Evils of Fracking
One environmental issue that is very controversial today is that of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking.” What is fracking? “Fracking is the process of drilling vertically and then horizontally through deeply buried shale beds, and pumping water, sand, and chemicals at high pressures into the shales to release the natural gas” (Gillen and Kiviat 2012). Shale is “A fine-grained sedimentary rock consisting of compacted and hardened clay, silt, or mud” (http://dictionary.reference.com). Fracking is also used to extract crude oil from shale. Many Americans support fracking for natural gas and crude oil in the United States, because it creates American jobs, and reduces our dependence on oil from foreign countries. According to the New York Times, the oil and gas industry across the United States is greatly increasing production, reversing 20 years of decline (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). This turnaround in the oil and gas industry is due partly to industry-friendly policies enacted by President George W. Bush and continued by President Obama (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). The other main factor contributing to the increase in production is the improvement of oil and gas drilling technology in recent years (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). Despite the increase in crude oil production, Americans are now consuming much less gasoline they did in previous years by driving less (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). They are also replacing old cars with new, more fuel-efficient ones (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). Some vehicles, such as buses actually run on natural gas, which is cleaner-burning (Krauss & Lipton, 2012).
Studies show that fracking can be harmful to many plant and non-human animal species, and may decrease biodiversity. Jennifer L. Gillen and Erik Kiviat conducted one such study in 2012. They studied the potential effects of fracking on animal and plant species restricted to areas on top of the Marcellus and Utica Shale-gas region (Gillen and Kiviat 2012). Of the fifteen species they studied, eleven were shown to require good water quality, ten were shown to be sensitive to habitat fragmentation, and thirteen have very strict habitat preferences (Gillen and Kiviat 2012). In another study, Smith et al. (2012) write that, in natural gas extraction operations taking place in forests, forest ecosystems are cleared for drilling platforms, roads, and pipelines. This removal of trees increases the water temperature in streams and rivers by causing these streams and rivers to be more exposed to the sun. (Johnson and Jones 2000) It seems that removal of riparian vegetation is the primary cause of this increase in water temperature (Johnson and Jones 2000).
Change in temperature directly affects the structure and composition of aquatic communities, because different species can tolerate different temperature ranges (Hogg and Williams, 1996; Magoulick and Wilzbach, 1998). The rates of many stream processes important to the survival of organisms in those streams, such as photosynthesis and decomposition, are also controlled by temperature (Smith et al. 2012). Brook trout are the only trout native to a large portion of the eastern United States (http://www.tu.org). They only live in cold, clean, freshwater, and serve as indicators of the health of the aquatic ecosystems where they live (http://www.tu.org). They survive best in streams where the temperature does not exceed 18˚C (64.4˚F), but may be able to survive for a short amount of time in water with a temperature as high as 25˚C (77˚F) (Jobling, 1981; Raleigh 1982). Stream temperature is considered the most important limiting factor to brook trout distribution, and therefore, many brook trout conservation efforts focus on this (EBTJV, 2011).
The construction of logging roads also contributes sediment to streams, dramatically increasing the amount of both suspended and bed load sediment (Smith et al. 2012). Bed load is “the sand, gravel, boulders, or other debris transported by rolling or sliding along the bottom of a stream” (http://dictionary.reference.com). Sedimentation increases turbidity and scouring, which affects stream-dwelling communities (reviewed by Waters 1995). Even low amounts of sediment have been shown to negatively impact the growth and survival of young salmonids (Suttle et al., 2004). Salmonids are members of the family Salmonidae, and include the trouts (http://dictionary.reference.com/). The machinery used in fracking also creates loud noise, which can disrupt animals. For example, noise from natural gas drilling operations has been found to disrupt ovenbird pairing success and change the age structure of ovenbird populations (Habib, Bayne, and Boutin, 2007).
Another big environmental problem with fracking is water pollution from the fracking process. When the water and chemicals are forced into the shale, some water and chemicals come back to the surface of the ground as “frack water,” which contains toxins such as toluene and benzene from the fracking fluids, and salt and radium from the shales (Rowan et al., 2011; Schmidt, 2011). Salt migration from deep shales into shallow aquifers is likely to be exacerbated by fracking in the Marcellus shale-gas region (Warner et al., 2012). This could be detrimental to species restricted to fresh groundwaters and to fresh surface waters that mix with groundwater. (Gillen and Kiviat 2012) Daniel J. Rozell and Sheldon J. Reaven 2012 assessed the likelihood that natural gas extraction would cause water pollution. They identified five ways that water can be contaminated: transportation spills, well casing leaks, leaks through fractured rock, drilling site discharge, and wastewater disposal (Rozell and Reaven 2012). According to their findings, the potential water contamination risk of wastewater disposal was highest among all the possible pathways of pollution (Rozell and Reaven 2012). Their findings show that even in a best-case scenario situation, a natural gas well operation is quite likely to expel at least 200m3 of polluted fluids into the environment (Rozell and Reaven 2012)! They recommend that additional action be taken to reduce this pollution from wells, because the number of natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale region could reach into the tens of thousands (Rozell and Reaven 2012). Wang et al. 2012 conducted toxicity tests to study the potential effects of pollution from natural gas extraction and coal mining activities in the Upper Tennessee River Basin and Eastern Cumberland River Basin in the United States. They tested sediments from seven test sites which were hosts to mussel communities close to, and considered to be impacted by, coal mining or natural gas extraction operations, as well as sediments from five control sites containing mussel communities that were not considered to be impacted by such activities. (Wang et al. 2012) They found that in ten out of fourteen test samples, mean survival, biomass, and length of individuals of one or more of the species they tested was reduced in areas impacted by coal mining and natural gas extraction, compared to the responses of the same species at the control sites. (Wang et al. 2012)
As a presidential candidate in 2008, President Obama endorsed policies to combat global warming, by reducing the burning of fossil fuels (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). Leading up to the election this past November, however, he allowed drilling in new federal waters and lands, praised the increases in oil and gas extraction, and placed less priority on the issue of climate change (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). In 2005, a White House energy task force headed by then Vice President Dick Cheney helped make the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which prohibits the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating fracking operations in accordance with the Safe Drinking Water Act, and gives the oil and gas industry billions of dollars in tax breaks. (Krauss & Lipton, 2012) Fracking made oil in reserves that were once too difficult and expensive to get to more accessible (Krauss & Lipton, 2012). Fracking also made it possible to extract much more oil at once than was possible with the old drilling method. (Krauss & Lipton, 2012)