What is Fracking?

“Natural” gas has a reputation as environmentally friendly, but a new method of drilling for gas called hydraulic fracturing or fracking is anything but clean and green.  Across the country, state regulators have documented over 1,000 incidents of groundwater contamination related to fracking.  In many cases, water is so polluted with gas that people can literally light their water on fire, right out of the tap!  In addition to contamination underground, fracking generates enormous quantities of highly toxic—and even radioactive—wastewater, which is often left to evaporate into the air, or simply dumped into the rivers and streams that supply our public drinking water systems.

How it works

The fracking process involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and over 900 toxic chemicals thousands of feet underground to release tiny pockets of gas by literally breaking up the rock where the gas is trapped.  The method has been compared to exploding a pipe bomb deep underground.  Chemicals used in the process are kept secret from the public, medical professionals, and even regulators, because fracking is exempt from key provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act.  The exemption, which was granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, has been dubbed “the Halliburton Loophole” because Halliburton pioneered the fracking process, and then-Vice President (and former CEO of Halliburton) Dick Cheney was heavily involved in setting the Bush administration’s energy policy.

Enormous Quantities of Water


Hydraulic fracturing uses enormous quantities of fresh water, which gas companies take from nearby streams, ponds, and rivers, or truck in if there is no immediate water source.  Every time a gas well is fracked, 4 to 9 million gallons of water are injected into the ground.  A single well can be fracked up to 12 separate times, adding up to over 100 million gallons of freshwater used in the lifetime of a well.  In the Delaware River Basin in New York and Pennsylvania, the gas industry estimates that it will use over 10 billion gallons of water over the next ten years—which they plan to withdraw from the same sources that the public depends on for drinking water.

Contamination underground


What happens to all that water?  Much of it stays underground, where no one is exactly sure what happens to it.  The gas industry insists that the chemicals and gas never find their way into underground aquifers, but many cases of groundwater contamination prove that the opposite is the case.  When the fractures creating by fracking intersect with existing cracks in the ground, chemicals and gas can “catch a ride” on underground streams, and wind up contaminating drinking water sources.  In places affected by fracking, many residents have become sick from dangerous levels of volatile organic compounds, chemicals, and methane gas in their water.  Methane gas is also responsible for the phenomenon of flammable tap water, and has even caused houses and water wells to explode.

Contamination above ground


While much of the water and chemical mixture stays below ground, a majority of it comes back up to the surface in the form of a toxic brew full of  hazardous chemicals, volatile organic compounds, and even radioactive material—which exists naturally deep underground and is mobilized in the fracking process.  With millions of gallons of this hazardous liquid created at every gas well, a major challenge for the gas industry and regulators has been finding a way to dispose of it.  In states like Colorado, Texas, and Wyoming, often this wastewater is left to evaporate into the air, with the final thick sludge taken to landfills.  This evaporation process has led dangerous air quality in some areas with gas drilling, and toxic exposure for many residents.

In less arid climates evaporation is not an option, so gas companies often dispose of the wastewater in municipal water treatment facilities.  Public water utilities are inadequately equipped to process the highly toxic liquid, so the wastewater ends up receiving minimal treatment and is released into rivers and streams still containing many dangerous compounds.  The Associated Press reported in January that in 2009 more than 44,000 barrels of fracking wastewater were discharged into a creek in the suburbs of Philadelphia.  In New York, the Buffalo Sewer Authority has released fracking wastewater into the Niagara River, which flows into Lake Ontario through Niagara Falls.

Industry that plays “fast and loose” with the rules, and no cop on the job


In addition to the infamous “Halliburton Loophole” exempting fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the gas industry benefits from a host of sweeping exemptions to our most basic environmental and public health protections.  Other laws that the gas industry is exempted from include key provisions of the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, CERCLA (Superfund Act), Resource Conversation and Recovery Act (hazardous waste act), and the Environmental Policy Act.

Between all these exemptions, the gas industry has often been described as completely free of all federal oversight. However, federal law does still prohibit the gas industry from one particular practice: the injection of diesel fuel as a fracking fluid.  While gas companies are permitted to inject hundreds of known carcinogenic compounds as fracking fluids (without informing the public of what chemicals they are using), the Safe Drinking Water Act still mandated that gas companies not use diesel fuel as a frack fluid.  But on January 31, 2011, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced their preliminary results of a year-long investigation into the practices of gas companies.  The congressional investigation found that oil and gas companies injected over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel into gas wells in 19 states between 2005 and 2009—in direct violation of the one federal provision from which they were not exempt. Despite having federal laws carved to suit their profits and need for secrecy, the gas industry could not follow the one guideline it had set for itself.

Plus: toxic air emissions, explosive conditions, declining home values, heavy truck traffic, high carbon footprint, burdened local governments, limited jobs for local workers…From start to finish, fracking is a disaster for our environment, health, economy, and future. It's time to ban fracking now.

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