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Gas Fracking by the Numbers 2013 report and Public Warning to Stop Now

Posted by on February 13, 2014
http://www.environmentamerica.org/sites/environment/files/reports/EA_FrackingNumbers_scrn.pdf
Gas Fracking by the Numbers
2013 report Written by:
Elizabeth Ridlington
Frontier Group
John Rumpler
Environment America Research & Policy Center
Fracking by the Numbers
Key Impacts of Dirty Drilling
at the State and National Level
2013
Environment America Research & Policy Center is a 501(c)(3) organization.
We are dedicated to protecting our air, water and open spaces. We
investigate problems, craft solutions, educate the public and decisionmakers,
and help the public make their voices heard in local, state and
national debates over the quality of our environment and our lives. For more information about
Environment America Research & Policy Center or for additional copies of this report, please visit
www.environmentamericacenter.org.
Frontier Group conducts independent research and policy analysis to support a cleaner, healthier
and more democratic society. Our mission is to inject accurate information and compelling ideas
into public policy debates at the local, state and federal levels. For more information about Frontier
Group, please visit www.frontiergroup.org.
Over the past decade, the oil and gas industry
has fused two technologies—hydraulic
fracturing and horizontal drilling—in
a highly polluting effort to unlock oil and gas in
underground rock formations across the United
States.
As fracking expands rapidly across the country,
there are a growing number of documented cases
of drinking water contamination and illness among
nearby residents. Yet it has often been difficult for
the public to grasp the scale and scope of these
and other fracking threats. Fracking is already
underway in 17 states, with more than 80,000 wells
drilled or permitted since 2005. Moreover, the oil
and gas industry is aggressively seeking to expand
fracking to new states—from New York to California
to North Carolina—and to areas that provide
drinking water to millions of Americans.
This report seeks to quantify some of the key
impacts of fracking to date—including the production
of toxic wastewater, water use, chemicals use,
air pollution, land damage and global warming
emissions.
To protect our states and our children, states should
halt fracking.
Toxic wastewater: Fracking produces
enormous volumes of toxic
wastewater—often containing cancercausing
and even radioactive material.
Once brought to the surface, this toxic
waste poses hazards for drinking
water, air quality and public safety:
• Fracking wells nationwide produced an estimated
280 billion gallons of wastewater in 2012.
• This toxic wastewater often contains cancercausing
and even radioactive materials, and
has contaminated drinking water sources from
Pennsylvania to New Mexico.
States should prohibit fracking. Given the
scale and severity of fracking’s myriad impacts,
constructing a regulatory regime sufficient to
protect the environment and public health
from dirty drilling—much less enforcing such
safeguards at more than 80,000 wells, plus
processing and waste disposal sites across the
country—seems implausible. In states where
fracking is already underway, an immediate
moratorium is in order. In all other states, banning
fracking is the prudent and necessary course to
protect the environment and public health.
• Given the drilling damage that state officials have
allowed fracking to incur thus far, at a minimum,
federal policymakers must step in and close the
loopholes exempting fracking from key provisions
of our nation’s environmental laws.
• Federal officials should also protect America’s
natural heritage by keeping fracking away from
our national parks, national forests, and sources of
drinking water for millions of Americans.Defining “Fracking”
In this report, when we refer to the impacts
of “fracking,” we include impacts resulting
from all of the activities needed to bring
a shale gas or oil well into production
using high-volume hydraulic fracturing
(fracturing operations that use at least
100,000 gallons of water), to operate that
well, and to deliver the gas or oil produced
from that well to market. The oil and gas
industry often uses a more restrictive
definition of “fracking” that includes only
the actual moment in the extraction
process when rock is fractured—a
definition that obscures the broad changes
to environmental, health and community
conditions that result from the use of
fracking in oil and gas extraction.
Our analysis shows that damage from fracking is
widespread and occurs on a scale unimagined just a
few years ago.
•Fracking wastewater is often stored in open waste pits such
as these, near Summit, Pennsylvania. Leaks from pits can
contaminate drinking water supplies.
Scientists have linked underground injection of
wastewater to earthquakes.
• In New Mexico alone, waste pits from all oil and
gas drilling have contaminated groundwater on
more than 400 occasions.
Fracking
Wells and roads built to support fracking in Wyoming’s Jonah gas field have
caused extensive habitat fragmentation.
MORE INFO VISIT:
http://www.environmentamerica.org/sites/environment/files/reports/EA_FrackingNumbers_scrn.pdf

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