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At the recently completed AWRA Baltimore conference Christopher Harto of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) gave a very good presentation, Shale Gas - The Energy Water Nexus. He's consented to have it posted here.
Download HartoAWRAShaleGas
Enjoy!
"Based on thorough analyses and good science, I am introducing a bill today that simply clarifies existing law that the EPA does not have authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing.” - Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)
Disclosure notice: AWRA has an MOU with CWAA to collaborate on various projects relating to water.
Below is Ben Grumbles' Presidential Pipeline column. Grumbles is President of the Clean Water America Alliance and a former EPA Assistant Administrator for Water.
See my earlier post of an interview with Grumbles about hydrofracking. If you have read Grumbles' column and want to cut to the chase, just scroll down to read my perspective (look for Dick Cheney's picture).
The friction over “fracking” (specifically hydraulic fracturing for natural gas)
underscores the growing need for energy security and environmental sustainability to be in balance rather than in battle and to keep water in mind through it all.
Most agree natural gas has a bright future as a "bridge" fuel to cleaner, renewable energy. It makes sense to develop home-grown energy, such as natural gas, particularly when it has a smaller carbon footprint than imported oil or coal (although debated by some) and it's in large supplies under our feet, although sometimes 5,000 to 9,000 feet under our feet.
But the "Shale Rush," prompted by technology breakthroughs in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing over the last decade or so, can raise significant questions about the drilling boom's large footprint on the landscape and the cumulative impact of operations on air, water, wildlife, and public health. Water is a particular concern since as much as 5 million gallons may be used at each site to fracture the organic-rich, tightly-compacted shale to recover valuable natural gas. Large amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, and injected under intense pressure (10,000 psi), can mean potential issues down under, downstream, or downwind.
The Marcellus Shale, the Saudia Arabia of natural gas to some, exists under much of southern New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Ohio, western Maryland, and even a portion of western and southwestern Virginia. USGS estimates the shale rock could include as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. A recent Pennsylvania State University study reports the Marcellus gas industry generated $3.9 billion in total value added revenue, more than 44,000 jobs, and $389 million in state and local taxes. For 2011, the estimated potential is more than $10 billion in total value added revenue, 100,000 jobs, and nearly $1 billion in state and local tax revenues in Pennsylvania.
EPA is no stranger to fracking and its legal and environmental issues. A 1997 court in Alabama ruled for the first time that EPA should be regulating coal bed methane fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act's Underground Injection Control program. This created legal uncertainty. EPA then sought to reduce scientific uncertainty, overseeing a study on potential risks of fracking to ground water. A commission of experts, including several from industry, reviewed existing literature and concluded in the final 2004 report that fracking presented “little or no risk” to underground drinking water. As EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water at the time, I signed off on the report and testified to Congress about the findings. EPA, however, never intended for the report to be interpreted as a perpetual clean bill of health for fracking or to justify a broad statutory exemption from any future regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
In 2005, Congress cited the report in justifying a fairly broad statutory exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act's underground injection control regulatory program. The exemption does not include a sunset or “recapture clause.” It does, however, stipulate that diesel fluids not be used in the process. This has prompted a lively debate over exactly what type of chemicals and propping agents go into the fracking fluids and what are the proper boundaries and differences between a community’s right to know and a competitor’s right to know the special ingredients of a fracking company’s product.
A lot has happened since 2005 and, in my view, it makes sense to review the Safe Drinking Water Act landscape as well as the relevance of Clean Water Act programs. Political and legal battles have been growing in state and federal courts and agencies, with particular attention to fracking for shale gas, which is different from fracking for coal bed methane, the primary subject of EPA’s 2004 report.
EPA is now developing a more complete, up-to-date study on fracking risks to ground water and seeking upfront input from its Science Advisory Board. An expanded, scientific review is important as much more information exists, including complaints about methane migration and contaminated water supplies. The Agency is also reviewing surface water impacts, such as from total dissolved solids (salts and minerals) and naturally occurring radioactive materials. EPA is probing current and potential new Clean Water Act requirements for onsite pre-treatment and permitting responsibilities at publicly owned treatment works and centralized waste treatment facilities, including the testing and handling of biosolids from facilities treating frack water.
States and interstate organizations in Shale Gas regions are also stepping up efforts to study, regulate, and monitor the impacts of natural gas drilling and fracking and the management of "flowback" fracking fluids. Salts, bromides, radionuclides, and biosolids seem to be getting some of the greatest attention, in addition to the “federalism” question of whether EPA regulations are needed if state agencies are acting to oversee the industry and protect the public.
