The Real Cost of Fracking (5 page)

Around the corner from these two neighbors, a family with two small children was living in their newly built dream house. The land that they purchased to build their home was part of a parcel that had been subdivided by the previous owner. The mineral rights for the land upon which they built their house had been leased, and on the adjacent property, both the mineral rights and the surface rights had been leased. Soon after the house was completed, drilling activity commenced in earnest. Four gas wells were drilled on the adjacent property, along with a compressor station and a wastewater impoundment; also nearby were buried pipelines and a gas processing plant.

The family began to experience burning eyes and sore throats, part of a constellation of symptoms that we refer to as
shale gas syndrome
, which also includes headaches, nosebleeds, vomiting, diarrhea, and skin rashes. These symptoms, of course, can be caused by a variety of things but are typical of people we spoke to living near shale gas operations. Predrilling testing of water was not done because this family’s water well was drilled after shale gas operations had begun; likewise, no predrilling air testing was done. After family members began to feel sick, some water testing was done both by the family and the drilling company, with conflicting results. In an effort to protect the children, the family settled with the gas company. Initially, the courts sealed all information about this case with a nondisclosure agreement, effectively removing the evidence of harm from public and scientific scrutiny.

In hopes of obtaining the family’s health records, we joined several other individuals and organizations to file an amicus brief in a case to have the evidence unsealed. The case was eventually unsealed,
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revealing a settlement of $750,000 and affidavits the family was compelled to sign as a part of the settlement. The affidavits stated that no medical evidence definitively connects the children’s health problems to gas operations and that the children were in good health.
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In fact, the children were prohibited from speaking in public about the oil and gas industry for the remainder of their lives, a potential violation of First Amendment rights.
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Before a judge unsealed this case after extended litigation, we had some idea of the facts of the case but could not study the evidence further, because the nondisclosure agreement effectively bought silence in the public domain. The reversal of a nondisclosure agreement is extremely rare. Let us imagine if other industries that have the potential to affect public health could use the simple tool of a nondisclosure agreement. What if a drug company were to bring a drug to market and when the drug began widespread use, a measurable fraction of the population taking the drug died of heart attacks? It might be difficult to know for certain if the drug was the cause of the fatal heart attacks without further study. Perhaps the simple solution for the drug company would be to pay the families of the victims to keep silent and have all prescription records sealed by court order. The company could then continue to sell the product and make large profits, with the occasional collateral damage. The action would avoid the messy business of an investigation and further study. Of course, this could never be tolerated and a full investigation with complete disclosure of the facts would be required.

Getting back to the fresh air, clean water, and quiet surroundings—the reasons all of the families gave us for living in the countryside—we can only imagine their surprise when the first earthmoving equipment arrived and the drill pad and wastewater impoundment were readied for action. This was a larger operation than anyone had expected. The West (Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Texas) had seen these large wells—as we discovered while documenting several cases in Colorado—but they were generally off the radar of anyone living in the Midwest or Eastern states. An individual living outside Pittsburgh described it this way: “We have been invaded.” It is important to think about the significance of this statement. This is not someone living in a quiet village in New England; this is someone living in the middle of a mining area, where coal and coal-bed methane are routinely extracted from the ground, with significant environmental impact.

The initial invasion takes the form of trucks, many trucks. First the large earthmoving equipment arrives to re-sculpt the land and create the drilling pad and impoundments to hold wastewater and drilling fluids, muds, and cuttings (solid material that the drill bit produces as it advances through the rock). Then the drilling rig is moved in, followed within a few weeks by an endless stream of trucks carrying water, sand, and toxic chemicals for the hydraulic fracturing. On quiet country roads that sometimes are only ten or twenty feet from a home—roads that never see more than a handful of cars and trucks over the course of the day—truck after truck idles, sometimes speeding by, but always spewing out diesel fumes laced with benzene. Benzene is a potent carcinogen and not what most parents would like their children to breathe or what most dog owners consider healthy for their canine companions. This is the norm—what happens when things proceed as planned.

While the industry and some state regulatory agencies insist that problems are nonexistent or at least manageable, the drilling and hydraulic fracturing processes can pose risks to water and air. The drilling process itself often contacts aquifers, in some cases aquifers that supply drinking water to families in the vicinity of the well. The well is then separated from drinking water by several layers of concrete, but this concrete has been known to fail. In at least one case, most of the wells in a particular area in northeast Pennsylvania required repairs because of a faulty casing in each well. The well is drilled down and the bit is turned to run horizontally into the shale formation of interest. For the Marcellus or Utica Shales in Pennsylvania, the shale formation is thousands of feet below the drinking-water aquifers. This fact has been used to argue in favor of the safety of the process. However, according to industry estimates, fractures can extend vertically up to two thousand feet.
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In areas where the formation is shallow (e.g., the Marcellus Shale in parts of New York State), direct interaction with aquifers could be a problem. Also, connections with natural faults and abandoned gas wells (tens of thousands of unknown and abandoned wells exist in New York
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and Pennsylvania) can bring fluids from the fracturing process into contact with an aquifer.

In addition to potential aquifer contamination, surface spills of both hydraulic fracturing fluids and the toxic and radioactive substances brought up with the gas have been documented and have contaminated ponds and streams. The wastewater brought up from the wells during the production phase contains high levels of salt. After all, these shale formations are nothing more than ancient oceans where the seawater has dried, leaving the salt behind. This wastewater can be spread on roads in New York and Pennsylvania to control dust and to melt ice and snow. But it is not only salt (sodium chloride) that is spread on the roads. The wastewater also contains organic compounds, heavy metals, and radioactive materials, the composition of which changes with time even after the well is put into production. Only minimal testing is required to sell this waste for spreading on roads, and we have witnessed illegal spreading for which there are no controls. This becomes a problem because of leakage into surface water, farmland, and even homeowner’s yards. When the wastewater dries on a dirt road, the substances become part of the dust that people breathe while walking, biking, or driving on the road.

