Fracking: Water Quality and Hydraulic Fracturing

Our Future3 REFERENCE: www. epa. gov www. wikipedia. com Documentary: â€Å"GASLAND† Josh Fox 2010 Our Futurejoe cool OUR FUTURE Joe cool Intro. 105 ? Our Future1 Hydraulic fracturing is the propagation of fractures in a rock layer caused by the presence of a pressurized fluid. (wiki 2011). This occurs naturally in nature, but the Hydraulic fracturing that I will speak of in this paper is a process being used by gas companies nationwide. Fracking is currently regulated by the EPA under the clean water act of 2005 (EPA. ov). However, this only partially governs the methods of injecting fluids and the retrieval of such fluids into the earth. It does not govern the types of chemicals that are being allowed to be used, or how much fresh water is wasted (millions of gallons per â€Å"Frack job†) and it does not carry stiff enough penalties for spills or irreversible damage to community’s water supplies. For those of you, who are unfamiliar with this practice, allow me to paint a picture for you. Big gas corporations have researched and found giant fields of natural gas in a layer of rock eight thousand feet deep in the earth’s crust known as the Marcellus shale line, and it is in four different regions in the U. S. spread over thirty states. Historically gas companies would drill for their gas, but in recent history have developed a process of Hydraulic Fracturing which at one job can use one million gallons of fresh water, and over nine hundred chemicals, to include Benzene and various heavy metals (Gasland). Once this mixture is forced ight thousand feet into the earth’s crust it destroys the shale and releases the natural gas. It is a fact that the companies can only recover forty percent of the fluid that is sent into the below. The rest is absorbed by the porous Marcellus shale. It is now being learned that this process is destroying ecosystems and making fresh water tables completely unusable. I don’t know where any of you live and I don’t k now whether you like where you live. But try and imagine if tomorrow you found out that twenty miles away there was a frack site, and the people of your community began getting sick. What would you do? Who would you look to for help? The Our Future2 government is of no use because there are no safeguards in place. What do you do? The only thing you can do is run, but I ask you fellow scholars, what happens when there is nowhere else to run? It is a fact that in Wyoming they are finding contamination in water tables as far away from fracking as forty miles. You tube videos of people igniting their tap water are numbered in the hundreds. These gas companies are poisoning our environment and destroying people’s entire way of life just to make money. Now most of us on some level are concerned about the environment, you don’t have to live in a tree and only eat organic fruits and vegetables to care about the future of earth. You just have to open your eyes and become comfortable to the fact that big corporations dictate government. These people live to make money, at all costs. Through my research on this paper I learned that in the same mountain range that a windmill project is being utilized there is also fracking going on. It is a humbling experience to stand under a windmill and see a frack site. The reason green energy is not being explored further? There’s no money in it.