Is Fracking Safe?

It May Depend on What You Mean By "Fracking"

A new study by Thomas Darrah of Duke University and four colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academcy of Sciences, suggests that there has been significant contamination of the ground water from natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania and Texas, but this contamination is not due to the process of hydraulic fracturing itself. Rather it is caused by leakage of methane, the primary ingredient in natural gas, and other chemicals near the surface due to faulty construction of the well.

The researchers took 133 water samples from drinking water wells—113 of them from along the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and 20 from the Barnett Shale in Texas. Through chemical analysis, they were able to tell whether each sample was contaminated, and if so, from where the contimation had come. I'm not knowledgeable enough in chemistry to understand the testing that was done, so I rely on the fact that this was a peer-reviewed journal.

They found eight clusters of contaminated wells—seven in Pennsylvania and one in Texas. The cluster in Texas consisted of five of the twenty samples they took. They don't say how many samples were included in the seven Pennsylvania clusters. From eyeballing their charts, it looks like about 20-25% of their samples were contaminated. However, the wells were not randomly selected. The researchers had focused on areas where contamination was suspected.

The chemical analysis indicated that four of the eight clusters were due to leakage around the cement used to seal the outside of the well, three were due corroded or poorly joined steel tubing used to drill into the ground, and the last was due to “underground mechanical well failure.”

Diagram by Howarth and Engelder (2011)

In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, fracking fluid is forced into the shale at high pressure in order to release the natural gas contained in it. The concern is that fracking might create breaks in the undreground rock formations, through which either natural gas or fracking fluid might leak upward and contaminate drinking water. None of the contamination came from far enough below the surface to indicate that this type of contamination had occurred.

Unlike last week's study of the correlation between fracking sites and health problems, this study received generous coverage by the corporate media. The general spin seemed to be that “fracking is safe.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a McClatchy article about the study on the front page. Two days later, they reprinted a Bloomsberg op-ed entitled “Fracking is not the threat.” The threat, it seems, is drilling company carelessness, which can be avoided through government regulations, regular inspections, and fines for poor performance.

The coverage is superficial in at least two respects. First, while there is no evidence that fracking in the narrow sense--that is, hydraulic fracturing, per se--has caused contamination, fracking in a broader sense--the fracking boom--is certainly responsible for ground water contamination. Regulation and oversight of the drilling industry will not be accomplished easily, especially in a state like Pennsylvania, where the state government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry.

Secondly, the absence of evidence of leakage due to fracking, per se, does not necessarily mean that there is none and the process is safe. Methane and fracking fluid from deep in the shale may simply take a longer time to reach the surface than chemicals that leak from at or near the surface. Maybe decades. The Darrah study may simply have been done too soon.

Meanwhile, there is accumulating evidence of another problem caused by natural gas drilling. A new report published in the Bulletin of the Siesmological Society of America shows a significant increase in earthquakes in the Raton Basin of Colorado and New Mexico since 2001. Fracking began there in 1999. As in previous studies, most of the earthquakes are located within 5 kilometers of waste water injection wells, rather than near sites where hydraulic fracturing has taken place. I guess that means that fracking is “safe,” but it doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the waste water.

You may also be interested in reading:

Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

Fracking and Public Health, Part 2

La Terra Trema

Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

An Important First Study is Published

Corporations that engage in mining and manufacturing are extremely fortunate that Americans cannot be randomly assigned to places of residence. This prevents researchers from doing true experiments--that is, randomly assigning people to experimental and control groups to study the effects of air, water and soil pollution on public health. As a result, when epidemiologists, who study the spatial distribution of health and illness, find evidence of illness concentrated in the vicinity of sources of industrial pollution, it its always possible for corporations to claim that something else—known or unknown—is responsible. Correlation does not mean causation.

On Wednesday, what is to my knowledge the largest scientific study relating proximity to natural gas wells to human health, conducted by a team led by Peter Rabinowitz of the Yale School of Medicine, was released online by the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Previous evidence of an association between natural gas drilling and illness had come either from case studies or convenience—that is, nonrandom—samples.

Photo by Ruhrfisch

The study was done in Washington County, south of Pittsburgh, which had 624 active natural gas wells, 95% of which utilized hydraulic fracturing. A set of 38 contiguous rural communities were selected for study, to avoid urban areas unlikely to have ground-fed wells. Within these communities, 760 geographic points were randomly chosen and the nearest residence was selected for study. Some sites were excluded due to duplication, because there were no homes nearby, or because the house did not have a ground-fed well. This left 255 eligible households, 180 (71%) of which agreed to participate. Forty-seven households refused to participate, and researchers were unable to contact residents of the remaining homes.

