Update on fracking and water use

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/industry-boos-oscar-nod-for-gasland/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110225/ap_en_ot/us_oscars_gasland

If you recall this email a while back, the "Gasland" film I reviewed was nominated for Best Documentary Oscar of 2010. Of course prior to the awards ceremony, a gas drilling industry trade group petitioned the MPAA to decertify the film as propaganda instead of documentary. Similar industry protests were made over "Sicko" and "An Inconvenient Truth". But probably the criticism only served to increase attention for the film, and the MPAA responded to the gas industry saying that they should "trust the intelligence" of the judges to know a documentary when they see it, and tell fact from fiction. While the film of course has an agenda, and some scenes are poorly executed and open to criticism, it was director Josh Fox's first film (made on quite a low budget as well), so to be nominated for the highest award in all of film-making must mean his argument has some merit. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_drilling_chemicals

Here is some validation for Fox's claims: 3 Congressmen released a report investigating 14 gas companies and the secret chemical mixtures they use during fracking. They said that millions of gallons of fracking fluid, containing up to 29 known or suspected carcinogens, were pumped into wells during domestic drilling from 2005-2009, with very little of that material recaptured by the drillers. So we can only conclude that the rest of it still remains in the ground, possibly leeching into aquifers that humans, wildlife, and livestock depend on. So how could these poisons, many of which are prohibited or on a "watch list" under the Clean Air/Water Acts, be covertly used in unregulated drilling? Congress granted drillers a waiver.

Methanol was the most common questionable substance used in fracking, and this is what it can do to you: http://www.epa.gov/chemfact/f_methan.txt. In my lab, I can lose my bonus or be fired for dumping even an ounce of methanol down the sink that drains to the Bay (not to mention my company getting fined), yet gas companies can get away with pumping untold gallons of it straight into the ground? And if the process is so safe as they claim, why be so secretive about their use of methanol and other poisons?

This may also be of interest to you, kind of an update on the status of drinking water:

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135241362/the-worldwide-thirst-for-clean-drinking-water
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/we-use-how-much-water.php

Americans per capita consume 100 gallons of potable water each day from our daily activities (over 2X the global average, and 3X more than the average Chinese). That is pretty obscene, but when you factor in the water used in electricity generation for our energy needs, our consumption rises to 350 gallons/day. So cutting back on energy use is a win-win-win proposition, saving multiple precious resources and reducing pollution/environmental degradation/dependence on foreign oil dictators. Also adopting a vegetarian diet (avoiding beef consumption especially, since 2,400 L goes into making 1 burger patty) can dramatically reduce one's water footprint. Indian society would collapse if their people had American diets (30% of India is vegetarian). While India and China's per capita consumption is low, their massive populations are putting huge strains on their precarious water supplies (and climate change, standard of living improvements, and population growth will only make the situation worse in the future).

We wouldn't expect it, but leisure cities in Republican states are leading the way for water conservation. Las Vegas and Orlando have some of the most modern and strict water conservation policies, really because they have no choice (Las Vegas is the driest metro area in America with 4" of annual rainfall, and there have been recent severe droughts in the US Southeast). Those cities are known for water waste from golf courses and entertainment, and it's true that their economies still depend on those industries. But Orlando set up a parallel reclaimed water system, where household waste water is treated to near-potable safety levels, and then pumped out to water golf courses and sports fields, since it really makes no sense to waste drinking water on grass. Vegas pays residents to change out their lawns for desert landscaping, and issues huge fines for water overages, especially at golf courses. Therefore, golf courses now adopt drip irrigation for each individual shrub and putting green, instead of the usual wasteful area sprinklers. So even though Vegas has grown in population by 50% since 2000, their overall water consumption is flat, and actually down from 1990 levels. Imagine if progressive California could do that, but then we have the farm lobby, and suburbanites don't want their streets ripped up to lay new and better pipe. Plumbing is of great concern, since a scary amount of clean water (1/6 of total consumption) is lost from leaky pipes and toilets each day.

The author's #1 water concern for the future: corporate control of potable water.

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The problem with leaky pipes, etc is there is no good/easy way to detect a leak.  The only way for me as a homeowner to determine if i have a leaky anything that isn't a faucet is to either eventually notice some damage (which means the leak is either quite severe and/or in the drywall) or turn off my entire water supply and come back some undetermined amount of time later t see if the water meter moved.  If my water company put an ethernet output from the water meter and i could log in, take the output from excel or something, man it would be easy to check for leaky water or to see exactly how much water i use on sprinklers (since i generally am not using water at 4am), etc.  Those tools just aren't available for whatever reason.  

Imagine how easy it would be to conserve (or not to) if you knew in real dollars what every toilet flush cost your or how much water you wasted leaving the faucet on while you brushed your teeth.

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Yeah seriously, I guess we should get in with Bechtel or Schlumberger exploiting some water-starved third world hole: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6670

I agree about leak detection. Like that author said, our water system is really 50-100 years old. We take water for granted, and barely commit any resources for maintenance and monitoring. I think he said in his city of Chicago, they schedule pipe replacement at a 160-year rate (meaning they do it so slowly, it would take that long to replace the whole system).

