Dateline: 16 February 2012
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| Sempronius, N.Y. (click to enlarge) |
The more I learn about hydrofracking, the more concerned I get.
And I can’t help but notice that people who are in favor of hydrofracking want those who are concerned about the dangers of hydrofracking to listen to the gas industry “experts.” Well, I may be a country hick but I’m not that gullible!
When it comes to an issue like hydrofracking, where enormous amounts of money are involved, I want my information about the safety of hydrofracking to come from people who understand the technology and are NOT being paid by the gas companies.
That’s why I’m so impressed by Professor Anthony Ingraffea, who I wrote about HERE (click to read article), and why I value his opinion so highly.
Another person whose opinion I value is Paul Hetzler, of Canton, N.Y. Mr. Hetzler worked for the New York State Department of Conservation as an environmental engineering technician. Mr. Hetzler understands geology, and aquifers, and well contamination better than most people, and he is concerned about hydrofracking. In December of 2011, Mr. Hetzler wrote a letter to the Watertown Daily Times. His letter speaks for itself...
Hydrofracking Sure To Contaminate Water
As an environmental engineering technician with NYSDEC Region 5, I managed scores of groundwater remediation projects in the 1990s. I’ve reviewed countless hydrogeologic reports and seen thousands of lab results from contaminated wells. I’m familiar with the fate and transport of contaminants in fractured media, and let me be clear:
Hydraulic fracturing as it’s practiced today will contaminate our aquifers.
Not might contaminate our aquifers. Hydraulic fracturing will contaminate New York’s aquifers. If you were looking for a way to poison the drinking water supply, here in the Northeast you couldn’t find a more chillingly effective and thorough method of doing so than with hydraulic fracturing.
My experience investigating and remediating contaminated groundwater taught me some lessons. There’s no such thing as a perfect well seal. Occasionally sooner, often later, well seals can and do fail, period.
No confining layer is completely competent; all geologic strata leak to some extent. The fact that a less-transmissive layer lies between the drill zone and a well does not protect the well from contamination.
A drinking water well is never in “solid” rock. If it were, it would be a dry hole in the ground. As water moves through joints, fissures and bedding planes into a well, so do contaminants. In fractured media such as shale, water follows preferential pathways, moving fast and far, miles per week in some cases.
In the absence of oxygen (such as under the ground), organic compounds break down infinitesimally slowly. Chemicals injected into the aquifer will persist for many lifetimes.
When contamination occurs—and it will occur— we will all pay for it, regardless of where we live. Proving responsibility for groundwater contamination is difficult, costly and time-consuming, and while corporate lawyers drag out proceedings for years, everyone’s taxes will pay for the subsurface investigations, the whole-house filtration systems, the unending lab analyses.
I’d love to see hundreds more jobs created. But not if it means hundreds of thousands using well water will be at a high risk of contamination. Not if it means every New Yorker will be on the hook for the cost for cleanup and for creating alternate water supplies. If your well goes bad, neither you, nor your children, nor their children will ever be able to get safe, clean water back. That’s too high a price.
Drill for gas, absolutely, but develop safe technologies first.
Paul Hetzler
Canton
I did some further looking on the internet about Paul Hetzler and came up with this gas industry piece disputing Paul Hetzler's claims.
The author immediately loses credibility by stating that hydrofracking has been successfully done in New York since the 1950s. Well of course hydrofracking has been done in New York since then, but the hydrofracking technology being used now is far different (and far more dangerous) than it was back then, as Professor Ingraffea explains so well.
To say that hydrofracking is safe now because it was safe back then is not only obscuring the truth, it's a dangerous distortion of the truth.
Another article regarding Paul Hetzler's letter offers further insights from Hetzler...
“I don’t claim that every potable well in a hydraulic fracturing zone would become contaminated, but some certainly will.”
“Subsurface conditions vary considerably, and the results of injecting pollutants into the aquifer at a particular point are hard to predict,” “Even small heterogeneities [differences] in a stratum can lead to different outcomes.”
“Pumping rates also influence whether a well takes a hit – two neighboring wells might become contaminated while a third remains OK.”
“Since contamination can show up months or even years after a pollution event, I’d advise all residents near a hydrofracturing operation to get monthly lab analysis on their water for several years after drilling ceases.”I don't know about you but I can't afford to pay several hundred dollars a month for the appropriate water test for years after hydrofracking ceases in Sempronius (not to mention while it is going on). I suppose that I might be able to afford such an expense if I were getting a big payoff from the gas companies, but I'm not. And if I were, I'd take the money and go someplace where they don't do hydrofracking, someplace where I know the water is safe.... someplace like Sempronius is now.
Am I in favor of a moratorium on hydrofracking in Sempronius? You better believe it!