Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom

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there needs to be a shift in how America uses energy, point blank.

the only reason why fracking might actually be a positive is because anything is better than shoveling money to the Middle East---but the time is long past that the world realized that fossil fuels generated over millions of years, cannot be used forever to power our lives so cheaply.

 

Eh, don't hold your breath. I mean, the methane's in the water, not floating around in breathable form, so don't bother holding your breath.

Oh, and don't hold your breath for fracking to go away, either. It's been studied to death. This whole argument has been done to death. It's pretty damned safe, despite the occasional Erin Brokovich episode.

Me, I like being able to turn my lights on, run my A/C 24-7 (it's Texas, people). I like doing it at a price that doesn't preclude me from making drastic cutbacks in the budget to the point where I have to decide whether I want to suffer through 80 degrees in the house or not. I LIKE IT when the lights come on.

 

Oh, and NS - you don't get to lecture people who live in Texas about air conditioning. You're a Canadian. You don't get it. Down here you NEED it, up there you don't. Just putting that out there.

 

Eventually Texas will have stationary bikes in the prisons hooked up to the grid to generate all the energy it needs. Problem solved.

 

surely Obama wants to outlaw fracking, but he doesn't dare do it before the 2014 election

after that he won't bother with legislation, he'll just tell the EPA to outlaw it with a decree

 

Yes and until proven otherwise this "prediction" will be shelved next to your absurdly flawed mathematical formula giving the 2012 election to Rit Momney.

 

hardly conclusive evidence. Still no comprehensive, respectable study has proven fracking to be harmful.

The benefits far outweigh the costs -- but I agree that energy companies need to have regulations to govern what they are allowed to do out there, but that can be done without banning fracking.

Northside is just pissed that Canadian crude and gas have become less economic and Canada's #1 buyer of energy won't need as much. Send it to Asia, Canadians -- but you won't get as much money due to the transportation to get it there (*snicker*)

 

If there wasn't a problem here, you wouldn't have these companies paying off family after family and putting them under gag orders to keep them from talking about how their homes became unlivable after their water was contaminated by fracking.

There was that story recently that came out about how a family's young children were put under a lifetime gag order back in 2011 when their parents agreed to a settlement: http://www.businessinsider.com/gag-order-bars-two-us-children-from-talking-about-fracking-2013-8

 

Seems legit! Nothing to see there.

 

I'm fairly supportive of natural gas, because it has pretty good environmental benefits from the end usage. However, we do need to balance the interests of people's land where their water is being contaminated, or be properly, PROPERLY compensated. Treeman, it's nice for you to say there's lot of things you'd LIKE to do, but if it was your water that caught on fire, you'd be pretty pissed.

 

Didn't that particular example end up being natural and not a result of drilling?

 

I recall reading something about that, yes. In fact, I think the article said that this isn't all that uncommon at all.

 

Let's see, Pennsylvania, a state with over a thousand abandoned coal mines, a town that is completely barricaded because of a coal seem fire, where the oil industry first began at Oil Creek, with hundreds of known natural petroleum seeps (gas and oil), etc, etc - must be those frackers.

 

I think what everyone should (I know, fat chance) be able to agree on: it's pretty darned complicated and anyone who says "oh it's totally polluting" or "oh it's totally never polluting" is just ignorant or biased.

Fracking is most probably safe in a majority of cases, and in some cases, it is probably contaminating ground water. There are also tons of natural sources (or sources from other manmade endeavors) that can taint water supplies. It's an incredibly difficult thing to study since water moves in crazy ways under the earth and we're a long way from where the action happens.

If there's something I like about this Scientific American article, it's that they're talking about fracking in different geologies and materials. We could probably end up with a very sensible set of simple rules: yes within rock type X, no within rock type Y.

I just don't see the need to form our traditional left and right leaning ranks over this, (even though Matt Damon did get involved). We need the energy, we don't need skanky drinking water, and there's probably a decent path to have both with fracking, once we learn more of the geology around it.

 

But it's the D&D.

 

I get that you're trying to play peacemaker with a middle ground approach, but I simply haven't seen conclusive evidence of the harm.

You can't shout "oh it's bad!! oh it's bad!" over and over without proof, and then claim that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

 

And there you have it, folks. We need to find a balance.

 

I'm an in house landman in Colorado and the amount of regulation the state has here is literally insane. Environmentalists pretty much resort to scare tactics even when their arguments contradict the environmental assessments by the BLM (bureau of land management) in conjunction with Federal & State environmental authorities for specific projects.

It's not uncommon for these entities to bribe oil & gas companies into paying sums of cash or agreeing to buy lands for conservation... I've seen it first hand. What I'm learning is that extremist progressives have hijacked the Democratic party here and are attempting a statewide shutdown of drilling. They are just as bad as the religious right in Texas.