The Real Cost of Fracking (6 page)

Once the well is drilled and hydraulically fractured, if water quality changes, testing may be repeated. Again, ownership, disclosure of the results, and the prohibitive costs of the tests are at issue. But at this stage, we have to consider the sensitivity and interpretation of the tests. The maximum contaminant level, or MCL, is used to interpret whether a substance can cause adverse health effects in a public water system. MCLs are set by the EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
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and also by some state agencies. The SDWA has been enormously successful in improving public drinking water, but for the purposes of testing water wells in shale gas regions, there are some serious drawbacks. MCLs are based on the idea that toxic substances have only one effect (injury, disease, or death) at a particular threshold level and above. But it is well known that many toxic substances can affect multiple physiological processes and at different concentrations. In some cases, for example, certain endocrine disruptors, low concentrations can even be more toxic than higher concentrations.
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If we take a step further and consider the probability that multiple toxic substances can be present, the use of the MCL as a standard for judging the quality of drinking water degrades further. We know almost nothing about the health effects of mixtures of toxic substances, and it is likely that the “safe” level of a mixture cannot be judged by the individual MCLs.
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MCLs may not be available for substances found in well water for at least two reasons. The first is simply that the EPA or a state agency has not evaluated certain chemicals. Several people we interviewed are enrolled in the EPA’s study of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking-water resources, begun in 2010 and expected to continue at least through 2014.
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In this study, a wide range of constituents are tested, but most lack primary MCLs. Drinking water may be deemed safe for consumption despite the presence of such chemicals, because there is no regulation stating that they are unsafe. In the Pennsylvania case described above, the stated reason the PADEP withheld complete water test results was that several metals were below the MCL or had no MCL.
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The other reason for the lack of an MCL is that routine tests are not sensitive enough to measure low concentrations of a substance. In this case, the EPA can mandate “Treatment Techniques,”
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which are procedures to remove such a contaminant if it were present in drinking water. This is fine for public water-treatment plants, but is not applicable to private well water. In the final analysis, we are left with MCLs that have been useful for improving public drinking water, but have more limited use in understanding water tests for private wells, particularly those suspected of contamination by gas and oil drilling in the area.

Given the difficulties of predrilling testing and the interpretation of results, contamination of water is extremely difficult to prove, particularly for the homeowner of limited means. Proving that the presence of a chemical or, much more likely, a mixture of chemicals resulted in a particular symptom is even more difficult. But this is only one type of exposure. Air testing is more challenging and more expensive than water testing, and exposure levels are less well documented. Contamination by microbes is an area that is almost entirely unknown in this field. We know that even at the elevated pressures and extreme salt concentrations of the shale layers, bacteria and archaea (single-celled microorganisms with no nucleus or other membrane-bound organelles) are present and may be quite different from the organisms found at the surface.
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Bactericides are used in hydraulic fracturing fluid to kill bacteria and avoid bacterial films that would impede the flow of gas to the surface. Making fracturing chemicals more “green” might have the unintended consequence of bringing viable, uncharacterized microbes to the surface.

We can do much better to protect public health with further research into the effects of chemicals used deep underground and those returning to the surface. In particular, we need to know more about long-term and low-dose effects as well as the effects of combinations of toxic substances. Finally, we need to understand the microbes that are brought back to the surface with the wastewater. Currently, these microorganisms can escape any detection in water tests and could present a significant health problem at low levels.

Given the difficulties in proving without a doubt that unconventional fossil fuel extraction has contaminated water and air and led to illness, it is perhaps easy to understand why we hear the constant refrain that this is a safe process that has been used for many years without problems. As is often said, absence of proof of harm cannot be equated to absence of harm, and we need to do more to protect the people living in shale gas country.

We illustrate the issues raised here with the stories of three families in different parts of Pennsylvania. They have all experienced health problems and have seen beloved pets fall sick after presumed exposures to toxicants associated with gas drilling. The levels of proof in each case vary, but the common threads are the types of symptoms and when they occur. These are all people who value living in a small town or country environment, with peacefulness and clean air and water. They have all seen their quiet lives changed drastically. Their passionate, and sometimes eloquent, responses to their troubles inspire us to work harder to understand what has happened to them and to so many like them.

Do you know what my little girl said? She dreamed that the guards were gone, the gate, the ropes, and the bright lights and the noise—all gone, and the hill back to normal, just being a hill. She just wants this all back to what it was before. We just want our lives back, the way they were before.

—Sarah Valdes, February 2011

In the rolling hills south of Pittsburgh, the quiet, rural landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation. Home to many new drilling sites in recent years, the area has seen truck traffic increase dramatically. Processing plants, compressor stations, condensate tanks, wastewater impoundments, drilling-muds pits, and drilling rigs now adorn fields that were once primarily agricultural land. The change has brought prosperity for a few landowners and for proprietors of fast-food establishments, but has been less than beneficial to the many who were unwittingly made victims. This is illustrated dramatically by the plight of two neighbors, Sarah and Josie, their families, and their animals.

I first received both Sarah Valdes’s and Josie Bidermann’s names, along with others, from a former employee of a gas company. After I was given Sarah’s contact information, I was asked not to call her until after the holidays were over. She was having a tough time with sick animals and a child who was severely ill, and because of that, the holiday season would be especially difficult for her.

I was working on another case when my contact called and asked me to drop everything and phone Josie. It was late, and as I listened to the prerecorded message after dialing her number and prepared to leave a message, she picked up. She was expecting my call and wanted to tell me everything about her experiences with the gas drilling company, her water problems, and, most importantly, what happened to her dogs and horses.

