Is CBM Extraction a Health Risk?
I understood that hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" involved injecting water at high pressure to fracture the coalbed seams and release trapped methane. Water sounds relatively harmless. I've since read several reports that show how it's common industry practice to use various "fracturing fluids" and "additives" for fracking.
According to the tenure referral letter sent to Fernie City Council, the BC Oil and Gas Commission will regulate these fracking fluids and the companies will be required to re-inject "produced water" into deep wells that are below domestic water aquifers. Nonetheless a significant proportion of the fracking fluid will remain in the shallow well into which it was injected.
So, here is a story that is worth reading on how fracking may be affecting people's health in the US rockies. It's best to read the whole story but I've cut and pasted a few paragraphs below. Could it happen in the Elk Valley? Read on...
EPA to citizens: Frack you
In the Rockies, a gas-extraction process called "fracking" may be releasing a carcinogenic stew of chemicals. Dozens of people say it has made them seriously ill, but the EPA refuses to investigate -- a failure one of its own engineers calls "irrational and corrupt."
Susan Haire, a former elementary teacher who ranches on a small scale, has lived atop one of the surrounding mesas for nearly a decade. But she says the landscape has been turned against her. When she drives down this stretch of highway, her nose bleeds, her eyes burn, and her head pounds. She's taken to wearing a respirator, even in the car. "The changes that have happened in the past 18 months are so dramatic. It's just a nightmare."
Haire's doctor blames her health problems on the scenery's relatively recent addition: 600 natural gas wells, drilled by oil companies over the past two years. Every few feet, 150-foot-tall drill rigs, graced with American flags, rise upward into the sky. Compressor stations, banks of rectangular huts with five-foot-diameter fans, sit back from the road and pump the gas into underground pipelines.
Scientists and environmentalists say the health hazards of the natural gas wells stem not only from air pollution but "fracking fluid," a mixture of carcinogenic chemicals, used in many of them. A group of 18 top public health experts wrote EPA and Interior Department officials in 2004, asserting that accelerated oil and gas drilling is taking place without adequate regard for human health.
The most serious problems may stem from fracking. The chemicals pumped into the wells to aid the flow of gas to the surface include known carcinogens such as benzene, naphthalene, arsenic and lead. Several chemicals that may be injected can be lethal at levels as low as 0.1 part per million, according to the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. Up to 40 percent of the fracturing fluids remain in the formation, according to studies conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the oil and gas industry; that means that fluids such as diesel and benzene may seep into the surrounding soil, groundwater, and water wells. The wastewater that the industry recaptures after the well hole is drilled often sits in open evaporation pits for upward of a year.
Because so many of the chemicals used in the fluid are proprietary, the industry isn't required to disclose their contents or ratios of concentration. The products' material data safety sheets, OSHA-required forms available on the Web, warn that the volatile chemicals have serious skin, respiratory and nervous-system effects. So far, Colborn and her staff have identified 190 chemicals that could be used in fracking fluids in Colorado, but there could be far more. A study by the Canadian government found more than 900 chemicals used in the fracking process.
For its part, the oil industry says there's no need for concern about the health impact of the wells. "We're one of the most regulated industries out there," says Dan Larson, a Durango, Colo.-based spokesperson for British Petroleum. "The best safeguard that exists is the company's desire to not harm its neighbors."
"It's a Catch-22," says the remarkably frank Weston Wilson, an environmental engineer with the EPA's Denver office for the past 32 years. "If the EPA doesn't study the health impacts, then there's no proof that there's anything dangerous happening. It's irrational and corrupt. We used to investigate mysteries, and now we're not. It's sad. It's kind of like we're being paid off with our generous salaries. The American public would be shocked if they knew we [at EPA] make six figures and we basically sit around and do nothing."
It really isn't the EPA's job to deal with the health concerns of citizens in places like Garfield County. "The EPA doesn't control oil and gas production; the states control that. If citizens have a complaint, they would go to the [state oil and gas commission]. They're the first line of defense.
Geoffrey Thyne, is a geology professor at the Colorado School of Mines. As Garfield County's geological expert, he speaks in steadied tones. "There's a real dearth of baseline information. I don't think any fracking expert would tell you that we are 100 percent sure where the fractures go. No one has studied how often there are lateral leaks into nearby aquifers. People out here kind of figure that the government is looking out for them, and if there was a real problem, some expert would come forward and say so. Unfortunately, because no one's studying this, it might be a while."
