction, a $7.7 billion a year industry in Wyoming that accounts for 20 percent of the state's gross domestic product.

"The limiting of the hydraulic fracturing process will result in negative impacts to the oil and gas revenues to the state of Wyoming. A further outcome will be the questioning of the economic viability of all unconventional and tight oil and gas reservoirs in Wyoming, across the United States, and ultimately in the world," wrote Tom Doll, supervisor of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, in a long email that circulated among top state officials.

Wyoming's top state regulator of oil and gas development, including essentially all fracking in the state, Doll was a district manager for Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Production Company until 2008.

The spark for Doll's missive was the closed-door meeting at Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality headquarters in Cheyenne two days earlier. EPA administrator Martin briefed Wyoming officials about what the EPA was about to announce based on its research in Pavillion. Doll took part by phone.

"Contaminants present at high concentrations in the deep monitoring wells are likely a result of hydraulic fracturing," read a "Key Findings" slide in an EPA PowerPoint shown at the meeting. Each slide was marked "Confidential--Do Not Disclose."

The public announcement more than a month later stated that the groundwater "contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing."

The EPA also suggested at the private meeting that gas development likely had contaminated household well water in the Pavillion area but that current data did not definitively support such a link. The EPA has made no such claim in public to date.

Emails show that Mead sought to reach Jackson within hours. Mead confirmed that he got her to hold off on the findings report until state officials could review the data.

"When I talked to Lisa Jackson they were going to release the findings regardless. That wasn't even the question. The question was on the timing of it. We wanted a chance to see what are they basing this on," Mead told the AP.

"She said, `Well, maybe we can hold off a couple weeks to give you guys this data.'"




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Fracking of wells puts big demand on Colorado Water

The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley

FORT LUPTON — Oil and gas drillers have bought at least 500 million gallons of water this year from cities for use in hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," along Colorado's Front Range.

Now they need more.

It's the only way they'll be able to sink thousands of new wells into the Niobrara formation that — if announcements last week by Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. are correct — contains about 1 billion barrels of oil.

Each well drilled requires 1 million to 5 million gallons of water, and more when they are refracked.

Drillers "may need more water than we have," said John McGee, water manager for the city of Loveland, which has leased municipal water.

In Fort Lupton, tanker trucks tap hydrants to fill up. It's the same in Greeley, Frederick, Firestone and other communities amid the expanding oil fields north of Denver.

The trucks haul the water to rigs, where fracking crews mix it with sand and chemicals and pump it thousands of feet underground to release oil and gas.

But as companies propose new deals with utilities, including Aurora Water, they're finding that a resource often scarce for people and agriculture may be limited for fracking too.

State natural resources planners say they're working with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to calculate, within the next week or so, how much water may be available for oil and gas drilling.

For years, state officials have projected shortfalls of 600,000 to 1 million acre-feet of water needed to sustain Colorado's population and agriculture.

Restrictions abound

Court-enforced compacts oblige Colorado to let some water flow down rivers to other states. Unlike water diverted from mountain rivers for use by cities and farms, much of the water pumped underground for fracking stays there.

And water diverted from mountain rivers on the Western Slope to Front Range cities legally must be used within specified service areas — preventing long-distance hauling to rigs.

"That is a concern," said Brian Werner, spokesman for the Northern Colorado Water Conservation District, which delivers diverted water widely. District board members are discussing new rules to minimize legal exposure.

"It's up to each municipality to see how much available water they have to sell," said Sean Conway, a Weld County commissioner who helped launch a "Niobrara Working Group" to deal with water and other issues. "We must ensure that we don't jeopardize our agricultural heritage."

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Dr. Gary Wockner of Clean Water Action posted the data below last year.