Lesli Marchese, Campus Carrier News Editor
What uses millions of gallons of water, a list of chemicals larger than all of our Berry bucket lists and has little to no regulation? If you guessed hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, you’d be right.
Currently Buckeye Exploration, a company that offers oil and gas exploration and production services, is trying to acquire rights to test for gas and oil in Floyd County. Although the company itself does not engage in hydraulic fracturing, they can hire larger companies to come work on the leased land.
The Coosa River Basin Initiative and several other environmentally-focused organizations, along with many concerned citizens and students at Berry, are trying to fight this appeal.
Fracking is a major political and economic concern outside of Floyd County too. Last Friday, the Obama administration voted to further restrict laws on fracking. The new rules, which take effect in June, require oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing and to build large barriers to shield nearby water sources.
According to the Society for Petroleum Engineers, fracking is a procedure “in which rock is fractured by a hydraulically pressurized liquid … and is injected into a wellbore to create cracks in the deep-rock formations through which natural gas, petroleum, and brine will flow more freely.” This “liquid” usually consists of water, sand and over 600 different chemicals.
Until the new laws about fracking passed on Friday, companies had no regulation on the chemicals they could use. Theo Colborn, founder of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, and her colleagues compiled a list of products used in fracking fluid.
They carried out literature reviews on 353 chemicals and found that “more than 75% of the chemicals could affect the skin, eyes, and other sensory organs, and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. Approximately 40-50% could affect the brain/nervous system, immune and cardiovascular systems, and the kidneys; 37% could affect the endocrine system; and 25% could cause cancer and mutations.”
Why do we allow harmful, carcinogenic chemicals to be injected into the ground, where they could then seep into groundwater? You tell me.
There have been hundreds of reports from various environmental organizations across the United States, including the Sierra Club, GreenPeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which outline why fracking is a such a dangerous, unhealthy source of energy.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a Global Environment Alert regarding hydraulic fracturing in 2012. The Alert states that fracking presents environmental risks, including “water contamination; water usage competition; ecosystem damage” and several other concerns. It also highlights risks to public health, including soil, air and water toxins. The UNEP Alert determines that fracking may have a negative impact on the environment, even when used properly, and that governments need to reevaluate current regulations.
Yet in the United States, fracking is exempt to more than five major environmental federal laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
I get that fracking acts as a great economic gain. It has pushed the United States to the top of the market for oil and gas exports. However, if I learned anything from Economics 110, it’s that in order to really calculate gains and losses, you have to look at the whole picture.
Many towns refuse to agree to fracking because the environmental impact, cleanup costs and impact on local tourism outweigh the money that fracking brings in.
So while I believe recent legislation has moved in the right direction, I am still not sure why fracking is something that we allowed at all. It has led to thousands of deaths and reproductive issues in many animal populations, and it puts a huge strain on local ecosystems.
With the large amount of natural beauty and endemic species we have in Rome, I sincerely hope we keep fracking companies far away.