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Scientists have found that fracking has had a "clear impact" to drinking water in Pavillion, Wyoming, according to a study published this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. In a report that Stanford researchers were calling a "wake-up call," they determined that natural gas extraction activities in the town, which included injecting chemicals such as benzene and xylene into the earth, had influenced the quality of the ground water.
What does "clear impact" mean? Can't read the original study so hard to say.I don't inherently trust environmentalists though.
"Around 2008, residents began reporting odors and other problems with their water," co-author Rob Jackson told weather.com in an email. "Their complaints led EPA to open an investigation that continued for several years." The EPA began investigating links to contamination in 2011 but later backed down on issuing a finalized report after pressure from natural gas groups and state representatives. The Stanford team stepped in to complete the report. "At Pavillion, you combine a legacy of unlined waste pits with recent instances of poor well integrity, insufficient cement, and surface casings that weren't deep to isolate the oil and gas wells from ground water," Jackson explained. "You also had acid treatments and fracking within a thousand feet of the surface, and drinking water wells as deep as 750 feet. That combination is trouble."
Sandra Steingraber, scholar in residence in the Department of Environmental Studies and Science at Ithaca College, also felt that the findings were further confirmation that the natural gas extraction process was inherently dangerous for drinking water. "The Stanford study demonstrates that, in Pavillion, Wyoming, fracking operations have contaminated groundwater aquifers and, more specifically, drinking water wells," Steingraber said in an email to weather.com. "The underlying geology in this whole region causes groundwater to rise toward the surface. Those same forces also have the potential to push fracking fluids upwards into drinking water wells. For that reason alone, it’s unlikely that Pavilion is an isolated, exceptional situation. "Allowing this area to be fracked in the first place is what went wrong," she concluded.
