Drilling for natural gas may not be our only concern now that a new way of expanding our water resources has been introduced recently. As mentioned in a New York Times article on March 1, this process “involves pumping millions of gallons of water into the ground for each well and can leave significant amounts of hazardous contaminants in the water that comes back to the surface.”
This basically started a movement to recycle wastewater, which one drilling company sees as a way of reducing water demand and further decreasing the disposal of water. Chief operating officer of Aqua-Pure/Fountain Quail Water Management Brent Halldorson agrees with the benefits, saying that natural gas burns cleaner than coal in its production of electricity.
But in order to better judge exactly how complicated and possibly dangerous this process is, let’s break it down according to the way 90 percent of well operators in Pennsylvania do it.
Pennsylvania well operators use what is called “hydrofracking.” This is the injection of water with sand and chemicals at high pressures in order to break up rock formations and release the gas.
Anywhere between 10 to 40 percent of the water injected resurfaces within the first few weeks of the process. The waste is often “salts or sludge at high concentration with radioactive materials,” among other components that are extremely dangerous to people and aquatic life.
What is more shocking is that sometimes these corrosive chemicals are sold to road workers to eliminate snow in the winter, and when the snow melts, the water containing these substances is inevitably returned to the waterways.
Many authorities warn against this, and three government officials have resigned because of the potential dangers of the process that would be harmful in the long run. Former secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection John Hanger renounced his position, saying that he felt government needed to increase regulation of radioactivity in water treatment plants.
Pennsylvania authorities aware of these effects responded by setting up a cap on the Toxic Dissolved Solids — often containing radioactive material — and have continued to increase the regulatory staff on this new law.
Pennsylvania reports from this past December point out that water recycling increased from 20 percent to 38 percent in the last six months. However, other industry representatives have claimed that the water-recycling rate is up to 90 percent.
So, when all is said and done, is it really worth risking the well-being of our environment in order to preserve water? I’d say it’s rather ironic having to pick between water — the most important element to human survival — and the habitat it originates from, our environment.
Nayelli Carrillo is a junior journalism major and contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
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