An oil and gas drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is polluting well water with known carcinogens while causing earthquakes across the United States. Except for Vermont, no other state and federal governmental entity bans the practice. The Safe Drinking Water Act should have protected us but in 2005, the Bush administration exempted the fracking process from the law. The Obama administration have made no effort to reverse this public safety problem either although the Environment Protection Agency began investigating this practice earlier this year.
Fracking injects mix of water, waste waters, sand and carcinogenic chemicals such as isopropanol and propane into the ground. In general, oil and gas drillers consider the injected chemicals a “proprietary recipe” that they will not voluntarily disclose. The industry feels that the process safe as the “fracking fluid” is injected below water tables and therefore cannot contaminate ground water. This argument is flawed as much of the fluid injected percolates up and mixes with ground water. For each oil or gas well, as much as 7.8 million of the mixture is injected into the ground of which approximately 1-2% consists of the carcinogenic proprietary fluid. The U.S. Energy Administration reported that 405,000 wells were drilled over the last decade with varying levels of fluid injected into the ground with the majority of these wells.
If polluted ground water were the only problem, fracking would be a practice in need of tight government supervision. The causation of earthquakes across the United States is of additional concern – particularly here in California. Only this year did a U.S. Geological Survey link fracking to earthquakes as their survey found that 2011 earthquakes levels were six times historic levels of the 20th century and most likely attributable to fracking.
In California, fracking is unregulated and done on top of the San Andreas fault line. The oil and gas industry along with the California Department of Conservation’s Oil, Gas and Geothermal Division state that the practice has been going on for decades with no known negative effects. The problem with this opinion is that the State does not require notification on the use of the process and have very little data to base their opinions on. Studies indicate that lubricants used change the pressure on fault lines induces fractures and earthquakes.
Serge Shapiro, a professor of Free University of Berlin has studied induced seismicity caused by fracking and found that, “You can’t have an earthquake larger than a given fault can provide.” Looking at the Inglewood Oil Fields in Los Angeles that currently use this oil extraction process and run alongside the Newport-Inglewood fault, finds that this area has the potential for a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. If that is not enough to raise concerns, this practice increases the chance of an oil field collapse as happened in 1963 in Baldwin Hills, killing five people and destroying 60 homes. An early indicator that there are serious problems brewing are increased occurrences of home damage such as cracked walls and foundations as well as buckled roadways. Nearby resident Lark Galloway-Gilliam says, “We are looking to our regulatory agencies to protect us, and they are scratching their heads and turning a blind eye.”
State regulators admit that they do not have the information necessary to determine if there is a pending problem. In response, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski of Fremont tried to pass a bill requiring the disclosure of where fracking is used, the chemicals injected into the ground as well as how much water is injected. An industry headed by Halliburton opposed the effort and the bill stalled – never reaching the floor for a vote.
The industry response to heightened concerns? A $747 million lobbying effort on Congress as well as a discreet effort to slow regulatory efforts here in California.
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