It’s hard to know where all of this is going, as the debate intensifies and the Administration and Congressional committees take differing sides on environmental, energy, and economic impacts. Nonetheless, here are some easy predictions to make: more disclosure to the public and/or regulators of previously undisclosed chemicals in fracking fluids (e.g. www.fracfocus.org), increased onsite recycling of the frack water by industry, and more detailed monitoring by drinking water and wastewater officials of frack water and biosolids, especially radioactive constituents. These are all good steps in my view.
The Clean Water America Alliance does not have a pro-frack or anti-frack view or official position and nothing I write in this column should be construed as such. We are, however, well-positioned to bring facts and policy choices to the table and use collaboration to keep watersheds and communities healthy into the future.
In my view, "drill, maybe, drill" means more review along a more thoughtful path, one that can include fracking, even in large amounts, but in the right place, at the right time, with the right amount of government oversight, and with water running through the policymaking from beginning to end.
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We have hydrofracking problems today not solely because then-Vice President Dick Cheney wanted hydrofracking and got the so-called 'Halliburton exception' into the 2005 Energy Policy Act.
Cheney aside (and he is a convenient whipping boy), there was certainly a rush to judgment. Emily Green posted an excellent article almost a year ago after a detailed investigation only a real journalist can do. Read it. And read her update. The mainstream press, with few exceptions, was mostly asleep. Heck, I was asleep. States, especially Pennsylvania, were drooling at the prospect of jobs and tax revenues. Even some universities were on board - from Green's perspective, Penn State comes out looking less than noble.
The rest of us were enthused about this shale gas stuff - imagine bypassing the Middle East for our energy supplies! Tied nicely into the 'War on Terror', didn't it? And it's relatively 'clean' energy, right?
But are EPA and Cheney off the hook? I don't think so. Here's part of an article from the LA Times (from Green's post):
An EPA study concluded in June that there was no evidence that hydraulic fracturing posed a threat to drinking water. However, some EPA employees complained about the study internally before its completion, and others have strongly criticized it publicly since its release.
One of them, an environmental engineer and 30-year EPA veteran in Denver, last week sought whistle-blower protection in an 18-page statement sent to the agency's inspector general and members of Congress. The statement alleges that the study's findings were premature, may endanger public health and were approved by an industry-dominated review panel that included a current Halliburton employee.
"EPA produced a final report ... that I believe is scientifically unsound and contrary to the purposes of the law," Weston Wilson wrote to lawmakers.
EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said Wednesday that the agency was reviewing Wilson's statement but did not "believe that any of the concerns raised by his analysis would lead us to a different conclusion."
Duhhh.....
I will throw something else into the mix: a colleague of mine thinks that some of the well contamination problems are the result of poor well construction practices. The hydrofracking is exacerbating contamination by exposing poor oversight of well drilling and completion. Is he right? Could be - I have not studied the issue carefully.
So what do we do now? What we should have done years ago - the right thing, that's what: take a close look at hydrofracking (see the EPA draft report, which I have not read) and get some unbiased science into the picture.
But in today's political climate, that could be a tough thing to do.
"Many of the cited articles come from the Tulsa-based publication Oil & Gas Journal, which captured an angle missed by every other organ — that being how hotly the gas industry was concerned with keeping natural pollutants out of its fracking water just as the public began panicking about fracking chemicals in its drinking water." -- Emily Green, from her post
I recently received these three items from USACE HQ.
1) Lower Mississippi River crest map.
Download USACE_lowermiss_crest_map
2) Four Power Point slides showing the effects/benefits of the Morganza Floodway opening.
Download Morganzabenefit
3) And finally, this gem from 1927: the transmission to Congress by President Calvin Coolidge via Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis of a report from Major General Edgar Jadwin, Chief of Engineers, describing the plan for flood control on the Mississippi River.
Download Flood_control_in Mississippi_River_Dec_8_1927
Check out these items (sent by friend Michael Dale) from, of all places, the Ely Times (NV) and also a cartoon by Robert Ariail.
The 1927 floods altered the USA in anumber of fascinating ways,and I'm not just talking about the flood damage. John M. Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America is the best book on the subject.
Here are some relevant WaterWired posts on the Mississippi River: 12 June 2007;: 13 June 2007; 23 June 2008; and 24 March 2011. See also my 15 May 2011 post.
Enjoy!
"The plan transmitted herewith is comprehensive and appeals to me as being adequate in its engineering. I concur in general in the conclusions and recommendations reached in the report, and suggest that appropriate legislation be enacted putting them into effect."-- President Calvin Coolidge, 8 December 1927
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