Frack me!

In a recent article The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette talked about what is going on with all the "fracking" being used to pull natural gas out of hard to get places. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11108/1140094-84-0.stm is just one of dozens of articles I have seen ever since this all started and as usual these articles got me thinking.

Okay I am all for using our own natural resources instead of shipping in oil/gas/guano or whatever from overseas. I am all using new techniques to access these resources. Hells, I am even for deep sea off shore drilling despite the horrors of the Gulf Oil Spill. What I am not for is using questionable and often times extremely hazardous methods and materials in the process.

To backpedal a minute and use the Gulf Spill Disaster as an example. The spill and others like it didn't occur because deep sea drilling is inherently bad. It occurred when a bunch of people decided that expediency and profit was more important than taking the necessary precautions. The Spill occurred because of the gigantic Cluster Flock that the owners/operators/financiers created to make a little more money. If drilling off shore is done properly and with the proper safety measures in place, it is about as safe as drilling on land.

Okay back to the present. For those who are not yet aware, Fracking or Hydraulic Fracking is the process in which vast amounts of liquids is pumped down a pipe and used to crack apart shale and other types of rock to release the natural gas trapped inside of it. This process has opened up thousands of acres of gas deposits that had been inaccessible. Some estimates put the amount of natural gas that could be made available through this process at of 87% of our current production. Sounds awesome doesn't it? BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

The first reported problems people started having with fracking (besides the massive amounts of air pollution produced where ever these plants set up) is that natural gas and other contaminants are seeping into their ground water supplies. The Gas Companies deny any correlation between fracking and the problem, but when you turn on your outside tap and then light the water coming out of it with a lighter, that throws red flags up in my book.

But hey, I am feeling magnanimous today so lets give the Frackers the benefit of the doubt on that one. I mean, for all we know, these communities could have always had high octane drinking water. Probably saved millions of buying Red Bulls. So lets move on to the disposal of the Fracking Water. Since this is a brand new process there are no real guidelines for the disposal/cleaning of the water/chemical mix produced. Some companies send their waste liquid to water processing plants that are set up to decontaminate the liquid and make it safe. Others "recycle" their liquids by pumping it back down the holes again. Still others have been caught simply dumping the liquid directly back into the rivers and streams. As of yet, no one in the governments (Local/State or Federal) have made any real attempts to regulate this issue.

Now my final point. As the above article mentions, "Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in Pennsylvania and more than 12 other states from 2005 to 2009." These companies are pumping chemicals into the ground that most countries wouldn't even use during a time of war. They are doing this with little or no oversight and keeping very few records of exactly what they are pumping into our water tables. With practically no oversight, they are "self regulating" their actions and are pretty much answerable to no one.

All of the above ranting is because everyone wants easy answers and quick solutions to our problems. "Grab as much as we can and the hell with tomorrow" is pretty much the universal attitude among most companies and politicians. Never mind, things like fracking and strip mining are destroying our ecosystem and will create a very bleak tomorrow if these things aren't reined it. As long as our lights stay on now and our cars keep rolling for the next decade or so, tomorrow can be dealt with soon enough.

Well, I have news for the politicians, CEOS etc. Tomorrow is rapidly becoming TODAY and all of the past due bills created by greed are about to come due. It's time we stopped pushing things off till tomorrow and maybe, just maybe start working on making things right today.