Participants were interviewed in their homes in the summer of 2012 by trained survey researchers who followed a prepared script. The survey made no reference to natural gas drilling. Researchers were unaware of the home's proximity to the nearest gas well. (Of course, this precaution failed if a drilling rig was visible from the front porch.) An adult member of the household was asked questions assessing the health status and symptoms of each member of the household—a total of 492 people. Participants were paid $25. Participating households were divided into those within 1 kilometer (.6 miles) of a natural gas drilling site, those between 1 and 2 km, and those more than 2 km from the nearest site.

Respondents were asked about six types of health problems: dermal, upper respiratory, lower respiratory, gastrointestinal, neurological and cardiovascular. The following variables were statistically controlled: age, gender, education, occupation, the presence of smokers or pets in the home, and awareness of nearby environmental hazards. Statistically significant results were obtained in two of the six health areas, dermal and upper respiratory.

• Upper respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, itchy eyes and nosebleeds, were reported by 39% of those living within a km of a drilling site but only 18% of those who lived more than 2 km away. Both the near and intermediate groups reported significantly more upper respiratory symptoms than the far group.
• The number of people suffering from dermal problems was smaller, but the association was stronger. Thirteen percent of those living nearest to a gas well suffered from skin problems, such as rashes, itching and burning, but only 3% of those living the farthest away. The near group reported significantly more dermal symptoms than the far group.

The authors do not claim that their data show a causal relationship between drilling and health problems. However, they speculate that, if natural gas drilling is responsible for these skin and respiratory issues, it could have happened through three pathways: (1) pollution of ground water, including the water in their wells; (2) air pollution from the drilling site; and (3) stress due proximity to a drilling site. Noise is a particularly potent stressor. Supporting the stress hypothesis is the fact that those who were aware of nearby environmental hazards reported more skin and respiratory symptoms, although the relationship between proximity and symptoms was still significant when the effect of awareness was statistically removed.

Whenever a relationship between industrial pollution and illness is found, the most likely alternative explanation is the indirect involvement of social class. Locations that are close to sources of pollution are usually undesirable places to live. Property values are lower and people living nearby have lower incomes. We know that, for a variety of reasons, lower income Americans are in poorer health. However, this explanation is weakened somewhat by the fact that almost all the natural gas wells in Washington County were drilled within the last 5-6 years. This allowed less time for migration to occur and for pockets of poverty to form around the drilling sites.

Because the researchers relied on self-report data, it's possible that people living close to drilling sites exaggerated their symptoms—although they might also have had reasons to minimize them. The fact that the results were still strong when awareness of environmental hazards was controlled argues against this interpretation. Future researchers should consider conducting actual medical examinations of the participants. This would of course be much more expensive and logistically challenging.

The 71% completion rate is well above average for surveys. However, it might be argued that people experiencing illnesses that they attributed to local drilling were more anxious to tell their story, and that this contributed to an overestimation of the percentage with health problems. However, the refusal rate did not vary significantly with distance from the nearest drilling site.

The health problems detected in the study were among the least serious included in the survey. Since most of those surveyed had only been living near a gas well for a short time, the authors say they were not surprised that diseases with longer latencies, such as heart conditions or cancers, were not yet associated with proximity to a drilling site.

The research was supported by a grant from Pittsburgh's Heinz Foundation, along with four other non-profit sources. The authors thanked the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project for “assistance with the community survey.” They conclude by calling for further research, including “longitudinal assessment of the health of individuals living in proximity to natural gas drilling activities, medical confirmation of health conditions, and more precise assessment of contiminant exposures.”

To be continued in Part 2.

You may also be interested in reading:

Fracking and Public Health, Part 2

Fracking Up Baby

La Terra Trema

La Terra Trema

I can remember a time when, if you raised the possibility that fracking might cause earthquakes, the natural gas industry treated you as if you were a nutcase. But now it's official. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has confirmed that a series of a dozen earthquakes in the Youngstown, OH area, includinging a December 31 earthquake on that measured 4.0 on the Richter scale, were caused by the underground injection of fracking wastewater at the Northstar 1 disposal well. So if you felt the earth move on New Year's Eve, you weren't drunk, you had just been fracked.

