Lots of info in this story about the complete deforestation of an area in WV after it was exposed to fracking fluid,but my favorite (not really) portion is the highly sophisticated, rigorously engineered, and carefully thought through method of disposing of fracking fluid:
A gas company that legally doused a patch of West Virginia forest with salty wastewater from a drilling operation killed ground vegetation within days and more than half the trees within two years, a new report from the U.S. Forest Service says.
***In 2007, Berry Energy Inc. of Clarksburg began drilling a conventional, vertical gas well in a section of the Fernow Experimental Forest, a part of the Monongahela set aside for research.
Adams said what unfolded over the next two years was an unexpected opportunity for observation.
Some results were expected, from deforestation and road damage to runoff and erosion. Others, including the dramatic die-off when wastewater was land-applied, were not.
Berry Energy didn’t immediately return messages Monday, but the report says that in June 2008, under a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection, it sprayed 75,000 gallons of treated fracking fluid on the quarter-acre.
Adams said the Forest Service hoped to minimize damage and was only told afterward that the industry standard is to use a much larger area.
“We were surprised when the vegetation responded so quickly because we were told there would be no effect, ‘This is done all the time,'” Adams said. “And there was a very dramatic response.”
Within a few days, all ground vegetation was dead. Within 10 days, the leaves of the hardwoods began to turn brown and drop. Within two years, more than half of the 150 trees were dead, and sodium and chloride concentrations in the soil were 50 times higher than normal.
Those levels declined over time, but the report says high salt content in the soil had another unexpected result: It attracted foraging white-tailed deer and black bears, slowing the regrowth of vegetation.
Really? That’s the disposal plan? To just spray it all over the god damned forest? How many engineers and scientists did it take to come up with this “idea?” You have to be kidding me, right?
It’s so fucking perfect, even down to the imagery of a large corporation shooting fracking fluid out of a hose into a forest. They’re pissing on you, me, and everyone and everything else and they don’t give a shit.