Drinking Water (18 page)

This is mainly a problem of enforcing laws against public or publicly regulated bodies. But enforcement against private parties has also been problematic. Most of the enforcement of our nation’s water laws takes place at the state level, and not all states take a strong approach to violations. The
New York Times
investigation found that from 2005 to 2009, factories and other regulated sites had violated water pollution laws more than half a million times, yet state officials sanctioned less than 3 percent of Clean Water Act violations with fines or other punishments. The administrator of the EPA in the Obama administration, Lisa Jackson, acknowledged these failings in an internal memo where she stated that “in many parts of the country, the level of significant noncompliance with permitting requirements is unacceptably high and the level of enforcement activity is unacceptably low.”

For their part, officials plead insufficient resources. While the number of regulatory targets has increased more than twofold over the past decade, most state enforcement budgets have not increased and remain under tight control in the face of state funding crises. Politics has also taken its toll. An EPA official speaking anonymously complained that, under the administration of President George W. Bush, “We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut. Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.” Enforcement picked up in the Obama administration, with more inspections and prosecutions, but uneven and inadequate enforcement in some states continues.

And note that this assessment does not even take into account so-called nonpoint source pollution, pollutants swept into waterways and seeping into groundwater from pesticides and fertilizer spread on farm fields. In most cases, these are completely exempted from the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. Their largely exempt status has caused nonpoint sources to now become
one of the most significant sources of water pollution, contaminating wells and aquifers with bacteria, nitrates, and phosphates.

T
HE EXEMPTED SOURCE CAUSING THE MOST CONTROVERSY AT THE
moment is hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking. Fracking is a method for extracting natural gas from deep within shale formations. Traditionally, natural gas drillers have sunk pipes straight down into gas deposits. In fracking, special technology developed by Halliburton Corporation allows the drill to change directions from vertical to horizontal, running along shale formations. Holes are blasted through horizontal well pipes and into the rock. To fracture the shale even more, a special mixture of water, sand, and chemicals is injected at very high pressure miles deep into these geologic layers. The combined impact of blasts and forced fluids creates fissures releasing natural gas (also known as shale gas or methane) that has been trapped in the shale formations for millions of years. The fracking fluids flow back up the well through steel pipes encased in concrete to the surface, opening a passage for the natural gas to follow.

The potential of fracking is enormous, turning assumptions about America’s energy security upside down. As recently as 2003, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, reported to Congress that the country would soon need to import significant amounts of natural gas from overseas. Reports of massive stores underneath parts of the East Coast have led some to predict that fracking could satisfy the nation’s need for natural gas for fifty or one hundred years. Natural gas is familiar to us as the blue flame used on gas stove tops and water heaters. It can generate electricity and even power cars, buses, and trucks, dramatically reducing America’s dependency on foreign oil while creating domestic jobs. Natural gas produces fewer greenhouse gases than other fossil fuels, so there could be climate change benefits, as well. As a result, in a modern-day miners’ rush, investment is pouring into the field, and we can expect thousands upon thousands of new wells across the country in the next few decades.

There are shale deposits across the United States, but most of the action has centered on a geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale, a formation extending from West Virginia and Ohio through Pennsylvania and New York. The northeastern Pennsylvanian town of Dimock lies in the heart of the Marcellus and has become ground zero for fracking controversy.

Dimock is a poor community—one in seven are out of work—so when representatives of the Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation knocked on doors, offering $25 an acre to drill for five years, plus a share of royalties when they started pumping gas, it seemed pretty attractive. Pat Farnelli’s husband was working two jobs—farmer by day and diner chef on the interstate at night—to make ends meet. When the Cabot Oil offer was made, she recalls, “It seemed like God’s provenance. We really were having a tough time then—that day. We thought it was salvation. Any ray of hope here is a big deal.”

Cabot Oil had chosen wisely, for its wells in Dimock did well, producing almost $60 million of natural gas every year. But it came at a cost. Starting in 2009, a number of drinking water wells exploded. Other residents complained of polluted wells. While the idea of explosive drinking water may seem hard to believe, if you search YouTube with the words “methane faucet fire,” you will find
a series of videos showing home owners turning on the faucet, lighting a match, and watching flames shoot out of their kitchen sinks. Cabot Oil replied that the methane in the water occurred naturally and had been there before the fracking began. The concrete casing lining the well safely trapped the methane within the pipe.

A careful study by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection sided with the home owners, concluding that Cabot’s operation had caused methane seepage in water wells. The company was ordered to install methane gas detectors for some residents as well as alternate sources of drinking water. Cabot has since placed a protective covering of cement along the entire well casing.

Nor is Dimock alone. In the suburban Cleveland house of Richard and Thelma Payne, methane built up in the basement, “shattering windows, blowing doors two feet from their hinges and igniting a small fire in a violent flash. The Paynes were jolted out of bed, and lifted clear off the ground.” The Ohio Department of Natural Resources laid the blame for the explosion on a nearby fracking site’s inadequate concrete casing that had allowed methane to escape near the surface.

Similar controversies are raging across the country. The documentary
Gasland
won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Its view on fracking is clear: “The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of ‘fracking’ or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a ‘Saudi Arabia of natural gas’ just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination.”