While wastewater had been presumed to have caused earthquakes in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Great Britain, the evidence in this case is much stronger. After the first few quakes, ODNR hired seismologists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to investigate. When seismographs were placed in the area, the geologists determined that the epicenters of subsequent quakes were within .8 kilometers of the injection site at the same depth (3 km), and were caused by slippage along a previously unmapped fault.

Operations at the well have been stopped, and ODNR has issued new rules in Ohio. They have banned injections below 8,000 feet. They will require pressure and volume monitoring, and automatic shutoff systems. Finally, they will require electronic tracking of wastewater entering from outside the state. Presumably, there will be no attempt to fine D&L Energy, the owner of the well. Nevertheless, a D&L released a statement disputing the findings, claiming that ODNR opted for “a politically expedient preliminary report that sacrifices true understanding for haste.”

Defenders of fracking were quick to point out that wastewater injection is not the same as fracking, the process by which natural gas is extracted, which also involves underground injection of fluids at high pressure. They said that fracking takes less time than injection of wastewater. Is time the critical variable? Other possibilities would seem to include the volume of fluids deposited in the ground, the depth of the drilling, and the pressure required to do it.

Although disposal of wastewater is only one of many public health problems associated with fracking, it is one of the most serious. There are approximately 144,000 gas wells in the U. S. producing 2 billion gallons of wastewater every day. Wastewater consists not only of fracking fluid, which contains known carcinogens and toxins, but also material brought up to the surface from the shale, including radioactive heavy metals.

There are three options for disposing of wastewater. (1) What they call “recycling” involves diluting it with fresh water and reusing it for subsequent fracking. However, eventually toxins accumulate and it can no longer be reused. (2) At this point, it could be sent to water treatment plants, but most existing plants are inadequate to treat these toxins. Wastewater sent to Western Pennsylvania treatment plants produced measurable increases in bromides, which are linked to cancer and birth defects, in the Monongahela River. (3) That leaves underground injection.

These earthquakes occurred in part because there was an “unmapped”—that is, unknown—fault in the area. What percentage of faults are known? That's unknown. (Duh.) Researchers say the only way to prevent future earthquakes is to do a seismic survey of the area prior to constructing the wastewater facility. Such a survey would cost $10 million per well. I'm sure the industry will be happy to oblige.

Pennsylvania, unlike Ohio, does not even monitor wastewater disposal facilities, but relies on the Environmental Protection Agency to handle permits for these facilities. An EPA spokesman, Jon Capacasa, said this could not have happened on their watch because they require companies seeking permits “to identify known faults . . within a mile of a proposed well site.” (Italics mine.) But of course this fault was unknown. I guess he didn't read the report.

Preempting Democracy

It's been almost two weeks since the final version of Pennsylvania House Bill 1950 was passed and sent to the governor. Meanwhile, I've been wrestling with writer's block.  Stating all the reasons I oppose this bill would require several pages. A less satisfying but more realistic option is to break the task up into smaller parts.

I'm opposed to drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for two main reasons. Briefly:

• Fracking poses long-term dangers to the public health and safety by releasing carcinogens and other toxins into the air and water on which we all depend. It may also threaten the geological stability of the land.
• Further drilling for natural gas will further delay the transition to renewable energy—primarily, wind and solar power—that is essential to avoid dangerous climate change that threatens to end human life on earth in just a few decades.

I'll discuss both of those issues in more detail on another day. This post is just about HB1950. I'll assume there will be more drilling and ask whether we are taxing and regulating it effectively. To say that the bill is industry-friendly is an understatement. But that should be no surprise, since the government of Pennsylvania is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry.

Flaring at a natural gas well in Potter County.  © Joshua B. Pribanic

Impact Fee

First of all, there is the optional impact fee. Each county must decide whether to impose it, which means that gas industry lobbyists will be flocking to the major drilling counties, checkbooks in hand, hoping to play off one county against another. (“If you impose the impact fee and the adjacent county doesn't, we'll leave your natural gas in the ground. And if you believe that . . .”)

The amount of the impact fee is difficult to pin down because it varies with the price of natural gas, but at current natural gas prices, it amounts to an effective tax rate of 2.6%—as opposed to, say, the marginal income tax rate of 28% that most upper middle class Americans pay. This amounts to about $240,000 per well, as compared to $993,700 per well in West Virginia, $878,500 in Texas, and $555,700 in Arkansas.