It is no surprise that health issues have been noted, given all of the potential problems associated with normal operations, accidental spills, and air and water contamination. During a presentation at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, Raina Rippel, the director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project (
www.environmentalhealthproject.org
), a clinic near Pittsburgh that sees affected individuals every day, said, choking back tears, “You have to believe that these things are happening . . . These are people who have lived on this land for generations . . . Their quality of life has been destroyed . . . The debate over whether there are health impacts needs to end: there
are
health impacts.” The problem we face is that the symptoms of shale gas syndrome, while fairly consistent among those that have been heavily exposed to shale gas extraction, are not unique. Headache, GI upset, nosebleeds, rash, and burning of the eyes, nose, and throat have multiple causes, and proving without a doubt that the symptoms are caused by proximity to gas and oil wells is difficult at best. We see consistency of symptoms, we can show that the symptoms started when the drilling started, we can show that the symptoms go away when the people or animals leave the area, but this is not scientific proof; this is a correlation.

So how do we obtain proof? The typical approach in environmental toxicology is to show that a toxic substance exists in the environment, then show the pathway that the substance enters the body, and finally correlate the symptoms with exposure to the toxic chemical. In a case associated with gas distribution, Erin Brockovich and Edward Masry settled a lawsuit in 1996 demonstrating that hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen used to fight corrosion in the cooling tower of the Hinkley Compressor Station near San Francisco, leaked into wastewater that was put into unlined ponds near the station. The hexavalent chromium subsequently contaminated groundwater in the area, allegedly affecting the health of nearby residents. Relative to understanding the effects of shale gas extraction on public and animal health, the Brockovich case was comparatively simple in that a single substance was involved. This is not to understate the complexity of the hexavalent chromium case, but rather to emphasize the difficulty of studying shale gas syndrome. We are dealing with multiple chemicals of varying toxicity, some of which are known and some unknown, with multiple, often concomitant exposure pathways, and insufficient pre- and postdrilling testing of air, water, soil, people, and animals.

From our case studies, we know that animals and humans have symptoms that correlate in time with gas and oil drilling operations, particularly unconventional wells. We know that health clinics in Pennsylvania and Colorado report that people living near shale gas operations have symptoms similar to what we have seen in people and are now calling shale gas syndrome. We know that water wells in areas near shale gas operations have been contaminated by methane that has the isotopic signature of shale gas.
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That is, using tests that determine the isotopes of carbon and hydrogen in the methane gas, scientists can determine if the gas is produced by organisms near the surface (biogenic methane) or if it comes from the shale layers deep within the earth (thermogenic methane). This is important because many water wells throughout Pennsylvania and New York are contaminated by low levels of biogenic methane that are unrelated to gas drilling. But we rarely have the smoking gun: this compound came from the gas well, ended up in the drinking water, was consumed by these people or these animals, and has caused this sickness. We have correlations, low levels of a multitude of chemicals, and little information on the effects of these chemicals and, particularly, the effects of combinations of chemicals on humans and animals. The data are lacking, and the statistical odds are against us.

If 2-butoxyethanol shows up in a homeowner’s drinking-water well, do we assume that it is because the resident was using Windex to clean her windows, or can we admit the possibility that it came from the ten shale gas wells within a mile of her home? When a well is drilled and hydraulically fractured, and residents near the gas well see persistent and marked changes in the color, smell, and taste of their water unlike anything they have seen before, do we simply dismiss this as normal variation in water quality? A representative for a large gas company once told us that he is tired of hearing about changes in the color and taste of the water from residents near their gas wells, and the only thing that matters is chemical analysis. While no one can dispute that chemical analysis is the ideal, the statement comes fraught with multiple complicated issues that have not been adequately resolved.

Simply put, the issues are cost, ownership, choice of tests, secrecy, sensitivity, and interpretation. States have varying regulations, but testing of water wells in the area before drilling a gas well is becoming more common. However, testing results and the choice of tests belong to the party that pays for the test. This can be the homeowner, the drilling company, the state government, or the federal government (the US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA). Both states and drilling companies differ in what is tested and what is disclosed to the homeowner. According to court records, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) withheld complete test results of several toxic metals from a private water well located near a shale gas drilling site.
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The homeowner is not given the list of substances to be used prior to drilling, so that testing must generally be limited to a subset of chemicals that may be used or may be present in the flowback water (the wastewater that returns to the surface within the first few weeks during and after hydraulic fracturing, and is composed mainly of hydraulic fracturing fluids).

Furthermore, testing is expensive (at least $500 per test), which can be prohibitive for a low-income individual living near a well but not part of the drilling unit and thus not anticipating royalties. As noted above, prior to drilling, the residents in the area are not routinely informed about the chemicals that will be used on the drilling site. Depending upon the state, this information may be revealed only to the regulatory agency. After the well has been drilled, an interested party can visit the FracFocus website (
www.fracfocus.org
) to obtain a partial list of the chemicals used in the drilling process. Because the information becomes available only after the well has been completed, the information is useless if a person wishes to conduct predrilling testing. Moreover, only chemicals that are not proprietary are reported, and any reporting is at the discretion of the drilling company. While this may be of some use in later tests, FracFocus does not provide the tools needed to design a comprehensive predrilling test.