In November of 2012, I presented a poster at the Geologic Society of America’s national conference. I had Sunday off, so I attended the large morning session on the environmental impacts of fracking. There were 6 different presenters, and many of them disagreed with each other, but I was particularly impressed with Avner Vengosh’s team who had published the first peer-reviewed article about water contamination linked to fracking (see my post from December 7, 2014).
His main findings were that water sources close to drill sites (within a kilometer) were contaminated by methane and other hydrocarbons. The concentrations of hydrocarbons was 17 times that of water sources further from drill sites. He did not, however, find any evidence of produced water contaminating the water supply. (In other words, he did not find traces of the frack fluid getting into ground water.)
Frankly, this seems incongruous with all the reports of water contamination so regularly in the news, and I always felt conflicted. On one hand, I want to believe the professional scientists who are studying this question with reliable, peer-reviewed methods, and on the other hand it is hard to ignore so much news about serious water quality issues.
Today, after reading the Vengosh study of 2011, one of my students asked if his team has done any follow up work. A quick Google search immediately brought up this article: Contamination in North Dakota Linked to Fracking Spills
https://nicholas.duke.edu/about/news/ContaminationinNDLinkedtoFrackingSpills
The article states, “Accidental wastewater spills from unconventional oil production in North Dakota have caused widespread water and soil contamination, a new Duke University study finds. Researchers found high levels of ammonium, selenium, lead and other toxic contaminants as well as high salts in the brine-laden wastewater, which primarily comes from hydraulically fractured oil wells in the Bakken region of western North Dakota. Streams polluted by the wastewater contained levels of contaminants that often exceeded federal guidelines for safe drinking water or aquatic health. Soil at the spill sites was contaminated with radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element found in brines, which chemically attached to the soil after the spill water was released. At one site, the researchers were still able to detect high levels of contaminants in spill water four years after the spill occurred. ‘Until now, research in many regions of the nation has shown that contamination from fracking has been fairly sporadic and inconsistent,’ said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. ‘In North Dakota, however, we find it is widespread and persistent, with clear evidence of direct water contamination from fracking.'”
Not only does this article scientifically confirm that there are some major environmental issues with fracking, but it seems to support my claim that the main problem with fracking isn’t the inherent nature of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling (though this process does seem to cause earthquakes), but that the problem is shoddy work to dispose of the waste water. What we have seen in many news articles is that companies are illegaly dumping their waste. This article also suggests that getting the waste from the site of drilling to the containment site is not always done in a safe or effective manner. “‘The magnitude of oil drilling in North Dakota is overwhelming,’ Vengosh said. ‘More than 9,700 wells have been drilled there in the past decade. This massive development has led to more than 3,900 brine spills, mostly coming from faulty pipes built to transport fracked wells’ flowback water from on-site holding containers to nearby injection wells where it will be disposed underground.'”
Maybe with so much drilling, it is impossible to guarantee that waste will be dealt with in a responsible manner. Would increased oversight, more regulatory personnel, and stricter laws help solve this problem?
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