Those of us in Brazos County are part of the Eagle Ford Shale. The fracking boom began on the other end of the Eagle Ford in 2008 and many residents there have been harmed from fracking. Some places in Texas have 24 wells per pad site!
Shale gas and shale oil wells have proven to deplete quickly, requiring enormous numbers of new wells in an attempt to maintain overall production.
We may suffer from fracking but will reap no economic benefit and have little or no advance notice that the land below us, or near us, is being fracked.
What baseline testing of our air and water was done? Who is monitoring our air and water as fracking increases in our area? The TCEQ has no plans to install an air monitor in our area, their nearest one is about 45 miles away.
Presently, at least one in every seven or eight deaths worldwide is the result of breathing polluted air, however, usually death is not immediate. Hydrogen sulfide is one of the exceptions, it can kill immediately at high enough concentrations. Some shale wells in Texas release hydrogen sulfide.
Are you being poisoned? You may not know. Your water may begin to look or smell differently, or not. You may notice different odors in your air, or not. You may get skin rashes, open sores, nosebleeds, headaches, have trouble breathing, dizziness, nauseau, pains in your body, get tired more easily, have trouble concentrating, have stomach pains, loss of smell, swollen, itching, or burning eyes, despondency, depression, coughing, chest pains, asthma, cancer, or other symptoms/complaints. Your animals may get sick or die.
If you get sick will depend on what is poisoning you, the dose, the timing, your age, and how healthy you are to begin with. Fracking chemicals can be labeled as ‘trade secrets’ and some are a lot more dangerous than others.
In our area, water shortages are already an issue. Where is/will all this fracking water come from?
The City of College Station will sell billions of gallons of water to Apache to frack east of Emerald Forest - see News page for details.
One study found about 80% of the fracking water is fresh water, the rest reused/reprocessed/recycled. Water not reused for fracking must be removed from the water cycle (due to its toxicity). This water will be either stored in plastic lined pits (and contaminants will ultimately leak into our land, air, and water), stored in enclosed tanks, be injected into underground storage wells (that also may leak into our land and water and/or cause earthquakes), or be trucked or piped ‘away’. This water will be contaminated by the chemicals injected into the wells by the fracking companies and is often also radioactive (when radioactive contaminants come to the surface from deep below the ground).
It is astounding the number of reports being released, each bringing additional information about the negative impacts of fracking. One of the most recent and important is based on an eight month investigation. It concentrates on air pollution from fracking the Eagle Ford Shale:
Link to Inside Climate News - Fracking Eagle Ford Shale - Big Oil, Bad Air
http://insideclimatenews.org/fracking-eagle-ford-shale-big-oil-bad-air-texas-prairie
_
Published in September 2013, Reckless Endangerment While Fracking the Eagle Ford, reports that lack of government regulation has placed many burdens on individuals and local communities. We need our local governments to put additional regulations in place that will protect our property values, roads, air, water, and health. Without these additional protections we risk the same horrific fate as these fellow Texans:
http://www.earthworksaction.org/files/publications/FULL-RecklessEndangerment-sm.pdf
_
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYaC7L2svoQ 52 minute talk, Jan. 2012
“It is true that both horizontal drilling and fracturing have been around for a long time - 60 years… What’s different is the volume of fracking fluids and the volume of flow-back that occurs in these wells. It is 50 to 100 times more than what was used in the conventional wells. The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point is at least as big as the volume. The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone that’s being fracked is not going to let anything come up. But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock…We’re opening up channels for the gas to creep up…”
“Gas drilling facilities have sporadic emission spikes that spew toxins harmful to human health, but states rarely monitor these fleeting events.
Many federal and state-run monitors average their data over 24 hours or take samples once every few days. It's a technique that's been used for decades to assess regional compliance with the Clean Air Act. But natural gas facilities have sporadic emission spikes that last just a few hours or minutes. These fleeting events, which release particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and other harmful toxins into the air, can quickly lead to localized health effects. When averaged over 24 hours, however, the spikes can easily be ignored.
The averaging technique is "useless" for detecting pollution spikes, said Neil Carman, clean air director of the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter in Texas. "If the police had to use 24-hour averaging for enforcing speed limits, nobody would ever speed. It would average out."
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)—the state's environmental regulator—operates just five permanent air monitors in the region, none of them located in heavily drilled areas. (Note: Per the TCEQ, the nearest TCEQ air monitor to College Station is about 45 miles away and they have no plans to add a monitor in, or near, our county).
Instead, most of the monitoring in the Eagle Ford is conducted through sporadic TCEQ surveys or investigations of citizen complaints.
