Fracking does not threaten water supplies
A recent article printed in both the Farmington Daily Times and the Carlsbad Current-Argus covered a study by “Physicians for Social Responsibility” that claimed that PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl) in frack fluids were threatening our water supplies.
In 2012, the EPA published a list of chemicals found in frack fluids and PFAS were not included. Further, at least one chemical manufacturer (Thatcher Group, Inc out of Salt Lake) says they haven’t used PFAS in frack fluid for over a decade. Having said that, PFAS are found in everything from cosmetics and cleaning supplies to fabrics and fire retardants. So the fact that some PFAS found their way into some fracks is not surprising nor unique.
Nonetheless, the physicians have no hard evidence of contamination, but use the word “could” ad nauseum through the article. They fan the emotional flames of fear by calling frack fluid a “witches brew of chemicals,” and making statements like “the entire watershed could now be contaminated.”
While facts are no match for emotional innuendo, let me tell you why fracking, with or without PFAS, isn’t threatening our water supplies.
When wells are drilled, several strings of pipe, called casing, are run in the hole and cemented across the shallow fresh water sands. Therefore, neither the frack fluid nor the produced fluid ever come in contact with shallow ground water.
The fractures themselves only grow a few hundred feet from the wellbore. Operators simply aren’t pumping enough volume for the fractures to grow through more than a mile of rock up into the shallow fresh water sands.
By using highly sensitive seismometers, operators can monitor the extent of frack growth. A study looking at thousands of fracks in the Barnett Shale (where the shale boom began) showed that not a single frack grew anywhere close to the surface.
Frack fluid is not a “witches brew," as claimed by the concerned physicians, because the fluids being pumped are 99.5% water and sand. The balance is made up of chemicals, all of them found in one form or another in your house, that primarily inhibit corrosion, protect the formation, and thicken the fluid so it will carry sand into the formation. The primary chemical is muriatic acid that, just like it does in a swimming pool, lowers the PH so that the other chemicals work properly. And just like pool water, while you wouldn’t want to drink frack water, it wouldn’t hurt you if you did. But not to worry, because as the data shows, it is not getting into your drinking water anyway.
So in the end, fracking doesn’t get into ground water and cause health issues to those living nearby. Don’t believe me… believe the EPA under President Barack Obama which in 2015 concluded that fracking poses no direct threat to drinking water. If you don’t believe the EPA, then how about believing independent study after independent study which concluded the same. Who you should not believe are the fearmongering environmental alarmists who try to scare the public with their unsubstantiated inflammatory innuendo.
Ironically, instead of recommending that the EPA ban PFAS across the board, the self-proclaimed socially responsible physicians have bypassed all the common uses and instead have focused on the most unlikely source of exposure… frack fluids. That is because their real agenda is to “phase out of fossil fuel extraction in New Mexico” despite the fact that they (and the rest of the world) are currently dependent on fossil fuels for 80% of their energy. That is dangerously backwards. Like Kodak film, when the technology and infrastructure develop to the point that oil and gas are no longer needed, the industry will go away all on its own. Until then, we need to drill and frack wells, and the best place to do that is here in New Mexico where our state is dependent on the revenue for over one-third of its budget, our landowners get the royalties, our communities get the taxes, and our citizens get the jobs.
This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Fracking does not threaten water supplies
