No One Could Have Predicted, Hoocoodanode, Dog Bites Man, There Were No Warning Signs, How Could This Have Happened, We Had No Idea, We Need to Look Forward Not Backwards
I’m shocked, shocked I say:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.The draft finding could have a chilling effect in states trying to determine how to regulate the process.
The practice is called hydraulic fracturing and involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals underground to open fissures and improve the flow of oil or gas to the surface.
The EPA’s found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath a Wyoming community where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals.
Health officials advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found hydrocarbons in their wells.
The EPA announcement has major implications for the vast increase in gas drilling in the U.S. in recent years. Fracking has played a large role in opening up many reserves.
It’s so good to know that the EPA has now confirmed what homeowners with water buffaloes in their front yard have known for quite some time. I simply can’t believe all those energy companies were lying to me in all those commercials on my tv about how safe fracking is and how I should pay no attention to the hysterics. It’s just amazing to me the cavalier attitude taken about polluting our most valuable resource- clean water.
The most depressing thing about this, though, is what the response to this declaration will be. In a sane universe, it would be an IMMEDIATE cessation of all fracking activity around the nation. Stop. NO MAS. Halt. You simply can not replace poisoned water. So stop until we figure out how to do this safely. We don’t live in a sane universe, so what will happen is the Republicans And Blue Dogs from energy states will double down on the calls to disband the EPA, energy lobbyists will triple, and the energy industry will keep on a drilling and putting out more and better commercials telling you that toxic sludge is good for you.
Nothing will be done about this until we are well and truly fucked.
And some hearings on the matter. It could take years to resolve this.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Or fracked, as the case may be.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
What do you mean? There’s Brawndo!
December 8th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
you know what will fix this and protect our children?
Deregulation of the petroleum and natural gas industries. We should do that.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:45 pm
The market will fix this. People will just stop buying natural gas if the industry doesn’t clean up its act. The good folks at Reason said so.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
@Soonergrunt: Lower taxes and it certainly wouldn’t have happened if everyone had been carrying firearms.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
@Soonergrunt:
Freemarket! Holds up lighter.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:48 pm
@Violet: NOT NEAR THE SINK!
December 8th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
@scav:
Reverse counter top check. If your counter tops are linoleum, you’re probably poor enough that you can’t fight back if your water catches on fire.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
I sense an epic thread of darkly cynical comedy in the making…popping popcorn…
December 8th, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Unfortunately, I am not sure that the EPA currently has the mandate needed to put a moratorium on fracking, except perhaps where the groundwater aquifer in question has designation under the Clean Water Act.
Now, Congress could certainly push through emergency legislation enabling the EPA to have such powers. HA
I crack myself up sometimes …
December 8th, 2011 at 7:52 pm
An important caveat from the article:
December 8th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Oh, and we MUST abolish the EPA, those communist job haters only impede the free flow of commerce…
December 8th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
@martha: well, as my countertops are indeed linoleum, maybe we can borrow Violet’s lighter and at least get a little use and joy out of the conflagration.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
I want to drill, laterally, through Cheney’s ranch in Wyoming whether natural gas
or his intestinal gas can be exhumed.
The energy production, whether NG or Methane will be substantial.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
@Benjamin Franklin: If you get near the theorized heart area, be sure to switch to wooden pipes.
December 8th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
@Benjamin Franklin:
FTFY
December 8th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
@Quaker in a Basement:
LOL. Gatorade Awaits
!
December 8th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
@The Other Chuck:
Can we leave some water buffaloes in his front yard? Or maybe mucking about in his bladder?
December 8th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Probably poor well completions creating a conduit. Decent well completions would prevent this from happening.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
@Jennifer:
Yep, 0 and friends will do what they did to womens rights today.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
you can’t drink the water but damn if those counter tops aren’t shiny as hell!
December 8th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Yep, watch this be the impetus to completely eradicate the EPA instead of calling into question the practice of fracking.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
@piratedan:
And they even catch on fire when the water hits them! Party trick!