I agree that costs for water, gas, beef, etc. need to better align with the true social costs, but of course companies don't want to acknowledge the externalities associated with their products. Since clean water is a vital resource, I think everyone should have the "right" to access a minimal amount of it, so I wouldn't just advocate an across-the-board rate hike. If we invested in a better monitoring system, each citizen/farm/company could get an adjusted quota of X gallons/month, charged a reasonable rate. For those who exceed the quota, they would pay through the nose. So we would still be free to consume more water if it was that important to us (for watering the lawn, swimming pool, etc.), but the price would reflect the social harm we are doing.

Industry and farming use much more water than households. So this would force farmers to switch leaner irrigation and companies to adopt less water-intensive operations. It might reduce the diversity of available produce at Safeway, or increase the costs of some goods, but we're talking about survival here. And the $ the gov't collects from water overages could then be invested into water research or subsidies to reward people/farms/firms for buying water sparing tech or improving their pipes. Like Orlando, we have to implement a parallel reclaimed water system. Factories, golf courses, etc. shouldn't be allowed to use fresh/clean/reservoir water. All this would require a huge investment to set up, but down the road it could pay for itself.

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Of course any extra fees gotten by the gov would invariably be used for something besides improving water efficiency.  When social security runs surplus, does social security get reinvested?  When the budget surplus happened under clinton, did the debt get paid down?  A problem but i suppose a good one to have.

I feel like water is a lot like oil in the sense that no one is going to sweat it until they can't get it.  Unlike oil i've only got ~ 3 days to figure out how to get it or I die.  But no one is going to pay meaningful attention to the problem until it is too late. Perhaps a fundamental human flaw and perhaps just an institutional problem, either way if we aren't in trouble our children or our children's children will be. 

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Yes, you are right about inflows of cash to the gov't. But at least higher prices will encourage people to use less. It is true that water and oil management are quite similar. I guess since the Cold War, this is the first time that humanity has had to pay for water. Of course we get a clean, virtually limitless supply of water in our homes and businesses, and that costs something. But humans are not used to seeing water as a commodity. Imagine if it was trading on some exchange like gold and pork!

I think due to globalization, wealth is increasing in a lot of previously poor places, and those people will want better standards of living. We already see this effect with energy (and food to some degree), but soon it will be clean water. But as you said, no one wants to confront the problem until it's too late. Actually I would expect China to be the most proactive due to their centralized gov't. They are transitioning to a less carbon-intensive economy faster than any other nation. It's not like China is a poster child for Greenpeace, but hopefully they can enact smart water management that we in the West could also copy (if Congress ever does anything).

You could be living in "Gasland"

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127593937
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/06/21/127988546/gasland-hbo-gas-drilling-film-exposes-drinking-water-worries

HBO is airing a documentary series this month, and one of the films is called "Gasland" by Josh Fox, about the problems associated with domestic natural gas extraction in American communities. The filmmaker was actually approached by a gas drilling company to lease his family's land for extraction for $100,000, and he first wanted to research the pros and cons before making a decision. What he discovered was so angering and shocking that he decided to drive across America to interview people living with the consequences of gas drilling for a documentary. Of course they were unaware of the impending BP disaster when the broadcast schedule was planned, but the content is now all too familiar. This is part of the true cost of our energy consumption habits.

The natural gas industry touts its product as cheap and "green", and yes its combustion is less polluting than petroleum and coal (but only 25% so). Plus it can be used in a variety of applications (from large scale electricity generation to vehicle fuel), extraction infrastructure is fairly compact, and we even have plenty of domestic reserves, so it sounds like a great energy source. But like ethanol, natural gas is dirtier than most of us know, and the companies tasked with its extraction have committed a litany of environmental and ethical violations. This controversy is not well publicized maybe because US natural gas reserves mostly exist in poorer, rural counties in the northeast, mountain states, and the southern Midwest. Much of the land is federally-owned, and those who live there don't have much of a political voice. The residents are generally less-educated and lower-income, so when a Halliburton-type drilling company approaches them with a fat check to buy the rights to drill on their land, they tend to sign. Companies give all sorts of guarantees that the drilling is safe and you won't even notice, and the rural residents are from the "my word is my bond" tradition, so they trust them without reading the dozens of pages of fine print. And if pollution problems are found and admitted to, the companies often pay off the victims into silence (or underpay for the true damage they inflict) and keep drilling the next day. But some short-changed victims were so mad that they broke their non-disclosure agreements to speak on camera. Even if landowners refuse to sign with drillers, they can still get screwed. If their neighbors agree to lease, their property value may sink because now they live next to an industrial site. By that stroke, drillers and your neighbors can collectively force you off your land by making your property virtually worthless if you resist.

