[All] McKibben on Fracking

[Robert Milligan]

Good stuff Peter.  Haven't  Alberta, BC & Quebec have been most  
associated with F'n fracking?  But Ontario? It should be checked out.
Robert M


On 9-Mar-12, at 11:25 AM, Peter Kofler wrote:

> Interesting article on fracking by Bill McKibben. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/why-not-frack/
>
> The following excerpted lines caught my attention, which might be  
> pertinent to our region:
>
> A second concern has to do with the damage being done to rivers and  
> streams—and the water supply for homes and industries—by the briny  
> soup that pours out of the fracking wells in large volume. Most of  
> the chemical-laced slick water injected down the well will stay  
> belowground, but for every million gallons, 200,000 to 400,000  
> gallons will be regurgitated back to the surface, bringing with it,  
> McGraw writes,
>
>
>
> not only the chemicals it included in the first place, but traces of  
> the oil-laced drilling mud, and all the other noxious stuff that was  
> already trapped down there in the rock: iron and chromium, radium  
> and salt—lots of salt.
>
>
> Some enterprising drilling companies have, Urbina wrote, “found  
> ready buyers [for wastewater] in communities that spread it on roads  
> for de-icing in the winter and for dust suppression in the summer.  
> When ice melts or rain falls, the waste can run off roads and end up  
> in the drinking supply.”
>
> Does anyone out there know if there are local safeguards against  
> "enterprising drilling companies" or intermediaries selling drilling  
> wastewater/frackwash to regional procurement people/snow removal  
> operators/dust control service contractors under some presumably  
> environmentally benign or techno-obfuscatory name like "brine  
> fluids", probably at really reasonable prices? We're close enough to  
> New York State, Pennsylvania and other states where fracking is  
> currently practiced to serve as potentially unwitting disposal  
> markets for this probable toxic waste.
>
> I'm aware of the somewhat circuitous route by which  
> hydrofluorosilicic acid got "recycled" from phosphate fertilizer  
> industry scrubber liquor toxic waste to water fluoridation chemical.  
> I suspect there's a strong incentive for fracking companies or their  
> subcontractors to use alternative disposal methods for frackwash to  
> avoid high disposal costs, what with currently relatively low  
> natural gas prices.
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