… Batterman, the University of Michigan professor, said 24-hour samples are still useful for long- term health studies, since pollutants like benzene and particulate matter can lead to chronic effects that don't show up until years or decades later.
Ideally, scientists should use a combination of methods to monitor long-term and acute impacts, he said, "but there are technology and cost issues."
The best way to analyze short-term impacts like skin rashes and headaches is to take frequent samples over a sustained period of time, said Beth Weinberger, a co-author of the new study. She and her colleagues assessed indoor air quality in 14 homes near drilling sites by taking measurements of fine particulate matter once a minute for up to 24 hours. After examining their data, they found that some homes had very high levels of particulate matter more than 30 percent of the time.
"It was alarming, because we realized if fine particulate matter was getting into the house, other things, like benzene and formaldehyde, probably were as well," Brown said.
"The plume touchdowns or emission events are often quite short, and by the time anybody comes out there and sets up their monitoring [equipment], there's nothing to measure," Batterman said. "I have some sympathies for the regulated community because it's very difficult to validate these exceedances that certainly occur."
In the Eagle Ford, the TCEQ has up to 30 days to investigate a complaint. In Pennsylvania, the deadline is usually two weeks. In Colorado, inspectors often respond within 24 hours, according to a spokesman for the state's Department of Public Health and Environment.
Weinberger said the TCEQ's practice of taking quick "grab samples" is "the perfect design" to miss detecting emission spikes.
"That's what you do if you're not interested in capturing episodic exposures," she said.
Weinberger said more frequent and consistent sampling is needed, such as monitoring once an hour for two weeks. Regulators can then compare the individual data points with existing health standards to see how often they're exceeded.
Federal air quality standards exist for only six chemicals: ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and lead. All other pollutants, including dozens of volatile organic compounds, are managed by a patchwork of occupational standards and state guidelines.
Texas, for instance, uses short-term exposure guidelines of 180 parts per billion for benzene and 4,000 parts per billion for toluene to determine whether a situation requires further investigation.
Other states have different guidelines, and some chemicals have none at all because little is known about their health impacts. The guidelines have another flaw: They don't fully consider what happens when people are exposed to many chemicals at once, as is common near gas and oil production sites.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140403/toxic-emission-spikes-fracking-sites-are-rarely-monitored-study-finds
There are two documentaries: Gasland I and II. Gasland II is often available on HBO:
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com
Get involved, learn more:
Follow fracking news (different on each site):
On Twitter:
twitter.com/gaslandmovie
On Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslandmovie
Get Involved:
Set up a free community screening of Gaslands:
[email protected]
http://www.stopthefrackattack.org/category/blog/
Shale gas and shale oil wells have proven to deplete quickly, requiring enormous numbers of new wells in an attempt to maintain overall production.
- Most of us don’t own the rights to the oil and gas below our property.
We may suffer from fracking but will reap no economic benefit and have little or no advance notice that the land below us, or near us, is being fracked.
- Fracking on or near one’s property can make it harder, sometimes impossible, to acquire mortgages and insurance.
- Fracking booms in other areas have increased crime rates (including high rates of methamphetamine use among drill crews), increased prostitution, raised rents/housing costs, and strained existing infrastructure (including schools).
- Existing regulations are too weak to protect us. The poisons released by fracking may go unnoticed for extended periods of time. Spills, leaks, and intentional releases often go unreported by industry. Victims may be completely unaware they have been, or are being, poisoned. Once aware, in order to be compensated, the victims must prove damages in a court of law and then try to collect.
- Fracking has been intentionally exempted from most of the federal clean air and water regulations. Recent Texas legislation passed to protect half the counties in the DFW area, specifically exempted those of us in the Eagle Ford Shale from these additional protections.
- Even the Texas agency responsible for issuing fracking permits, the RRC, urges LOCAL regulations and protections for flaring of gas, pipelines, air & water protections, eminent domaine issues, road use, etc.
What baseline testing of our air and water was done? Who is monitoring our air and water as fracking increases in our area? The TCEQ has no plans to install an air monitor in our area, their nearest one is about 45 miles away.
Presently, at least one in every seven or eight deaths worldwide is the result of breathing polluted air, however, usually death is not immediate. Hydrogen sulfide is one of the exceptions, it can kill immediately at high enough concentrations. Some shale wells in Texas release hydrogen sulfide.
