This is a stunning and horrible development:
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the United States has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.
But not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush. In Pennsylvania, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been the only state letting its waterways serve as the primary disposal place for huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. State regulators, initially caught flat-footed, tightened the rules this year for any new water treatment plants, but let existing operations continue discharging water into rivers.
No one is safe from the invisible hand. Drink well water? No problem, they’ll pollute that with seepage from the chemicals they pump into the ground. Drink what we call “city water?” No problem, you can get your barium and strontium when they pollute your drinking water with the chemicals they pump out of the ground into the rivers that feed our water treatment systems.
And when we all have cancer and there are a rash of birth defects in twenty years, we can throw up our hands and wonder how it all happened? Hoocoodanode?
Kryptik
Hint, assholes: When George Carlin said that ‘the more cancer you got, the healthier you are’, he was being facetious.
Osprey
Can’t recommend enough the HBO (I think it was HBO?) documentary GasLand. It goes into great detail the devastation caused by fracking, the illnesses it has spawned, and what they’re planning to do.
When you can light your tap-water on fire (yes, actually light the water on fire), you know Capitalism is alive and well.
Bubblegum Tate
But if we regulate businesses, that’s job-killing FASHIZM, don’tcha know. The free market will fix this.
singfoom
Whatever we do, we musn’t limit the freedom of corporations to socialize risk and privatize profits. Sounds like some people forgot their filters. The free market has already solved this. Everyone should buy triple osmosis filters to prevent drinking bad water.
See? Everyone wins. The filter maker, the polluter and the happy consumer who gets their water clean through filtration.
What, what you say? Filtration at the county/town level? That sounds like socialism to me…
Dave
How is this even legal? Doesn’t the Clean Water Act regulate this kind of stuff?
sb
Along with global warming, this is the scariest “I don’t want to think about it” topic in my life. That the water we drink–bottled or otherwise–causes cancer.
It’s like the inevitable big earthquake here in Southern California; who the hell wants to think about it?
Yutsano
@Dave: IIRC Dubya gutted the Clean Water Act with well-placed cronies and underfunding of the EPA. So the violators just charged on forward. Plus Pennsylvania is run by TeaTards who will assert states’ rights if the feds try to intervene. It’s always all about the Benjamins.
RosiesDad
If you haven’t seen the movie, Gasland, find it and watch it. And be afraid. Be very afraid. Because you will see brown water coming out of previously pure wells and water coming out of faucets that you can light on fire.
And what they (Halliburton, among other companies that produce fracking fluid) is secret and proprietary. Because that’s how Dick Cheney’s energy commission wanted it.
Also, contact your Congressman about supporting the FRAC Act, that would remove the exemptions that were put into the 2005 Clean Water Act. (They only call it Clean Water or Clean Air if it gives someone permission to pollute it more!)
zmulls
Our new Republican Governor here in PA will certainly put a stop to that sort of unhealthy but profitable practice by energy companies
Loneoak
Thirds on the GasLand recommendation. Should be classified as a horror movie, not a documentary.
funluvn
Oh, really now?
Is it just me, or do State officials, energy firms and treatment plant companies seem more interested in fattening their personal bank accounts as opposed to making sure the American people are safe?
Nah…couldn’t be
Punchy
I’m sure TeaTard Toomey will be quick to pass legislation outlawing this. Just as soon as gays are locked up and more tax cuts are passed.
Western PA is fuuuuuuuuuucked.
Poopyman
I thought, from reading the title, that this was written by a Mexican.
catclub
I was figuring that JCole objected to Pennsylvania based drillers copying the techniques for poisoning the populace they had perfected in WVa.
Or have the guys up north surpassed their teachers?
Poopyman
@zmulls: Yeah, as a native Pennsylvanian now living along the Chesapeake Bay, I really wanna thank you folks for that.
Frack on, mofos!
Brick Oven Bill
The EPA governs all water in the United States. The Maximum Contaminant Level for Strontium-90 in American drinking water is 8 picocuries per liter, a level which has been determined by conservative scientists to not pose a threat to human health. Similar MCLs exist for all identified contaminants.
States may impose their own regulations that are stricter than these MCLs, but in no case regulations that are less strict.
One characteristic of the Teabagger is that when some moron writes something stupid in a local newspaper, the Teabagger does not fly off into hysterics.
Nate
@Yutsano – More than just cronies and a weakened EPA, hydro-fracking is specifically exempt from the Clean Water Act.
But unless you’re getting cancer from your drinking water, are you really free?
celticdragonchick
Welcome to fracking.
