Water and Power - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 244

“New York State has one of the largest deposits of natural gas in the United States,”
thundered one red-faced legislator that November night. “But the revenues from the gas
won't even come close to equalizing the cost of a new treatment plant. Think about it!”
The crowd whooped and whistled.
Similarly charged meetings have been held in the upstate towns that would be af-
fected by fracking, as well as in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and
Texas. Hydrofracking has split communities and even families.
Fracking is water intensive and dirty. A single hydrofracked well requires from 3 to
8 million gallons of water per day, the rough equivalent of a day's supply for forty thou-
sand people (based on average US use of eighty to a hundred gallons of water per day).
In 2009, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation made a dis-
turbing discovery. In analyzing samples of wastewater brought to the surface by hydro-
fracking, scientists found it to be radioactive. The water contained radium 226, a nat-
urally occurring uranium derivative , at levels 267 times the limit safe for discharge into
the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for drinking water. Tests suggest
the amount of radioactivity in the water was far higher in New York than in many other
places. While the state's Department of Environmental Conservation found that “well
… wastes do not constitute a health risk ” the federal EPA notes “potential risks.”
West of New York City, the Delaware River runs 410 miles long and is considered one
of the cleanest rivers in the East, famous for some of the best fly-fishing in the country.
About 17 million people—including residents of Manhattan and Philadelphia—rely on
its pristine watershed as a drinking supply. But in June 2010, the advocacy group Amer-
ican Rivers named the Delaware “the most endangered river in the country” because of
the threat of fracking. Fears of pollution caused regulators to put a temporary morator-
ium on gas exploration in the Delaware basin until the matter could be studied.
Yet the temptations of natural gas are huge. An industry study released in 2010 sug-
gested that as much as $6 billion in government revenue and 280,000 jobs could be at
stake in the Marcellus Shale region alone.
In 2008, hydrofracked gas wells began to pop up all over the Appalachian town of
Dimock, Pennsylvania (population 1,400). People's drinking water turned brown and
occasionally exploded; pets and farm animals suddenly began to shed hair; dangerous
levels of methane, iron, and aluminum were found in wells; kids grew sores on their
legs; and their parents suffered frequent headaches. In 2009, the state imposed a
moratorium on drilling new wells in Dimock, though existing ones can continue to be
used, and ined Cabot Oil and Gas , a Houston-based energy company, $120,000. Resid-
ents fear that fracking has made their properties worthless and have banded together to
sue Cabot for compensation.