Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
in it because the smell stayed on your skin, you couldn't wash clothes
in it.” Another resident said her fi ve children were sick for months, until
the family stopped using tap water for drinking or cooking. “They're
fi ne all day at school, they come home, they get a drink of water, and
that's when they got sick. They would have very, very severe stomach
cramps, and double over, and throw up or have diarrhea.” Another
neighbor worried about her water when a relative showed her that her
tap water could be ignited. “The fl ame from the jug of water was this
high,” she said, indicating about 20 inches, “and that's what my kids
and our family have been drinking.”
The companies consider the chemical composition of their fracking
fl uids proprietary. The composition of fracking fl uid has been unregu-
lated since the oil and gas industry won exemptions in 2005 from federal
environmental laws including the Clean Water Act and the Safe Water
Drinking Act. According to the Endocrine Disruption Exchange reports,
about a third of fracking chemicals may cause cancer; half could damage
the brain and nervous system, and almost 90 percent have the potential
to harm skin, eyes, and other sensory organs.
In late 2009, New York's Department of Environmental Conservation
analyzed thirteen samples of wastewater from drilling in the Marcellus
Shale and found that they contain levels of radioactive radium-226 as
high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and
thousands of times the safe limit for people to drink. Radium is a potent
carcinogen that gives off radon gas, accumulates in edible plants, and
takes 1,600 years to decay. The distribution of radon in wastewater from
the widespread Marcellus Shale is unknown.
It should be noted that the pursuit of money is not restricted to the
natural gas industry. Wayne Smith, a local farmer, said he made about
$1 million in royalties over three years from gas taken from under his
105 acres. But he now wishes he never signed the lease and wonders
whether tainted water is responsible for the recent deaths of four of his
beef cattle and his own elevated blood-iron level.
21
Coal bed methane forms 21 percent of the unconventional gas supply
and is simply methane found in coal seams. It is formed from either a
microbiological process or a thermal process stimulated by depth of
burial. Several venture capital start-ups are experimenting with using
microbes in the laboratory to turn coal into natural gas, as microbes do
in coal mines. The microbes naturally metabolize coal. The theory is that
if you can isolate and breed the very best methanogens (as they are called)
and then inject them into coal seams and abandoned mines, you should
