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The New York Times published an article stating the radioactivity of water caused by gas shale, here's the translation (google trans):
The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands new wells and drilling, while the country is struggling to tap into the gold rush of this century - for natural gas.
Gas has always been there, of course, trapped underground in innumerable small bubbles, such as spills jelly seltzer between thin layers of shale. But drilling companies have only in recent years develop techniques for unlocking the enormous reserves, thought to be sufficient to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generate electricity and operate a vehicle until a hundred years.
Thus, energy companies require drilling. And they are rare to get support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say that using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns cleaner than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail gas as a source of employment. They see it as a way to wean the U.S. from its dependence on other countries for oil.
But the relatively new drilling method - known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking - has environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
hydrofracking With a well can produce over one million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with salt and corrosives, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements such as radium, which can occur naturally in thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to waste water by chemicals used in the same hydrofracking.
Although the existence of toxic waste have been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times Agency of Environmental Protection, state regulators and drillers show that harm to the environment and health are more important than previously thought.
The documents show that wastewater, which is sometimes transported to treatment plants not not aim to treat it, then dumped into rivers that drinking water contains radioactivity at levels higher than those previously known, and much higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these plants processing to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many EPA scientists are worried, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based in part on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an EPA consultant who concluded that some treatment plants, sewage was unable to remove some contaminants and residues of drilling was probably violated the law.
The Times also found studies ever reported by the EPA and a confidential study by the drilling industry which have all concluded that the radioactivity of drilling wastes can not be diluted into rivers and other watercourses .
But the EPA did not intervene. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most of the treatment plants that accept waste from drilling does not test for radioactivity. And most of the plants intake of drinking water downstream of these treatment facilities wastewater in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom started in 2008.
In other words, there is no way to ensure that drinking water supported by all these plants is safe.
This has worried experts.
"We burn the furniture to heat the house," said John H. Quigley, who retired last month as Secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Pennsylvania.
"In moving away from coal and natural gas lines, we try to clean the air, but we produce massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it is not clear that we have a plan to properly manage these waste. "
The risks are particularly acute in Pennsylvania, which saw a sharp increase in drilling, with about 71,000 gas wells, as against about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the waste water was sometimes hundreds or even thousands times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. As people are clearly not drink wastewater drilling, because to use the drinking water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in waste water drilling.
Drillers truck at least half of these wastes to a treatment plant wastewater in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009, according to state officials. Some of them were sent to other states, including New York and West Virginia.
However, operators of sewage treatment plants say they are much less able to remove radioactive contaminants than most other toxic substances. Indeed, the Most of these facilities can not remove enough radioactive material to meet federal standards for drinking water before discharging wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream of intake of drinking water plants.
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The New York Times published an article stating the radioactivity of water caused by gas shale, here's the translation (google trans):
The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands new wells and drilling, while the country is struggling to tap into the gold rush of this century - for natural gas.
Gas has always been there, of course, trapped underground in innumerable small bubbles, such as spills jelly seltzer between thin layers of shale. But drilling companies have only in recent years develop techniques for unlocking the enormous reserves, thought to be sufficient to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generate electricity and operate a vehicle until a hundred years.
Thus, energy companies require drilling. And they are rare to get support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say that using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns cleaner than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail gas as a source of employment. They see it as a way to wean the U.S. from its dependence on other countries for oil.
But the relatively new drilling method - known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking - has environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
hydrofracking With a well can produce over one million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with salt and corrosives, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements such as radium, which can occur naturally in thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to waste water by chemicals used in the same hydrofracking.
Although the existence of toxic waste have been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times Agency of Environmental Protection, state regulators and drillers show that harm to the environment and health are more important than previously thought.
The documents show that wastewater, which is sometimes transported to treatment plants not not aim to treat it, then dumped into rivers that drinking water contains radioactivity at levels higher than those previously known, and much higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these plants processing to handle.
Other documents and interviews show that many EPA scientists are worried, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based in part on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an EPA consultant who concluded that some treatment plants, sewage was unable to remove some contaminants and residues of drilling was probably violated the law.
The Times also found studies ever reported by the EPA and a confidential study by the drilling industry which have all concluded that the radioactivity of drilling wastes can not be diluted into rivers and other watercourses .
But the EPA did not intervene. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most of the treatment plants that accept waste from drilling does not test for radioactivity. And most of the plants intake of drinking water downstream of these treatment facilities wastewater in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom started in 2008.
In other words, there is no way to ensure that drinking water supported by all these plants is safe.
This has worried experts.
"We burn the furniture to heat the house," said John H. Quigley, who retired last month as Secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Pennsylvania.
"In moving away from coal and natural gas lines, we try to clean the air, but we produce massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it is not clear that we have a plan to properly manage these waste. "
The risks are particularly acute in Pennsylvania, which saw a sharp increase in drilling, with about 71,000 gas wells, as against about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the waste water was sometimes hundreds or even thousands times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. As people are clearly not drink wastewater drilling, because to use the drinking water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in waste water drilling.
Drillers truck at least half of these wastes to a treatment plant wastewater in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009, according to state officials. Some of them were sent to other states, including New York and West Virginia.
However, operators of sewage treatment plants say they are much less able to remove radioactive contaminants than most other toxic substances. Indeed, the Most of these facilities can not remove enough radioactive material to meet federal standards for drinking water before discharging wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream of intake of drinking water plants.
DISCLOSE INFORMATION
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