@Dave:
It should, but the gas companies just deny that they are responsible for watershed and aquifer degradation. They have a lot of lawyers…and sympathetic GOP appointed judges. Moreover, fracking was exempted from a host of fderal regulations under the last president.
Nellcote
Is T Boone Pickins involved in the gas exploitation? He seems to have been very quiet since the ’08 election when he was pushing natural gas.
Yutsano
@Nellcote: No one was buying his bullshit so he went back to traditional money-grubbing capitalism. Another thing to blame Texas for I guess.
srv
Darwin was right about evolution, particularly in places like Pennsylvania.
Triassic Sands
You know, if we just turn the country over to Republicans in 2012, both the Medicare and (imaginary) Social Security financial problems will disappear. Following in the path of Mother Russia after the Soviet Union broke up, we could get our average life expectancies down to the point where the only people living long enough to collect Medicare or Social Security will be the super-rich. If everyone will cooperate and die at 59, both Medicare and Social Security will be solvent forever. And we can accomplish that without raising taxes!!!
Huggy Bear
@Brick Oven Bill:
You have obviously never read the “Letter to the Editor” section of any local newspaper on the planet.
I can’t honestly say that you should have.
Comrade Dread
But Al Gore is fat and has a big house.
Nellcote
@Yutsano:
The issues of Pickins/gas/water have come up before.
Morbo
Pshaw, don’t be such a wuss, man up. –Ed Rendell
ChrisS
In rural NY, the poor folk who have been fucked over by capitalism for the last thirty years were knocking each other over to sign gas leases. Most of the worthless farmland and wood lots are being sold off without mineral rights these days.
With oil primed for another run at $150/bbl and salaries going down, down, down … people are going to try their best to out exploit each other.
Some outfits are predicting $5/gln gas by 2012. Who does that fuck the most? One analyst said that “well, that’s only an extra ~$1200 a year for most people.” But DUDE not everyone makes enough where an extra $100/month is easily absorbed or gets raises (gotta fight inflation!) to pay for that extra cost. Convenient how Greenspan and Reagan legislated energy costs right out of inflation.
Gas drilling isn’t going to be stopped.
Shinobi
@Brick Oven Bill:
So, tell me BoB who is president these days in Opposite Land?
The Bobs
@Brick Oven Bill:
“The Maximum Contaminant Level for Strontium-90 in American drinking water is 8 picocuries per liter”
BOB, they are talking about naturally occurring, non-radioactive strontium in the article. Strontium-90 is artificially produced as a result of nuclear fission. Strontium-90 is much more dangerous than natural strontium.
Since you are evidently stupider than the “moron” who wrote the article, what does that make you?
drkrick
That’s because he took up permanent residence in hysterics some time ago.
Anon
“Gas drilling isn’t going to be stopped.”
I suspect this is true. So, the smart move for a public official to wait as long as possible before allowing fracking in your state. Diminshing supply=higher price. Also means other states get to do the beta-testing on which fracking chemicals cause cancer and which don’t.
And when you do the fracking, let’s keep it in perspective. It would be total insanity for New York State to mess around with the NYC watershed. The city is a sustainable resource, and this drilling is a one-shot, it’s utter lunacy to sacrifice the city for the drilling and New York’s water supply would be so expensive to rebuild that it would undoubtedly be a greater loss than any gains from fracking.
jayjaybear
I’m sure that Governor Corbett’s state environmental agency is going to crack down hard on this practice, right?
Sorry…I just injured myself laughing.
debbie
I’m guessing this is similar to a story on 60 Minutes earlier this season on fracking. One guy turned on his kitchen faucet, lit his Bic, and then dodged the ensuing explosion.
Erikthe Red
Well now…
Aren’t you glad we elected a Dem President and Congress just a couple of years ago?
lacp
Hey, they can poison our water and we won’t burden them with un-Galtian severance taxes…..it’s win-win!
Paris
Some of the test wells drilled in NY resulted in the waste water being considered radioactive waste. Apparently there’s a bit of radium down there. Hopefully the cost of disposing of millions of gallons of radioactive waste will be enough to stop them from doing to NY what they’re doing to PA.
burnspbesq
When there is no mechanism for embedding the costs of future environmental remediation in the price of the product, outcomes like this are inevitable. Cheep gaz naow, and fuck the future!
There are two ways to keep resource-extraction companies from mucking up the environment: make it illegal, or make it prohibitively expensive. We currently don’t do either very well. So you have this. And you have mountaintop removal. And you have the Macondo well. And you have the Exxon Valdez. And you have Alberta. And. And. And.