Are you being poisoned? You may not know. Your water may begin to look or smell differently, or not. You may notice different odors in your air, or not. You may get skin rashes, open sores, nosebleeds, headaches, have trouble breathing, dizziness, nauseau, pains in your body, get tired more easily, have trouble concentrating, have stomach pains, loss of smell, swollen, itching, or burning eyes, despondency, depression, coughing, chest pains, asthma, cancer, or other symptoms/complaints. Your animals may get sick or die.
If you get sick will depend on what is poisoning you, the dose, the timing, your age, and how healthy you are to begin with. Fracking chemicals can be labeled as ‘trade secrets’ and some are a lot more dangerous than others.
- Fracking is done with enormous quanties of water - millions of gallons of water per well per fracking. Each pad site may have a couple dozen wells and each well may be fracked several times.
In our area, water shortages are already an issue. Where is/will all this fracking water come from?
The City of College Station will sell billions of gallons of water to Apache to frack east of Emerald Forest - see News page for details.
One study found about 80% of the fracking water is fresh water, the rest reused/reprocessed/recycled. Water not reused for fracking must be removed from the water cycle (due to its toxicity). This water will be either stored in plastic lined pits (and contaminants will ultimately leak into our land, air, and water), stored in enclosed tanks, be injected into underground storage wells (that also may leak into our land and water and/or cause earthquakes), or be trucked or piped ‘away’. This water will be contaminated by the chemicals injected into the wells by the fracking companies and is often also radioactive (when radioactive contaminants come to the surface from deep below the ground).
- Contamination of some drinking water wells and/or aquifers is likely. Serious adverse health effects have occured to those bathing in fracking-contaminated water. If your water is unsafe to drink, it is not a good idea to bathe/shower in it.
It is astounding the number of reports being released, each bringing additional information about the negative impacts of fracking. One of the most recent and important is based on an eight month investigation. It concentrates on air pollution from fracking the Eagle Ford Shale:
Link to Inside Climate News - Fracking Eagle Ford Shale - Big Oil, Bad Air
http://insideclimatenews.org/fracking-eagle-ford-shale-big-oil-bad-air-texas-prairie
_
Published in September 2013, Reckless Endangerment While Fracking the Eagle Ford, reports that lack of government regulation has placed many burdens on individuals and local communities. We need our local governments to put additional regulations in place that will protect our property values, roads, air, water, and health. Without these additional protections we risk the same horrific fate as these fellow Texans:
http://www.earthworksaction.org/files/publications/FULL-RecklessEndangerment-sm.pdf
_
- EnergyPolicyForum.org, sounds the alarm on the financial burdens born by local and state governments and the economics of fracking. Deborah Rogers, Ft. Worth, native, points out the drilling treadmill, the quick decline in shale well production per well, the low number of productive shale wells, and the huge number of wells necessary in each area. Just like the housing bubble that burst in 2007-2008, the fracking bubble, fueled by the financial industry, relies on Wall ‘Street’ economics to keep fracking companies attractive to financial analysts and investors. Rogers details the environmental problems created in the DFW area by fracking and the dismal revenues and production over time with ever more wells being drilled, with less per well production:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYaC7L2svoQ 52 minute talk, Jan. 2012
- Richard Heinberg, in his book, Snake Oil - How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future, reveals the supply GROWTH of shale oil and gas will be over before the end of this decade, leaving behind ruined landscapes, poisoned water, abandoned homes, farms, and wells. His book is an excellent overview of the fracking industry, including the Eagle Ford shale ‘play’ where first-year decline in production in new wells is 60% and the overall decline at the end of the second year is 89% below the average initial production levels of wells drilled in 2012….The average Eagle Ford well will yield less than 15 barrels a day within about three years. See pages 86 and 87 for information on air pollution in drilling areas, including methane and butane spikes; volatile organic compounds linked to unhealthy ground-level ozone; dozens of other hazardous pollutants at operating well sites detected up to 7/10 of a mile from the well site….Historically, regions that rely on resource extraction as an economic pillar often underperform when compared to other regions, especially when viewed over the long term…In 2012, the State of Texas received about $3.6 billion in severance taxes from ALL oil and gas produced in the state (from conventional wells as well as those in fracked shale). But during that same year, the Texas Department of Transportation estimated damage to Texas roads from drilling operations at $4 billion…Roads designed to last 20 years are requiring major repairs after only 5 years due to the constant stream of overweight vehicles ferrying equipment and water to and from fracking sites.
