The recent headline article (Jan. 31) concerning Brunswick City Leaders’ stance on fracking was quite interesting and very encouraging. Mayor Gary Werner stated that the Council members should do more research about the fracking industry and the safety and environmental issues involved. I would like to point out some facts about water and the fracking industry.
One of the basic objectives of the World Plumbing Council is to promote the protection of our drinking water supply and to safeguard the environment through proper management, care, reuse and conservation of our natural resources. Water is the primary natural resource since it is a finite quantity. There is no way to make more water; the water we use today is the same water that has been around for millions of years. Water is life. The human body can exist for about three days without water.
Care must be taken when doing research, especially on the Internet. Much of the information put out by the drilling companies is correct but grossly incomplete. When doing research on the well drilling and hydraulic fracturing industry, it would appear to be a rather responsible industry. The many websites talk about how important water is to the harvesting of the natural gas and oil in the deep shale and the amounts of water that are used. They go on to compare the amount of water they use to a very small percentage of the overall industrial use of water. Their most important point they make is their use of the water is not a continuing use but temporary, only being used during the drilling and completion stage of the operation. This is where one needs to begin to read between the lines and do some calculations.
An average drilling operation uses close to 350,000 gallons of water, but that amount can easily double for a deeper and longer horizontal drilling operation. Most of this water, polluted with salts, hydrocarbons and other chemicals, returns to the surface. How this water is handled at the wellhead is critical to the safety of the surface and ground water environments. A common method of disposal technique is to pump this polluted water back underground into injection wells. The drilling companies have chosen to call this polluted water “brine;” huge misuse of a common term.
The fracking operation can use 4,500,000 to 6,000,000 gallons of water. Only 10 to 30 percent of this water returns to the surface, again polluted. The percentages can vary depending on which drillers’ website you use. The remaining 70 to 90 percent remains a mile or more underground for a very long time; hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
Now, let’s do the calculations. Using conservative numbers, take 70 percent if the 4.5 million gallons of water that stays underground forever and you get 3,150,000 gallons of water lost forever. The average family of four consumes about 400 gallons of water a day, all of which is returned to the environment in some manner. This adds up to less than 150,000 gallons of water a year. Now, divide this year’s use of water into the 3,150,000 gallons of water that remains underground and that amounts to either 21 years’ worth of water for the average family or 21 families for a year. And all of this water is available for reuse over and over again. Just think, if you use the more liberal figures of 6,000,000 gallons and 90 percent, the water lost forever would supply 36 families for one year or one family for 36 years. And that is just for one well.
There are many other issues that can be explored in this same manner — the percentage of chemicals used, how deep are the injection wells that pump the polluted water back underground, with modern technology, why hasn’t a better way been found?
I totally understand the economic impact that this gas and oil boom can bring to our great state of Ohio, however, at what cost? The gas and oil industries do make our lives much more comfortable, but without water life is not possible. Why waste one non-renewable resource for another?
Richard J. Prospal
World Plumbing Council