Just as we are tapping new oil reserves with more sophisticated (and riskier) deep-sea drilling, we can now access deeper natural gas deposits using a technique called hydraulic fracture (nicknamed with a masculine moniker, "fracking"). Basically, the gas is trapped in dense rock (shale) over a mile underground and can't be cost-effectively harvested by a conventional well, so with the advent of horizontal drilling, we can bore into the shale and then pump in a high-pressure fluid mix. The mix of water, sand, and proprietary chemicals (that companies may or may not admit are included in the pumping fluid, and are currently not legally required to disclose) fractures the shale so the gas can percolate up to the wells. Through the work of the filmmaker and environmental activists, we now know that fracking fluid contains benzenes, sulfides, and other carcinogens banned by the EPA Clean Air, Water, and Safe Drinking Water Acts. 65 identified ingredients are known to be health hazards. It used to even contain diesel fuel, but Halliburton cut a deal with the EPA in 2005 to stop using it in exchange for a waiver to substitute benzene.

If you recall, 2005 was a big year for the industry with the passing of the Energy Policy Act. After VP Cheney's formed his energy task force and held secret meetings, industry lobbyists successfully convinced politicians to open up unprecedented tracts of federal land to energy exploration, and insert loopholes to exempt the oil and gas industries from many environmental rules. As you would expect, Halliburton is one of the biggest gas drillers, and the industry fracks a staggering 35,000 wells each year in the US. So far the EPA has shown interest and expertise in investigating and regulating fracking chemicals, but agency leaders have copped out, and pronounced that "the states should decide" how to regulate gas drilling. In response to calls for greater scrutiny, the industry has said that fracking is completely safe without providing much supporting evidence. They in turn threaten back that added regulation of drilling will only serve to increase the cost of natural gas to consumers. In response to criticism that "Gasland" paints a slanted picture with anecdotes only from angry anti-gas families, the filmmaker challenged an industry rep to provide him with just one example of a happy, healthy American community living alongside fracture drilling, and so far they haven't gotten back to him yet.

Fracking may sound good; we're tapping vast gas pockets that were previously inaccessible. But the fracking fluid has to go somewhere, and drilling sites are often near aquifers that supply well water to local residents (and in many drilling areas, there aren't big reservoirs or rivers, so people rely on wells to survive and farm/ranch). Some of the waste fluid returns to the surface and is collected in huge pits. If the company is conscientious, they will pump up the liquid and dispose of it safely. But often the drillers will just allow the fluid to evaporate, seep back into the soil, or even expedite evaporation by pumping the fuel through vaporizers. This is all legal apparently. But the poisons don't just disappear. They either accumulate in the water supply or become aerosols that get inhaled by living things nearby.

Fracking breaks up underground shale to release gas, but that gas isn't 100% collected by the wells either. It also seeps into the water supply, and there have been several documented accidents of tap water catching on fire and causing well or household explosions. Many residents were forced to buy bottled water or rely on rainwater cisterns instead. Poisons also contaminate the wildlife, making it harder for local farmers and ranchers to make a living, or even live healthily. The incidence of some cancers, asthma, and neurological disorders (all well-documented side effects of exposure to various fracking fluid base chemicals) is uncommonly high in communities near drilling areas. And as one interviewee in Wyoming said, viewers may think it's crazy but people like him really love what they do - 3rd or 4th generation ranchers who carry on the tradition of Western living that we usually relegate to nostalgia. Now they can't even water their herds enough to develop them for market. So in addition to the massive environmental and health effects of gas drilling, we may be losing a unique and precious feature of American history and culture also. Yes our supercharged economy needs energy to run, and gas is a precious resource. But potable water is also very precious, and although laws and subsidies make its price artificially low, humans are also fighting wars across the globe (either with guns or lawsuits) over water access. Ideally we should protect both our energy and water resources, and it makes no sense to destroy one while pursuing the other, unless you stand to make a lot of money in the process of course. 

Even if companies went beyond the porous rules and made sure their drilling waste didn't endanger local life (if that is even possible with fracking), how green and minimally-invasive is natural gas exploration anyway? Reserves are often in remote areas, so there has to be hundreds of diesel truckloads of equipment transported hundreds of miles to set up a well, and in many cases miles of new road to the site have to be paved beforehand. It's like clear-cutting in the Amazon, and may leave the land like a moonscape afterward. Fracking consumes 400-600 tanker truck loads worth of water, and only a fourth of that volume can be recovered and cleansed (if the company chooses to). If each well consumes 1-7M gallons of water per frack (and wells are sometimes fracked over 10 times), the industry creates trillions of gallons of contaminated water per year (the industry term for the waste is "produced water"). The drilling and refining processes also need to be powered by diesel generators, which collectively spew out tons of emissions. Combine that with gas leaks and chemical evaporation, and the air in microclimates near heavy drilling zones (even densely populated areas like Ft. Worth, which has 15,000 wells in its vicinity) is more unsafe than LA smog.

Most states are in very bad financial shape now, and thanks to the GOP blocking of the jobs bill, will get even less federal assistance in 2010. As consequence, they have had to trim down their environmental and regulatory workforce, and may be more open to allow gas drilling to reap royalties, taxes, and create jobs. As long as they don't live in drilling areas, what do those state legislators care? A major drilling expansion is planned in the Marcellus shale in upstate New York and Pennsylvania. But projected well sites are located in the upper Delaware River Basin and NYC watershed that collectively supply the drinking water to NYC, Philadelphia, and over 15M residents in between. NYC council members are trying to stop the expansion, and so far no wells have broken ground yet.