December 8th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
@Violet: that’s a feature, not a bug!
December 8th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
You can’t stop making flammable water spit through the 99% pipes! It amuses the servants to no end. Otherwise they’d be lighting their farts, which is entirely more offensive and certainly less appealing to the nose. You people are hysterical. – David Koch
December 8th, 2011 at 8:10 pm
@Waynski:
Servants are made to be set on fire.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
I finally caught a glimpse of the invisible words the invisible hand had writ between “free” and “market”:
and here the typesize went really really really small(er) so I’m off to find an electron microscope.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
As I live in a location without frackable natural gas available, I praise those of you who will be sacrificed for the greater
goodprofit of Free Market Frackers and Al Gore who is fat.Look, drink the
kool-aidwater and spit fire!It’s a feature, not a bug!
December 8th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Ugh…I’m finding my heartrate going up too since this shit just infuriates me. The state of environmental politics in this country has totally gone to shit, and there seems to be know fucking way to get around it anymore, because everyone knows ‘scientists lie’, you can’t trust the EPA or anyone that dare says anything about climate because ‘they’re in on the hoax’ or are just a bunch of loony loony lib lib motherfuckers who want to destroy the economy. We obviously can’t trust them because “OMG THEY HATE SUCCESS AND WANT TO DESTROY BUSINESS, WE HAVE TO STOP THESE FUCKING HIPPIES NOW NOW NOW FUCKING NOW, BEFORE THEY DESTROY US ALL, NOW GODDAMMIT NOW
!”
I just wish it didn’t all seem so futile, because I really am honestly convinced the EPA will be dismantled before any consequences to frackers are handed down. Oh, there will be consequences. It’ll just be for those dumb fuckers who actually trust the water they’re drinking in places like PA and Wyoming and such. Consequences for thee, profits for me,
December 8th, 2011 at 8:27 pm
Just think, if a Republican were in the White House, an oil and gas industry exec/lobbyist would have either supressed the report or edited the report such that the conclusions/findings could be
December 8th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Well, there’s one sure way to solve this, just have the person who is in charge of the Department of Energy void the findings. After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned is that scientists shouldn’t be trusted, they aren’t all that and who the hell cares about science anyway? Why, Stuck took Vioxx! Don’t you know that completely invalidates science and federal regulations altogether?
December 8th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Of course, as long as there’s even a whiff of uncertainty, energy companies will deny everything. Plausibility, even overwhelming evidence, isn’t enough. See also global climate change.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
@Brandon:
It’s worse than that. They would draft legislation which allows bottling the
brew as mineral water with tax incentives attached.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
We all live along the banks of the Cuyahoga now.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:35 pm
@Benjamin Franklin:
Plus an ad campaign to convince people that the murkiness actually proves it’s healthier, along with a pithy slogan like, ‘Water’s clear, better fear’ or something.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Ho ho ho.
Off topic: Oprah’s network is airing “Becoming Santa” tonight at 9. Like in about fifteen minutes. Sounds charming.
Guess that’s worth sitting through who knows how many tampon commercials.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
The CBS report I saw claimed that Wyoming land owners do not own mineral rights to their own land and cannot stop or profit from frakking done on their property. Can that possibly be true?
The land owner interviewed claimed his water was poisoned but he had no control or profit over what was happening to his own property.
If this is true, who owns the rights and who profits from the sale/lease of those rights?
December 8th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Bottle the water and market it as “Fire of the Holy Spirit” water. You can make a fortune from gullible evangelicals.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
@RSA:
Well, there always was a wiff of uncertainty about cancer sticks, too.
