Report: fracking produces ‘unimaginable’ damage

There are growing concerns over radiation risks as a new report finds widespread environmental damage on an unimaginable scale in the United States from the process of hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’.

‘Fracking’ in the US generated 1100bn litres of toxic wastewater last year, enough to flood all of Washington DC beneath a seven mtre deep toxic lagoon, a new report out has found.

The report from campaign group Environment America said America’s transformation into an energy superpower was exacting growing costs on the environment.

“Our analysis shows that damage from ‘fracking’ is widespread and occurs on a scale unimagined just a few years ago,” the report, Fracking by the Numbers, said.

The full extent of the damage posed by ‘fracking’ to air and water quality had yet to emerge, the report said.

However, it concluded: “Even the limited data that are currently available, however, paint an increasingly clear picture of the damage that ‘fracking’ has done to our environment and health.”

Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reports a number of recent studies have highlighted the negative consequences of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which have unlocked vast reservoirs of oil and natural gas from rock formations.

There have been instances of contaminated wells and streams, as well as evidence of methane releases along the production chain.

The Guardian reports the Environment America report highlights another growing area of concern, the safe disposal of the billions of litres of waste water that are returned to the surface along with oil and gas when walls are fracked.

The authors said they relied on data from industry and state environmental regulators to compile their report.

More than 80,000 wells have been drilled or permitted in 17 states across the US since 2005.

It can take seven million to 34 million litres of water mixed with sand and chemicals to ‘frack’ a single well.

The report said the drilling industry had used 1000bn litres of fresh water since 2005.

Much of that returns to the surface, however, along with naturally occurring radium and bromides, and concerns are growing about those effects on the environment.

Another study published by researchers at Duke University found new evidence of radiation risks from drilling waste water.

The researchers said sediment samples collected downstream from a treatment plant in western Pennsylvania showed radium concentrations 200 times above normal.

The Environment America study said waste water pits have been known to fail, such as in New Mexico where there were more than 420 instances of contamination, and that treatment plants were not entirely effective.

“Fracking wastewater discharged at treatment plants can cause a different problem for drinking water: when bromide in the wastewater mixes with chlorine (often used at drinking water treatment plants), it produces trihalomethanes, chemicals that cause cancer and increase the risk of reproductive or developmental health problems,” the report said.

Much of the toxic wastewater was from Texas, a state that has undergone three years of severe drought and where there is fierce competition for water between the oil industry and farmers and ranchers.

Environment America said that water was now taken out of the supply and that storing, transporting and even recycling the toxic waste carried environmental risks.

Spokespersons for Energy in Depth, the industry lobby group, disputed the findings as “alarmist” and “meaningless”.

Other consequences of ‘fracking’ highlighted in the report included: 450,000 tonnes of air pollution a year and 100 million tonnes of global warming pollution since 2005.