Sixty percent of the impact fee goes back to the counties to cover local costs, such as police and fire protection, damage to roadways, etc. The remaining 40% is split among state agencies, including some environmental and recreation funds, such as the Growing Greener fund. However, these gains are offset by cuts to environmental and recreation spending in the governor's 2012-2013 budget.

These fees will not even begin to cover the legacy costs of drilling in Pennsylvania. Ultimately, the gas companies will treat Pennsylvania the same way they treat the Third World. They will extract our resources and leave us with a hollowed out shell of environmental destruction. The cleanup costs will be borne by the taxpayers. As the song goes, “find 'em, fool 'em, and forget 'em.” (I think that's how it goes; there may be another “F-word” in there somewhere.)

Health and Safety Standards

The media have dutifully reported the health and safety protections in the bill, such as increased bonding requirements, greater penalties for violations, and setback requirements from homes and waterways. However, the bonds and fines are still inadequate, and the setbacks are a sham, since the bill requires the state to grant a variance from these standards should they deprive a company of its gas rights or if they promise to take protective measures. (For a more thorough critique of the bill's details, see this document from Penn Future.)

There have been over 3000 legal violations by natural gas companies in the last four years. The Environmental Protection Agency's recent decisions to investigate the effects of natural gas drilling in Susquehanna and Washington counties was widely interpreted as a lack of confidence in Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enforce the law, which seems reasonable if DEP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry.

Preemption

Another provision of HB1950 preempts any local ordinances that regulate natural gas drilling that are stricter than the state standards—which is most of them. It states: “(A)ll local ordinances purporting to regulate oil and gas operations regulated by Chapter 32 are hereby superceded.” Local governments have 120 days to repeal those laws or they lose any impact fees that might be coming to them, plus they will have to pay legal penalties if they are sued by drilling companies.

Preemption is a legal strategy by which corporations and government take away the right to home rule from a community. It can occur with any law, but it often involves environmental issues such as corporate resource extraction or waste dumping. State preemption goes something like this: A bill is passed by the state imposing lax, corporate-friendly standards on the activity in question. Included in the bill is a section making it illegal for county or local governments to impose more stringent standards than those contained in the state law. The bill is often given an Orwellian title claiming to “protect” the very right that is being taken away.

Remember when the legislature passed its partial ban on smoking in restaurants and bars? Establishments that claim to make 20% or less of their revenue from the sale of food were exempt from the ban. Suppose Allegheny County wanted to ban smoking in all businesses that serve food? Sorry. That's preempted. Another example of preemption in Pennsylvania is the 2005 ACRE act, in which the state overruled local ordinances governing farming practices in Pennsylvania.

Of course, should a state impose environmental standards that corporations find to be a nuisance, such as California's gas mileage standards, they will press for federal preemption of state laws. Congress can preempt state and local laws under the supremacy clause of Article VI of the Constitution. Between 2000 and 2005, the feds enacted 27 preemptive laws overturning 92 state statutes.  The trend appears to be growing.

The ultimate in preemption is the World Trade Organization, where a three-person international committee of corporate lawyers have the power to overrule the laws of any country that they deem to be in “restraint of trade.” These dispute resolution tribunals have consistently ruled health, safety and environmental standards to be illegal under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Preemption shifts the decision-making power away from members of the local community who are directly affected by the outcome and gives it to people who don't have to live with the results. The legislators who decide that local communities can't regulate factory hog farms don't have to smell the pig shit. In most cases, it shifts the decision to a level of government where corporations have greater influence, or where they can exert their influence more economically—that is, where fewer people have to be “persuaded” through a combination of lobbying and campaign contributions.

Brian O'Neill of the Post-Gazette said, “We need to elect better poker players to represent is in Harrisburg.” This is typical media talk. It assumes that when our legislators fail to act in the public interest, it is due to incompetence. A more likely explanation is that the public interest is not even a serious issue for our politicians. Their only important constituency is the people who pay for their campaigns. According to Penn Future, Governor Tom Corbett received $1.3 million in contributions from the natural gas industry.

The responsibility for this debacle belongs to the Elephant Party. The Jackasses were excluded from the secret deliberations between the governor, the majority leadership and natural gas industry which produced this bill. But there is no reason to think the result would have been different had there been divided government, or had the Jackasses been in power. (Recall the Rendell administration's similar record on natural gas.) The public interest can be safely ignored because there is no political party in Pennsylvania that represents the public. Democracy has been preempted.