New Study Predicts Frack Fluids Can Migrate To Aquifers Within Years

ProPublica
Abrahm Lustgarten | May 1, 2012 1:32 p.m

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Watertwo weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth's underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry's argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.

But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as "just a few years."

"Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable," said the study's author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.

"The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability," he said. "Fluids could move from most any injection process."

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Any idiot that tells you shale is impermeable, is full of crap!

SHALE IS PERMEABLE! Fracking only re-fractures the natural fractures that exist.

Video Investigation of Gas Drilling Sites Reveals Invisible Air Pollution

Bay Daily
11/29/2011

A Chesapeake Bay Foundation infrared video investigation of natural gas drilling and processing sites in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia found invisible air pollution rising from almost three quarters of those examined.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) sent the video to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today with a letter explaining that the video shows that emissions from drilling sites are not being adequately controlled, and that proposed new EPA regulations for the drilling industry do not recognize the extent of the problem or a solution.  CBF's video provides important new evidence that "the industry is not sufficiently limiting the amount of leaks from drilling and processing operations,"Jon Mueller, CBF's Vice President for Litigation, wrote to the federal agency.

The video, which can be viewed by clicking here, demonstrates the need for a comprehensive federal study of the environmental and human health impacts of the growing amount of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the region’s Marcellus shale formation, according to two experts who reviewed CBF’s videotapes.

The images also raise troubling questions about exemptions for gas drilling rigs from air pollution control permits and regulation in federal and state law, the experts said.

North Dakota’s most spectacular state park to be sacrificed for oil

INFORUM.com
May 1, 2012

The state of North Dakota is losing its largest and most spectacular state park. Little Missouri State Park, 20 miles north of Killdeer, is literally being given to the oil industry.

The state of North Dakota is losing its largest and most spectacular state park. Little Missouri State Park, 20 miles north of Killdeer, is literally being given to the oil industry. Burlington Resources, a division of ConocoPhillips, has been given permission to drill as many as 80 wells in a 30,000-acre giant unitized lease area surrounding the park and possibly as many as 10 within the park boundaries.

Most of the currently planned wells will be visible from within the park and some will disrupt use of horseback and hiking trails. Roads, pipelines, gas flares and sludge pits will seriously degrade access to the park and use of it for recreation and camping.

The State Parks Department apparently is not at all worried because the oil company has promised... 

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Does ANY of this look like it's been remediated? NEVER LET 

THE FRACKERS FOOL YOU! The industry will enter the land, scrape any and all vegetation and wildlife from it, contaminate it with daily spills of up to several hundreds of thousands gallons of toxic industrial waste and walk away from it... Reclamation is just a word that doesn't mean much to the industry.

Photo Credits: Shane Davis

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Call to Action: STOP THE FRACK ATTACK National Day of Action on July 28th, 2012

Please join us at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday July 28 to make this the largest rally in history to Stop the Frack Attack and fight for a sustainable energy future!

Please make your plans now to journey to Washington D.C. this summer! Join with Delaware Riverkeeper Network and thenationwide coalition that today declared the time is NOW to use our collective power to end oil and gas drilling that harms public health, water and air quality, and the climate.

From California to New York, from North Dakota to Texas, people across the country are converging on the U.S. Capitol to tell Congress, the President and the world to end the rush to drill and STOP THE FRACK ATTACK.

This is the right time and the right place for all of us to take a public stand in the nation’s capital where ultimately the decisions about our nation’s energy future will be made.  We are calling upon Congress and the President to stand with communities who want to protect their land, their health, their water, and their environment and to develop and support sustainable energy sources, not fossil fuels.

Instead of pushing for the increased use of oil and gas, elected officials and public agencies must insist that the industry stop dirty and dangerous drilling and PUT COMMUNITIES FIRST.  As a first step, we need them to close loopholes in environmental laws – laws that every other industry must follow.

Join us on the U.S. Capitol Grounds on July 28^th and join community leaders, celebrities and policymakers calling for a truly clean, fossil fuel free energy future.

To find out more:

• Go to http://bit.ly/DelawareRiverKeeperNetwork-StopTheFrackAttack and sign up to come to day of action in D.C.
• Follow us @stopfrackattack Twitter.
• Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/stopthefrackattack
• And bring your family and tell you friends, come to the Capitol on July 28!

State declares health emergency at Windsor oil drilling site

Coloradoan.com
May 1st, 2012

Colorado oil and gas regulators have declared an emergency at an oil well being drilled atop an old landfill on the Larimer County side of Windsor – a well that generated a groundswell of public concern when it was announced last year.

A drilling rig became unstable last Wednesday as Ranchers Exploration Partners was drilling an oil well atop the long-shuttered Johnston Landfill in Windsor, a site near the River West and Ridge West subdivisions south of Colorado Highway 392.

The well site is on a hill above a gulch that drains into a nearby reservoir along the Poudre River.

After Greeley-based Ranchers Exploration attempted to stabilize the drilling rig with cement, landfill debris and other trash were seen being expelled from the well bore, and the rig lost “circulation of fluids, likely due to the presence of highly permeable unconsolidated landfill materials,” according to a cease-and-desist order the state served Ranchers last week.

In last week’s cease and desist order, Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Acting Director Thomas Kerr declared an emergency because Ranchers’ operation poses an environment and public health risk.

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