The Cost of Cheap Energy?

First you drill a big hole. Then you shoot high pressure water into the hole. Then you get natural gas! Then you contaminate the water supply?

Fracking has reduced natural gas prices by 47%, compared to what it would have been if fracking hadn't entered into the equation. Fracking has dropped gas bills $13 billion (about $200 per year). Fracking is helping the US move towards energy independence in as little as four years. 

Image Courtesy of Brookings

But is fracking contaminating drinking water and poisoning those who live around the drilling pads? It depends who you talk to.

If you ask the EPA, they say that it is largely safe, but name specific instances where groundwater contamination have occurred. Due to the very large number of wells compared to the ones that contaminated water, the EPA states that "hydraulic fracking activities in the US are carried out in a way that have no led to widespread systemic impacts on drinking water resources." So while there are still potential vulnerabilities in the procedure of fracking, there should not be such a large concern about the overall safety of fracking. All of this comes from a recent (June 2015) study. However, there are potential concerns with the study itself, namely the fact that the EPA did not have good pre-fracking water data from each of the areas they looked at, making it quite difficult to accurately assess whether the act of fracking had a detrimental affect on the water supply.

If you ask the companies doing the fracking, of course they say that, if done properly, it has no effect on the groundwater around the wells. One website cites geologist and Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper: "...we can't find anywhere in Colorado a single example of the process of fracking that has polluted groundwater." They further cite the strenuous lengths that companies take in order to ensure that groundwater is protected; things like 'back flow preventers' to ensure one-way water movement through the well and steel / cement shielding along the interior of the well in order to separate the gas production and the environment. You can see a diagram of some of these practices in the image below (click the link in the caption to see a larger image). Whether measures like these are in fact effective in protecting groundwater may still be up for debate, but it still shows that most companies dealing with fracking are putting in a good faith effort to prevent water contamination.

Image Courtesy of energyfromshale.org

If you ask the people who live around these fracking wells, you'll get a completely different story than the ones I've told before. Public Herald, a non-profit news organization, claims that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has gotten 2,309 complains about water in 43% of the counties in which fracking has taken place. A map that charts these in Northeast Pennsylvania is below.

Image Courtesy of BH/NY Friends of Clean Air and Water

Homeowners are also showing water from drinking wells near fracking sites have dissolved methane or other chemicals from fracking, resulting in murky water and odd smells. The methane that may be entering these people's water supply hasn't been imbued with sulfur, meaning that they might not even know if methane may be in their water, as it is odorless.

Water from drinking well near fracking site
Image Courtesy of ecowatch.com

Whether these cases are in fact due to inherent dangers involved in fracking, or whether they are due to carelessness that is allowed to continue due to improper regulation on the industry is a major question that still needs to addressed. The EPA is unable to make definitive conclusions on the topic due to lack of data at this time, and third party sources are not putting out solid claims that they are able to definitively back up. While it cannot be denied that there have been cases where water contamination has been an issue, is it a reason for America to stop the practice? Or is it a signal for lawmakers to ramp up their game and better regulate the industry?