- Louis W. Allstadt, former executive vice president of Mobil Oil who ran the company’s exploration and production operations in the western hemisphere before he retired in 2000, states:
“It is true that both horizontal drilling and fracturing have been around for a long time - 60 years… What’s different is the volume of fracking fluids and the volume of flow-back that occurs in these wells. It is 50 to 100 times more than what was used in the conventional wells. The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point is at least as big as the volume. The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone that’s being fracked is not going to let anything come up. But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock…We’re opening up channels for the gas to creep up…”
- Excerpt from Toxic Emission Spikes at Fracking Sites Are Rarely Monitored, Study Finds by Lisa Song and Jim Morris:
“Gas drilling facilities have sporadic emission spikes that spew toxins harmful to human health, but states rarely monitor these fleeting events.
Many federal and state-run monitors average their data over 24 hours or take samples once every few days. It's a technique that's been used for decades to assess regional compliance with the Clean Air Act. But natural gas facilities have sporadic emission spikes that last just a few hours or minutes. These fleeting events, which release particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and other harmful toxins into the air, can quickly lead to localized health effects. When averaged over 24 hours, however, the spikes can easily be ignored.
The averaging technique is "useless" for detecting pollution spikes, said Neil Carman, clean air director of the Sierra Club's Lone Star Chapter in Texas. "If the police had to use 24-hour averaging for enforcing speed limits, nobody would ever speed. It would average out."
- The situation in Texas' Eagle Ford Shale, which spans an area nearly twice the size of Massachusetts, is particularly problematic because there's little monitoring of any kind.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)—the state's environmental regulator—operates just five permanent air monitors in the region, none of them located in heavily drilled areas. (Note: Per the TCEQ, the nearest TCEQ air monitor to College Station is about 45 miles away and they have no plans to add a monitor in, or near, our county).
Instead, most of the monitoring in the Eagle Ford is conducted through sporadic TCEQ surveys or investigations of citizen complaints.
- But spot monitoring can only catch a fraction of the emission spikes.
… Batterman, the University of Michigan professor, said 24-hour samples are still useful for long- term health studies, since pollutants like benzene and particulate matter can lead to chronic effects that don't show up until years or decades later.
Ideally, scientists should use a combination of methods to monitor long-term and acute impacts, he said, "but there are technology and cost issues."
The best way to analyze short-term impacts like skin rashes and headaches is to take frequent samples over a sustained period of time, said Beth Weinberger, a co-author of the new study. She and her colleagues assessed indoor air quality in 14 homes near drilling sites by taking measurements of fine particulate matter once a minute for up to 24 hours. After examining their data, they found that some homes had very high levels of particulate matter more than 30 percent of the time.
"It was alarming, because we realized if fine particulate matter was getting into the house, other things, like benzene and formaldehyde, probably were as well," Brown said.
"The plume touchdowns or emission events are often quite short, and by the time anybody comes out there and sets up their monitoring [equipment], there's nothing to measure," Batterman said. "I have some sympathies for the regulated community because it's very difficult to validate these exceedances that certainly occur."
- TCEQ has 30 days to investigate complaints:
In the Eagle Ford, the TCEQ has up to 30 days to investigate a complaint. In Pennsylvania, the deadline is usually two weeks. In Colorado, inspectors often respond within 24 hours, according to a spokesman for the state's Department of Public Health and Environment.
Weinberger said the TCEQ's practice of taking quick "grab samples" is "the perfect design" to miss detecting emission spikes.
"That's what you do if you're not interested in capturing episodic exposures," she said.
Weinberger said more frequent and consistent sampling is needed, such as monitoring once an hour for two weeks. Regulators can then compare the individual data points with existing health standards to see how often they're exceeded.
Federal air quality standards exist for only six chemicals: ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and lead. All other pollutants, including dozens of volatile organic compounds, are managed by a patchwork of occupational standards and state guidelines.
Texas, for instance, uses short-term exposure guidelines of 180 parts per billion for benzene and 4,000 parts per billion for toluene to determine whether a situation requires further investigation.
Other states have different guidelines, and some chemicals have none at all because little is known about their health impacts. The guidelines have another flaw: They don't fully consider what happens when people are exposed to many chemicals at once, as is common near gas and oil production sites.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140403/toxic-emission-spikes-fracking-sites-are-rarely-monitored-study-finds
- An easy way to get an excellent understanding of Fracking and the effects on communities is by watching Gasland.
There are two documentaries: Gasland I and II. Gasland II is often available on HBO:
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com
Get involved, learn more:
Follow fracking news (different on each site):
On Twitter:
twitter.com/gaslandmovie
On Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslandmovie
Get Involved:
Set up a free community screening of Gaslands:
[email protected]
- Learn how to help ensure fracking does not harm our community:
http://www.stopthefrackattack.org/category/blog/