Josie and her daughter, Lindsay, compete in rodeo and barrel-racing events, keeping their horses in a stable on their farm. Along with Josie’s husband, Jeff, they raise dogs—purebred boxers and bulldogs, some of the best in Pennsylvania. These are not city folks playing at being plantation owners, but salt-of-the-earth farmers with a real connection to the land. Jeff has lived in this neighborhood all of his life and was raised by grandparents in their home, a 200-year-old farmhouse on land where beef cattle and pigs were kept and fruit was produced. Josie has lived here only thirty-three years and considers herself an outsider because many of their neighbors, like Jeff, have families that have lived here for generations. To Josie and Jeff, the politics of Harrisburg and Washington, DC, could be happening on another planet. Yet deals were being made with multinational corporations, and their beloved Pennsylvania landscape was being sold to the highest bidder with little or no accountability. On Josie’s farm, these deals meant nothing. Protecting the health and welfare of her family and animals was most important.

In the last couple of years, the drilling company had cleared several acres of farmland on the property of her neighbor, Mr. Leverkuhn. Seemingly overnight, this bucolic landscape was transformed into an industrial zone with the arrival of a shale gas well pad situated on higher ground and within a half mile of both Josie’s and Sarah’s homes. This was soon followed by three wells. Along with the gas wells came a drilling-muds pit that held the drill cuttings, muds, and fluids; an impoundment nearly five acres in size to hold wastewater; and condensate tanks to store semiliquid hydrocarbons that are often produced along with the gas.

As with most landowners, Mr. Leverkuhn was probably unaware of the massive changes that would take place on his land. The landsmen charged with signing up farmers for leases apparently have a rather casual relationship with the truth: rarely is the process of fracking and its potential impacts explained to the landowner—the enticement is monetary, information is secondary. Since even landowners are kept in the dark before signing a lease, neighbors who will have their lives turned upside down are typically unaware of the changes to come. I wonder now, in retrospect, if Mr. Leverkuhn was aware of the dozen or so springs on his property before he leased his land. I wonder if he was aware that the site chosen for development was a recharge area, where surface waters move downward to refill the springs and groundwater that are used by him and his neighbors, including Josie and Sarah, as their sole source of water. And, I wonder, if he knew what he knows now, a few years after drilling began, would he lease again?

While on a tour of her neighborhood, Josie confirmed what I had suspected after having spoken with her by phone for over a year and a half: she worked from her home, her life and business revolved around her animals, and to put it mildly, she was devoted to them. Although she was the type of person who kept to herself and didn’t know the neighbors as well as her husband did, Josie admitted, “If it’s horse people or dog people, you can ask me [about them] and I’ll know them.” Josie was also exceptional in that she had a record of every event, every phone call, every meeting that had anything to do with the invaders who had taken over her neighborhood. She was probably the only person I spoke with who knew the distances from her water well to the well pad and wastewater impoundment, from her spring to the well pad and wastewater impoundment, from the well pad to her property line. She had dates corresponding to when the wells were drilled and completed, and when the wastewater impoundment was completed. This last date—the spring of 2010, approximately a year before I first spoke to her—was seared into her brain, because soon after the completion of the impoundment, she lost her well water completely and her spring water dropped to a trickle.

Amazed by Josie’s organization, I wondered, if I were to take her place, would I be this organized? Would I be able to cope with bad water, sick and dying animals, and my water service being cut off? (Just before I first spoke with her, the drilling company informed Josie that her water service would be stopped.) Amazingly, Josie and her family soldiered on. When the water well first dried up, Jeff diverted the spring to run into the house. This helped until the spring all but stopped a few months after the wastewater impoundment was completed, at which time Jeff and Josie started hauling water from a nearby creek—325 gallons at a time. It was hard work, but Josie assured me they had to do it. They needed water to wash clothes, wash dishes, take showers, flush the toilets—all things we take for granted. And their horses needed water too. They bought bottled water for themselves and their dogs but couldn’t afford it for their horses.

In September 2010, after Josie complained to the drilling company that her spring had been running low since June, the company supplied her family with water temporarily and paid for a new water well to be drilled. While there was no admission that its drilling activities on Mr. Leverkuhn’s property caused Josie’s water problems, the drilling company did determine that the construction of the impoundment may have inadvertently affected the drainage of Josie’s spring water. But her horses were still drinking what little water could be obtained from the spring and whatever the family could haul from the creek. I heard deep guilt in Josie’s voice when she talked about her horses. She was speaking with a veterinarian, and she was feeling bad about shortchanging the horses, these animals she loved, these animals that, along with the dogs, were always taken care of first.

Of course I understood, but I had to ask a question, a question she knew was coming: “So your family and your dogs are doing better off the water, but how are your horses doing?”

There was a long pause.

“One has diarrhea. It’s not good, but it would be worse if we weren’t cutting what’s left of the spring water with what we’re hauling. I have a barn full of horses—we could never afford to give them bottled water, and we can’t physically haul all the water they need.” We both agreed she was doing the best she could, better than most people, given the situation, and that it could be much worse. We moved on.

Although she could not afford a full analysis of what was killing her animals, she did have some basic diagnostic tests done. I was interested in the results of these tests in order to understand what happened. The first animal to die after drilling began was Mr. Higgins, Josie’s young boxer that served as a stud for her breeding business. By the time I began researching this case, the veterinarian had decided that he was not going to speak to anyone concerning the death of Mr. Higgins. The fact that Josie had given me written permission to obtain all records from him made no difference; he was not talking, and that meant I was cut off from speaking with the first veterinarian who saw Mr. Higgins on emergency.