From: Reid Short, Class of 2015, Wakefield High School, Arlington, VA
Published March 3, 2014 11:41 AM

COLLEGIATE CORNER: The faults of fracking



The EPA has finally linked fracking and water pollution together.  The fracking process forces millions of gallons of water into the earth to fracture the rock, usually shale, and releases natural gas.  The water is filled with numerous chemicals that keep the cracks in the rock open so that the natural gas can come out.  Not all the solution can stay down under the earth, or else there would still be high amounts of pressure underground and the gas would not come out of the rock (Helman), so much of the water is pumped back out of the earth and put into waste pits or shipped off in trucks.  These waste pits are simply ditches that have been dug cheaply and sometimes not even lined with plastic or hard clay.  The contaminants are allowed to seep into the ground and wreak havoc on our water supplies as seen in the state of Wyoming.  Thirty-three abandoned waste pits leaked dangerous chemicals, such as the cancer causing benzene and 2-butoxyethanol, into the groundwater.  In 2008, the EPA found water contaminates that could be related to fracking, and another EPA water sampling confirmed that relation.  The EPA and other federal health officials then warned residents not to drink the water for their own safety.  Homeowners were also cautioned to ventilate their homes because of the levels of methane found in their water, which was enough to be lit on fire.  Hydraulic fracturing supporters have long said that geologic layers that they were drilling underneath would be a sufficient barrier to protect groundwater from fracking fluids, and the EPA reports also found that, "Those layers were not sufficient to provide a reliable barrier to contaminants moving upward" (Lustgarten and Kusnetz). 


Fracking image via the Royal Society of Chemistry.


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