Don’t Frack the Delaware

Don’t Frack the Delaware and Risk Our Water and Health

By Betty Tatham, Guest Opinion, Intelligencer, Nov. 16, 2011, and Bucks County Courier Times, Nov. 17, 2011

The Delaware River Basin Commission was created 50 years ago by Congress “to protect the water quality, quantity and scenic beauty of the Delaware River Basin.”  That protection is now in jeopardy, if 3 of the 5 Commissioners: Governor Christy, Governor Corbett, Governor Cuomo, Governor Markell and Col. Larsen, who represents President Obama and the federal government, vote to approve the just published Revised Natural Gas Regulations on November 21.  The public meeting will be held at the War Memorial Theater in Trenton between 10:00 a.m. and noon and it will be followed by a question and answer period.  The regulations are available on the Commission’s website. [Please sign and circulate this petition and fact sheet, to be delivered to the Commission by the Delaware Riverkeeper prior to the November 21 meeting.]

The revised regulations will allow discharge of toxic hydraulic fracturing flowback and wastewater (that come up with the natural gas) into streams and rivers in the Delaware Basin through treatment or sewer plants.  Studies have shown that some of the chemicals used in drilling and fracturing are carcinogenic and sometimes also radioactive and some cannot be removed, only diluted.

They will allow deep injection wells, called “Underground Injection Control,” in the regulations.  These waste wells are hydraulically fractured at great depth to make room for flowback and wastewater disposal under high pressure.  They have been linked with earthquakes in at least 4 states, including Arkansas, where more than 1,000 quakes were recorded by the Geological Survey in the Guy-Greenbrier area in 7 months and one was at 4.7 magnitude.  The earthquakes greatly subsided after the two deep injection wells were shut down last spring.  These wells will be located within the Delaware basin, but be regulated by the state in which they are located.

“Impoundments,” or frack ponds, are also approved by the regulations to store and treat flowback and wastewater; however, many of the toxins, including heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, etc., can only be diluted.  These huge open “Central Impoundments” will serve several well pads and numerous wells and they can overflow during flooding, endangering groundwater, soil and nearby aquifers.  The wind can also whip toxic chemicals and methane into the air and carry them 100 miles or more during a storm.

Compressor stations will be used to compress the natural gas before moving it through pipelines for shipping or to storage facilities.  Air contamination is unavoidable near this equipment and childhood asthma rates in heavy drilling areas in Texas are three times higher than in the rest of the state (verified by a multi-hospital study mentioned in the New York Times).

After studying hydraulic fracturing and its effects on people and the environment, I am convinced that if it were not for the congressional approval in 2005 of the exemptions of the hydraulic fracturing process from the protection of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund Act and other federal regulations, only conventional drilling for natural gas would exist today.

While Pennsylvania has seen heavy use of hydraulic fracturing for less than four years, in Texas it has been practiced twice as long and some of the health effects are alarming.  Breast cancer rates, childhood asthma, and possibly childhood leukemia rates (especially in children under age 5 in the Flower Mound area of Texas) should be warning signs that a cumulative impact study for the Delaware River Basin or waiting for the EPA study results would be wise.  The gas has been here 350,000,000 years and it can wait another year or two while we safeguard our water, our health and that of future generations.  

Pennsylvania is still grappling with clean-up after the coal industry, but with hydraulic fracturing, the damage to aquifers can be permanent.  Let’s hope that three people who have the power to save our water and health, will not trade it for natural gas!