That’s the way these vile parasites play the game.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:49 pm
You left out the part about the energy companies hiring hackers to break into servers full of e-mails from the scientists responsible for this finding, followed by a massive wingnut Wurlitzer campaign to distort the meaning of every flippant remark in those e-mails, until all the GOP candidates, including Huntsman, insist that the science is suspect.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:52 pm
This country has really gone off the rails. I know conservatives always screech about “original intent!” and “what the framers wanted!” and all that, but unless they’re talking about something they like, like states rights, they don’t give a shit what the framers wanted. I’m not going to go digging around for anything specific right now, but the guys who set our country up 200 years ago saw businesses as underakings that would bring some benefit to society as well as to the owners. They didn’t buy into this Profit at all costs! crap we see today. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Samule Adams, Thomas Paine, these guys would be leading the next revolution if they came back today and saw what walmart or Exxon or the Kochs or Bank of America or whoever was doing now. I bet even Alexander Hamilton would think things have gotten a little out of hand.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
My mother in N MI, at 84, is up to her armpits in the anti-fracking movement.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
The republican governor of Wyoming, Matt Mead, was doing exactly that on CBS news this evening.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:02 pm
@Violet: Well, you can set the servants on fire, only so much as they won’t miss work in the morning. One must be humane. We are not wolves.—David Koch
December 8th, 2011 at 9:03 pm
@patrick the pedantic literalist: There are many many places where land has been sold with mineral rights reserved, which allows someone to remove oil and gas below your property without royalty. They typically dont have rights to surface access to exploit the oil and gas, but I cant say for sure that the law makes that provision everywhere when mineral rights are reserved. I would assume that pollution caused by such activity would have consequences for the drillers, but also cant say for sure.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
@Arclite:
Yes indeed, because the folks who get cancer and other terminal degenerative diseases from it will soon no longer be in the market for gas for heating their house and firing up their gas grill. OTOH because people who hope they still have their health will be fleeing regions where fracking has been going on, so the free market will devalue property for anything but its true best market use, fracking natural gas. And so the free market will sort things out properly after all, with property in regions away from fracking going up in value as more people want to move there, and property in regions near fracking going up in value for energy companies interested in fracking the land.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Remember the episode of TNG where the Ferengi scientist had this incredible breakthrough in shield technology, but he was an outcast in his own society because he was interested not in the profits, but the knowledge and respect of fellow scientists?
December 8th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
I’ll have a thirst mutilator.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
I see a future in which WV or southern PA are blazing like the Deepwater Horizon.
God Bless America for creating all those jerbs.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:20 pm
Sorry.
Screw Wyoming.
They have enjoyed the benefit of disproportionate representation at the federal level for generations now, and instead of using to fix shite like this, they’ve used it to screw me and mine out of clean government, so I say they can all go pound sand (ha, literally!) and quit all this whiny BS.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:21 pm
@Villago Delenda Est: That perfectly sums up the thought processes (such as they are) of both the NeoConfederates and their media enablers.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
@Regnad Kcin:
Too bad environmental stuff like this has the annoying tendency to not recognize political borders.
December 8th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Boehner introducing a bill to defund the EPA as a response in 3…2….1
December 8th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
well the good news is you can make a lot of money from your land. the bad news is your children will become mutant zombies.
December 8th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Partial bibliography:
Dr. Seuss. The Lorax. New York: Random House Children’s Books, 1971.
December 8th, 2011 at 10:01 pm
@Steve:
...Yeah. I’m sure this is just an isolated incident, and that there is NO chance that the fracking going on in everyone else’s backyard can pose a health threat.
(Not responding to you per se, but to that quoted section.)
December 8th, 2011 at 10:05 pm
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Oh, right; they may contaminate Idaho and Utah into the bargain.
Excellent!
December 8th, 2011 at 10:22 pm
I do not have mineral rights on my land. It’s a small house in San Diego, but I actually read my sales contract, and I don’t have the rights. It did not state who did, but suddenly I’m curious.
December 8th, 2011 at 10:37 pm
It is worse than you think. We use the natural gas from fracking to process the tar sands. Dick Cheneys dream energy policy written by the Multinational oil corporations in 2000.
And those ‘tanks’ you see in the gas fields do not “contain” anything, they are releasing VOCs and other pollutants into the air 24/7. Spewing it out through a pressure valve on the top of the tank.
