"hydrofracking"

Hydrofracking: Environmental Boom or Environmental Nightmare?

By: Ted Walter, Staff Member 

The recent emergence of hydrofracking has made natural gas a prime player in the energy field.  And various groups support hydrofracking for different reasons.  Environmentalists claim natural gas is better for the environment because it burns more efficiently than coal or oil.

[1]

  Politicians love it because hydrofracking is a source of new jobs.

[2]

  But, just like anything else, hydrofracking raises some cause for concern. 

One concern is with the water used for extracting the natural gas from the rock below.  This water can be classified in three different categories: fracking fluid, flowback water, and produced water.

[3]

  Fracking fluid is the water that goes down to start the well, flowback water is the water that comes back in the very beginning, and produced water is the water that comes back over the life of the well.

[4]

  Additionally, “[w]ith hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur thousands of feet underground.”

[5]

  Furthermore, “[o]ther carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.”

[6]

  Essentially, the water that goes down to start the well in the beginning is contaminated, and the water that comes back up is more contaminated than in the beginning.

The issue becomes what to do with the water that comes back to the surface.  A

simple solution, and an option sometimes chosen, is to take the water to a wastewater treatment plant.  But this may not be the best solution because “design of wastewater treatment plants is usually based on the need to reduce organic and suspended solid loads to limit pollution of the environment.”

[7]

  Furthermore, “[t]reatment to remove wastewater constituents that may be toxic or harmful to crops, aquatic plants (macrophytes) and fish is technically possible but is not normally economically feasible.”

[8]

  As a result, “most of the facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking-water standards before discharging the waste water into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream from drinking-water intake plants.”

[9]

  As far as flowback water from hydrofracking in Kentucky, you shouldn’t worry. Apparently, “[t]he shales in Kentucky have much more clay, and that discourages hydrofracking in the state because water makes clay formations swell, inhibiting the release of natural gas.  Instead, Kentucky drillers frack with liquid nitrogen.”

[10]

So, what does this mean for Kentuckians?  One, just because water isn’t used for hydrofracking in Kentucky, doesn’t mean that contaminated water from hydrofracking that occurred elsewhere can’t end up here.  Two, liquid nitrogen may not present water quality issues, but that doesn’t mean liquid nitrogen won’t present other types of environmental issues later on.

[1]

Ian Urbina,

Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers

, THE NEW YORK TIMES, (Feb. 26, 2011) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?pagewanted=all.

[2]

Id

.

[3]

Bill Chameides, Natural Gas, Hydrofracking and Safety: The Three Faces of Fracking Water, THEGREENGROK, (Sept. 20, 2011) http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/frackingwater/.

[4]

Id

.

[5]

Urbina,

supra

note 1.

[6]

Id

.

[7]

M.B. Pescod,

Wastewater treatment and use in agriculture – FAO irrigation and drainage paper 47

, (1992) http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0551E/t0551e05.htm.

[8]

Id

.

[9]

Urbina,

supra

note 1.

[10]

Kristin Tracz,

Hydraulic fracturing rare in Ky., but Appalachian Forum poses questions about regulations and pollution of gas drilling

, APPALACHIAN TRANSITION, (Feb. 24, 2012) http://www.appalachiantransition.net/content/hydraulic-fracturing-rare-ky-appalachian-forum-poses-questions-about-regulation-and-pollutio.

New Developments in Local Regulation of Hydrofracking

By: Travis Van Ort, Staff Member

There is a new twist in the debate over hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) and how to regulate the process.  In February, two courts in New York issued opinions that upheld local regulation of hydrofracking.

[1]

  A state Supreme Court judge in Ostego County ruled that the local municipality was “legally able to ban hydrofracking through its zoning law,” and another state Supreme Court judge, in Tompkins County, “found that state mining laws do not prevent local governments from enacting fracking bans under zoning laws.”

[2]

  This likely will not be the last word on the issue, as the New York rulings are expected to be appealed.

[3]

This is not the first attempt by a municipality to regulate or ban the use of hydrofracking within city or town limits.  For instance, in August, a court in West Virginia overturned the Morgantown city ordinance that prohibited hydrofracking within city limits; in the ruling, the judge indicated that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has “exclusive control over [that] area of law.”

[4]

The rulings in New York raise three important concerns:  the first two are practical concerns and the third is a policy concern.  First, the banning of hydrofracking in areas where natural gas companies have already bought land or acquired leases for the purposes of drilling may expose the regulating municipality to liability.  A company that is a party to the Tompkins County case indicated that it may “pursue a ‘takings’ claim against the town” for taking private property without just compensation.

[5]

  The company claims it has spent over $5 million to secure land leases in the area.

[6]

The second concern is the potential chilling effect local regulation could have on drilling for natural gas, at least in New York.  New York overlies three important shale gas plays – the Marcellus, the Utica, and the Devonian shales

[7]

– and if these Supreme Court decisions are upheld on appeal, local regulation could inject a significant level of uncertainty into natural gas drilling in New York.  One of the attorneys in the aforementioned cases suggested that “[n]o company will invest in leases if they can just be abrogated by a town board vote,” and “[t]hese decisions could be the kiss of death for the drilling industry coming [to New York State].”

[8]

  While the complications from local regulation may not be as dire as has been suggested, it seems likely that increased local regulation or banning of hydrofracking will lead to a decrease in interest in exploiting the gas under New York State and a decrease in drilling.  Since more than 20 local governments have already banned or limited hydrofracking

[9]

and others are attempting to implement a ban,[10] this is no small concern.

The last concern is a policy concern.  Given the importance of natural gas, especially shale gas (which requires hydrofracking to be commercially viable), to meeting US energy needs now and in the future,

[11]

these types of local level restrictions have the potential to severely complicate the extraction of gas in some of the key shale gas plays.  The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) suggests that in the future the US could produce more natural gas than it consumes.

[12]

  If the US is unable to produce as much gas as the EIA predicts because of local level bans or restrictions on hydrofracking, any shortfall between domestic production and consumption will have to be made up either through conservation and efficiency programs, the substitution of domestically produced sources of energy like coal, or energy imports.

[1]

Brian Nearing,

Local Drill Ban Wins 2

nd

Victory

,

Times Union

, Feb. 24, 2012, http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Local-drill-ban-wins-2nd-victory-3360224.php.

[2]

Id.

[3]

See id.

[4]

Charles Young,

Judge Denies Injunction to Uphold Fracking Ban

,

The Daily Anthenaeum

, Aug. 23, 2011, http://www.thedaonline.com/news/judge-denies-injunction-to-uphold-fracking-ban-1.2550997#.T1Gc93meqRd.

[5]

Mireya Navarro,

New York Judge Rules Town Can Ban Gas Hydrofracking

,

N.Y. Times

, Feb. 21, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/nyregion/town-can-ban-hydrofracking-ny-judge-rules.html.

[6]

Id.

[7]

See What is Shale Gas and Why is it Important?

, U.S.

Energy Info. Agency

,  Feb. 14, 2012, http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_brief/about_shale_gas.cfm.

[8]

Nearing,

supra

note 1.

[9]

Glenn Coin,

Central New York Municipalities Take Steps to Control Hydrofracking

,

The Post-Standard

, Aug. 21, 2011, http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/central_new_york_municipalitie.html.

[10]

Jordan Carleo-Evangelist,

Albany Gas Drill Foes See Veto-proof Vote

, Times Union, Feb. 24, 2012, http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Albany-gas-drill-foes-see-veto-proof-vote-3359000.php.

[11]

See What is Shale Gas and Why is it Important?

,

supra

note 7.

[12]

Id.