THE CASE AGAINST HYDROFRACKING - Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know - page 53

formations lie 1.5 times deeper than those in the United States, and require more
fluid to hydrofrack. 10 And in hot, dry nations with fast-growing populations—such
as India, Australia, and South Africa—water is already a grave concern; hydro-
fracking will therefore add further competition for limited supplies.
Does Hydrofracking Contaminate Groundwater?
Oil- and gas-bearing shale formations deep underground are often connected by
cracks, fissures, and channels to water-bearing formations. The latter hold ground-
water, and many worry that chemicals, seeping methane, and other pollutants will
contaminate people's drinking supplies.
Even in the best-run hydrofracturing operations, there are many opportunities
for water pollution, a risk that increases significantly with wildcat operators who
sometimes manage their drill sites less carefully than well-established firms.
Engineers who investigate industrial accidents note that as equipment and in-
dustrial processes grow increasingly sophisticated, and reach deeper and deeper
into the earth, the “human factor” often leads to costly mistakes. 11 Bad judgment
can lead to well blowouts. Poorly built or damaged, boreholes and pipelines—such
as those used to transport wastewater to treatment plants—can allow pollutants
to flow into groundwater. Accidents involving trucks or the storage of fracking
chemicals can lead to chemical spills, and the runoff will eventually be flushed
into rivers, streams, or aquifers. Wastewater storage ponds allow volatile com-
pounds—such as benzene, xylene, and naphthalene—to evaporate into the atmo-
sphere, and can overflow when it rains. 12
Hydrofrackers say they use an array of sophisticated engineering tech-
niques—such as magnetic resonance imaging and sonar—to study their under-
ground explosions and carefully control the extent of the fractures in shale forma-
tions, and thus the spread of fluids. 13 They say that the actual fracturing happens
thousands of feet from water supplies and below layers of impenetrable rock that
seals the world above from what happens down below. Yet this is not always the
case. Even if freshwater supplies are sealed off from the region where fluid is in-
jected, the gas well itself can create openings in rock: a borehole is surrounded by
cement, but often there are large empty pockets, which can cause buckling, or the
cement itself can crack under pressure. The powerful pumps can cause gas and flu-
ids to leak into surrounding water supplies. 14