We subsidize this crap with our tax dollars.
December 8th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
I live in Philadelphia. The gas companies want to start fracking in the Delaware River Watershed, which provides the drinking water for me and about 15.6 million people. The vote to allow them to do so was recently delayed, thankfully. But they won’t stop trying.
I would love to meet the CEO of one of these companies. Maybe then I could take him to Dimock, PA and force him to go to a well that’s been corrupted by fracking and say to him, “Look at this, you son of a bitch.”
God damn them all.
December 8th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Fixed.
By the time scavenging hordes are fighting tooth and nail for clean water, our Masters of the Universe will have “Gone Galt” to some Swiss mountain fastness, or Thielian floating city. It’s been obvious since about 2002 – the “reasonable” people are going to kill us all, and by the time we start paying attention to the “radicals,” it’ll be too late.
At least we can snark ourselves out as the ship goes down.
December 8th, 2011 at 11:04 pm
@Chuck Butcher: Awesome! My grandmother is not as active (though always votes)... she remembers when the coal companies promised they’d put the hilltops back. Ha. She was not fooled either time, & is pretty disgusted. (we are in PA, with a disgusting governor she voted against!)
December 8th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
It will be interesting to see how many statehouses go Republican this time. If there were ever an object lesson, this current crop has shown it. Georgia and Alabama might get some surprises, too, in their leges.
December 9th, 2011 at 12:30 am
Indeed, it’s a disgrace.
Too bad we don’t have a President who would use the powers of the Executive and the national reach of executive branch agencies to thwart this poisonous technique from being used in new towns, news communities and new states every day.
December 9th, 2011 at 12:42 am
@William Hurley:
When in doubt, blame Obama. Regardless of the subject, regardless of whether he has anything to do with it.
December 9th, 2011 at 1:32 am
gee, who woulda thought that high pressure pumping of chemicals into the earth to fracture, dissolve, and ‘liberate’ oil in shale deposits would also move along the fault lines broken in the shale and find refuge in the ground water…
December 9th, 2011 at 3:15 am
Dick Cheney/Haliburton got a pass from the EPA for fracking while he was VP
http://www.earthworksaction.org/halliburton.cfm
Where fracking is doen water from faucet are flammable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQMA0zwMM4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRZ4LQSonXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....&NR=1
Check youtube for more
Countries are banning or considering banning due to earthquake link
http://rt.com/usa/news/france-.....disasters/
http://planetsave.com/2011/07/.....-fracking/
http://www.reuters.com/article.....0020111102
US may finally do something about this problem
Ironic that the first national coverage of this came from the state Cheney is from
December 9th, 2011 at 4:18 am
It is comforting to live in NJ where fracking is not allowed and never will be.
December 9th, 2011 at 7:51 am
[...] Balloon Juice. [...]
December 9th, 2011 at 9:09 am
@Jay in Oregon: I think your sarcasm is misplaced. The article explains why this particular episode of fracking may, in fact, be more dangerous than fracking as it is practiced elsewhere. A lot of people think they know (in their gut, because that is where true science is performed) that fracking is an environmental disaster in every single case, and they may even be right, but they shouldn’t go thinking this article is proof that they’re right.
December 9th, 2011 at 9:30 am
The energy billionaires will frack up the clean groundwater until decent drinking water costs MORE than oil, or beer.
Then we’ll learn to create balanced meals without meat, because no one will be able to afford to water their cattle.
Eventually we’ll be where they want us, naked and starving in hovels and no threat to their overlordship over the planet. Then who will buy their products? How much will a handbuilt iPad cost?
December 9th, 2011 at 10:41 am
Executives are the only people where society and people in power give them free reign to kill people for money and in the name of capitalism.
December 9th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
It’s been my dream to start a non-profit that would go around the country opening toxic waste dumps and fracking in the aquifers right next to the main residences of the 1%, knowing full well that they would support my entrepreneurial spirit.
December 9th, 2011 at 1:07 pm