Amid the charges flying back and forth, there are three basic concerns about fracking and drinking water. The first is that the fracking fluids blasted thousands of feet below the surface are finding their way into shallow aquifers that provide drinking water. The second is that methane is escaping from well casings as it is brought back to the surface. And the last is that the recovered fracking fluid is polluting local water sources.

As with other emerging contaminants, there are currently more questions than answers. The best science on the subject to date may be found in a recent peer-reviewed study by researchers at Duke University and published in the prestigious
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
. Researchers compared the chemistry of water found near fracking sites with more distant water. The data showed that water samples near fracking sites contained higher levels of methane than distant drinking water sources. This, in itself, was not surprising. Industry has generally not denied this, arguing that methane was naturally present in water sources before the fracking even began but no one was looking for it.

The Duke study ruled this out by using a detection technique called isotopic analysis. The samples closest to the fracking sites contained a special form of methane known as thermogenic methane. Thermogenic methane only occurs deep within the earth and has a different structure than naturally occurring surface-level methane. The most plausible way this could have been brought to the surface was through poor concrete casing of the drilling rigs, allowing some thermogenic methane to leak as it rises.

Importantly, the Duke study did not find any fracking fluids in the waters they tested. This supports the industry position that the liquids are injected well over a mile beneath shallow aquifers, making contamination virtually impossible. It should be noted that most states do not require disclosure of what exactly is in the fracking fluid. Industry has argued it should remain a trade secret. At a recent conference speech, the CEO of Halliburton, an industry leader in the field, held up a glass of the company’s new fracking fluid and asked an executive to come on stage and drink it. Observers were impressed, but said they would have been more impressed had the CEO himself drunk the fluid.

The U.S. EPA has started to get involved, testing drinking water for some of Dimock’s residents and drafting regulations for air pollution from fracking operations. Why has it not been more active in such an important area? Perhaps surprisingly, it has been prevented from doing so. In the 2005 energy bill, at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, text was adopted that specifically exempted
fracking from coverage under the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. The efforts of Cheney, a former chief executive of Halliburton, led some to dub the exemption as the “Halliburton Loophole.” Regulation and enforcement occur at the state level but are very uneven, with stretched resources. The nonprofit ProPublica reports that West Virginia has one inspector for every 3,300 wells. Nor is methane regulated in drinking water. It is not thought to be harmful to health, but there is very little research on the topic.

The fracking debate continues to rage, but two things are certain. Fracking will become an increasingly important industry in the coming years, raising greater concerns about its impacts on drinking water supplies. And the term “fire water” is likely to take on a new meaning.

T
HE PREVIOUS CHAPTER BEGAN WITH THE OBSERVATION THAT
, although we do not give a second thought when filling a glass from a nearby faucet, for most of human history, safe drinking water has been the exception, not the norm. And this seems obvious. The high levels of cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and other waterborne diseases that were commonplace in times past have thankfully become rare, if not nonexistent, in developed countries today. Consider that in 1900, an American had a 1 in 20 chance of dying from a gastrointestinal infection before the age of seventy. In 1940, this had been reduced to a 1 in 3,333 chance; and in 1990 to a 1 in 2,000,000 chance. This is a staggering achievement—a 100,000-fold public health improvement in less than a century.

No surprise, then, that from the vantage of twenty-first-century America, we view the quality of drinking water in the past and in much of the developing world as unsafe, and for good reason. It goes without saying that if we got into a time machine and exited in 1854 at the pump on Broad Street, we would be wise enough not to drink that water. If the history we have traversed means anything, though, it is that our assumption about safe drinking water generally being the exception rather than the norm is wrong.

While
we
may look with horror on the water drunk in days
gone by, people at the time often did not. People generally regard their water as safe. The widow in Hampstead liked the Broad Street Pump water so much she sent her servant specially down to bottle it for her. It is only later, when we look back through the lens of modern microbiology and public health, that the water seems unsafe and the laws inadequate.

The interesting question, then, becomes how such transitions occur, why formerly safe water becomes regarded as unsafe and norms adapt. Think back to the example of the communal cup at Tian Tan Buddha. Why did attitudes toward shared drinking water cups change so rapidly in America in the early 1900s, indeed forcing a change in laws, despite the fact that this practice persists in parts of Asia today? Why was chlorination welcomed in some communities in the early 1900s yet strongly opposed in others? Why do some Bangladeshis continue to draw water from red-painted tubewells and others do not? And of direct relevance today, should we regulate pharmaceuticals and personal care products in drinking water? In these cases and others, common understandings of safe drinking water are in flux; norms are contested.

What explains these transitional periods and their influence on what we regard as safe water? The answer is multifaceted. A large part of the explanation clearly turns on changing conceptions of disease. Imagine there was no time machine and you really were a Londoner living in Soho a hundred fifty years years ago. If you, an educated person,
knew
that diseases such as cholera and typhoid were spread through airborne miasma, then getting your water from a covered well would be prudent. Through this perspective, the cesspit located next to the well would, in fact, be very convenient. You can dump your garbage and collect your day’s water at the same place. How thoughtful of the municipality.