Drilling is invasive. Drilling with intensive hydraulic pressure, even more so.
Something powerful enough to "Fracture" the geologic rocks of the Earth, is something we ought to use with only great care and transparency. When a cap rock layer gets broken (or pierced like pin-cushion) there's not a lot we can do about plugging those invisible leaks.
And drilling with intensive hydraulic pressure is done with "Trade Secret" often toxic chemicals.
Yet too few people, blissfully go on their eazy-energy way. Out of sight out of mind. But when the Toxicity somehow finds its way into their consumption (food and drink) to ill effect, too many people want to know WHY (and what poisoned me). Then. After the fact.
Fracking Waste -- Too Toxic for Toxic Waste Dumps
inthesetimes.com -- May 24, 2013
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, captures the attention of U.S. citizens far less than it should, considering that its byproducts include carcinogens that make their way into drinking water and cause air pollution. The practice is pervasive, due in part to the “Halliburton Loophole,” which, according to Don Lieber’s PlanetSave.com article "Fracking Waste: Too Toxic, Even for A Hazardous Waste Site," gets the natural gas industry out of a slew of regulatory and reporting requirements in the Safe Drinking Water Act. We can thank former Vice President Dick Cheney for that loophole.
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The natural gas industry has also played an active role in suppressing public knowledge about the health risks of the chemicals they routinely use -- including lobbying successfully to ban doctors from freely discussing with their patients the links between symptoms and the chemicals used in nearby fracking operations.
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Water will always try to "find its level." People not so much -- usually only when the circumstances become dire, do we start to ask the hard questions. But usually then the time for preventive actions has long passed.
Such is the curse of procrastination: Someone has to live with the consequences.
Laws can keep polluters under control and above board. And laws can keep polluters below the radar too. Much depends on the legislatures and who's interests they care about most.
Do these legislators ever stop to ask, "How many cancer deaths are too many?"
Or are there "acceptable losses" among their citizens, that they will take in exchange for "drilling development"?
For Pennsylvania's Doctors, a Gag Order on Fracking Chemicals
Climate Desk, theAtlantic.com -- Mar 27 2012
Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction -- but they won't be able to share it with their patients. A provision buried in a law passed last month is drawing scrutiny from the public health and environmental community, who argue that it will "gag" doctors who want to raise concerns related to oil and gas extraction with the people they treat and the general public.
Pennsylvania is at the forefront in the debate over "fracking," the process by which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, sand, and water are blasted into rock to tap into the gas. Recent discoveries of great reserves in the Marcellus Shale region of the state prompted a rush to development, as have advancements in fracking technologies. But with those changes have come a number of concerns from citizens about potential environmental and health impacts from natural gas drilling.
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Even if there weren't serious climate change implications, the way Big Oil treats our aquifers, as their own open sewers, is simply astounding.
One needs to only watch the documentary Gasland, to see how this drill-anywhere folly can go very wrong, and how Big Oil will do anything to avoid responsibility for their profit-taking actions.
Perhaps even more astounding is how we as a nation, just let it happen. Just letting our aquifers, become a reservoir of god-knows-what kind of toxicity. Well at least know certain Doctors now know -- but they can't tell anyone. How fracked is that?
Fracturing by it's very nature opens up wide cracks in the rocks. Drilling too. Which gives the toxic fluids somewhere to go:
Our lakes. Our rivers. Our Taps. Water will always try to "find its level."
"Trade Secrets" may protect the profits. But someone really needs to be asking "Who or what is protecting the People?"
This geologic legacy of Dick Cheney's "Trade Secrets" should be over by now. Those toxic formulas really should be seeing the light of day by now. Don't you think?
Afterall if the Frackers "haven't done anything wrong -- then they really don't have anything to worry about" ... isn't that how the saying goes?