Pennsylvania news outlets reported two major developments in the controversy over fracking and unconventional gas today. The president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition has admitted publicly that fracking has contaminated local drinking water supplies in Pennsylvania.
And PA governor Tom Corbett has ordered gas drillers to stop taking fracking wastewater to public water treatment facilities (POTWs).
Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jeanne VanBreisen was first to discover high levels of bromides in drinking water sourced from rivers that have received treated fracking wastewater. Bromide is a salt also found in drilling wastewater from fracking operations.
The news is extra worrisome because bromides, when combined with chlorine at water treatment plants, can create bromates trihalomethanes, which are linked to bladder cancer, miscarriage and still births.
As a result of this shocking discovery, today the Pennsivania Department of Environmental Protection ordered Marcellus Shale gas drillers to stop trucking wastewater to 15 treatment plants in the state.
The industry's admission that dirty gas fracking is causing drinking water contamination is long overdue, and welcomed. Now the state of Pennsylvania has every reason to place an immediate halt on fracking operations until the gas industry is held accountable for its damage to the state's water supply. This troubling news is yet another reason why fracking for unconventional gas needs to be banned nationwide until the gas industry can prove it isn't causing damage to public health, water supplies and the global climate.
Photo credit: David Turnbull
Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.
There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.
On Sat., April 27, I met up with energy investor Bill Powers at Prairie Moon Restaurant in Evanston, IL for a mid-afternoon lunch to discuss his forthcoming book set to hit bookstores on June 18.
The book's title - "Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth" - pokes fun at the statement made by former Chesapeake Energy CEO...
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fracking
With the release of Gasland, awareness of fracking dangers is starting to register. There is a Texas Progressive Blogger who has assembled information for years and collates RSS news on fracking : BlueDaze.
More at my Topical Index > Water - Wealth & Power at the Blogger site : http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com
nice post.
nice post.