Paris
@celticdragonchick: Thank Dick Cheney for inserting the exemptions from any environmental oversight of fracking.
Steve M.
The one possible firebreak here is New York City, where I think even upscale people drink the tap water, which comes from the Catskills, two hours north, and is actually surprisingly good. (City employees actually work up there to keep it potable.) But part of the Marcellus Shale is in the Catskill watershed, and the driller want to drill there. The “No Fracking Way” bumper stickers are already showing up up there — but if there’s a limit on this, it’ll be because Bigfoot NYC says no. And that’s not a bad thing (even though it’ll probably just mean fracking will happen in the parts of the state that aren’t delivering water to NYC — and no, don’t count on Cuomo to ban fracking here, though I suppose it’s possible).
MsInformed
I seem to vaguely remember natural gas “fracking” was exempted from environmental impact studies as one of the “features” Bush-Cheney’s energy bill.
ChrisS
even though it’ll probably just mean fracking will happen in the parts of the state that aren’t delivering water to NYC
And add to the divide between upstate and downstate. “The foofy liberals want to say how we can use our own land!”
Apparently there’s a bit of radium down there.
A few million years worth of alluvial deposits tend to collect all sorts of things. Many things that would be better left in place.
brendancalling
holy shit, i cannot WAIT to move out of this idiotic state. To call the leadership “retarded” is an insult to retarded people. To call them satanic is an insult to the devil himself.
glad we’ve been stocking up on bottled water. too bad i’ll have to use it for brewing.
it’s going to be really fucking funny, in a laughing at way, when Philadelphians can’t drink the water anymore. it was actually pretty tasty.
lacp
@brendancalling: Yeah, I was looking forward to splitting from Philly and joining my GF in Sarasota. Unfortunately Florida has been taken over by wingnuts, too.
sukabi
@Dave: Gas & coal companies got an huge exemption from the Clean Water Act courtesy of W and his cronies… so technically it’s not illegal…
kc
I don’t know why terrorists bother targeting Americans. Give us enough time, we’ll kill ourselves off.
les
@Osprey:
Seconded; Gaslands is an awesome, and awful, film.
foonman50
Damn at least in Hell Hole Oklahoma they pump that water down disposal wells that at least are in non-porous rock formations..
Walker
I live in fracking war-central. Inside my county, everywhere you see there are no-fracking signs. Once you cross the county line, the “friends of natural gas” have their “pass the gas” signs everywhere.
EDIT: Of course it helps that we actually have jobs in my county.
Seth
@kc: LOL … but of course you realize, that IS the strategy ObL has been implementing.
Jason
I mentioned this a couple of times before, but I’ll repeat myself: the regulatory branch of PA’s DEP that deals with the Shale and frac water (the BOGM) is the only branch that sees growth, as accredited biologists, geologists, and engineers working at 42k/yr elsewhere go there specifically for the money – getting in means you will likely soon have a job in the industry, which is better than a job with the state.
More important, however, is the requirement that management in that sector have had experience in a gas drilling firm. The entire regulatory structure is based on conflicts of interest. It doesn’t really matter, since most problems are neither reported or acted upon by the understaffed BOGM. Hanger and Perry (DEP and BOGM heads, respectively) have neither the legal wherewithal nor the political desire to take on the Coalition. Certainly not in a state that venerates Tom Ridge for his environmental acumen, and with Rendell looking to cement an economic legacy.
I can tell you one thing: DEP employees, more often than not, hate having to go into a courtroom. And not just because DEP management, more often than not, doesn’t construct regulatory investigations in line with their legal obligations. In the Shale, however, the laws are so toothless that the Coalition companies can just sue when (if) they are charged with a compliance issue, and every day that one or all of the handful of DEP people are in court is a day they’re not out in the field.
Taylor
So do carbon filters remove any or all of the contaminants? I’ve been filtering my tap water for years, after reading A Civil Action. In the movie, the EPA comes riding to the rescue at the end. In the real world, as described in the book, the EPA drug its feet and hung the plaintiffs out to dry.
If carbon filters are no good, I assume the only alternative is reverse osmosis, which is a bit more of a PITA.
At least I can rely on Gov Christie to stop this happening in Joisey…
Lilybart
@Dave: No, Cheney made sure that fracking was exempt.
Lilybart
The world has to work for people first. Isn’t that what being a Democrat is about? Sure we need the natural gas, but we have to protect PEOPLE FIRST. Make sure we don’t poison their water or destroy the land, then get the gas.
Why is this so hard?
This is how we can decide policy on any number of issues, all of them really.
Lilybart
@Taylor: Seriously? You think Christie is going to protect the people? I don’t.