D.C. Group Says 1982 Incident Shows Risk of Fracking
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
4 August 2011
By Don Hopey,
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded in 1987 that
hydraulic fracturing of a 4,000-foot-deep natural gas well in Jackson
County, W.Va., contaminated shallower groundwater and private wells,
according to a report by Environmental Working Group.
That's significant, the Washington, D.C.-based health and environmental
research organization said in a report released Wednesday, because the
gas drilling industry has repeatedly maintained that fracking
operations in Marcellus Shale natural gas fields in Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, Maryland and New York pose no threat to rural underground
aquifers, groundwater and drinking water wells.
The EPA's 1987 finding, contained in an all-but-forgotten report to
Congress, stated that a gas well drilled and "fracked" by the Kaiser
Gas Co. in 1982 did contaminate water wells on adjacent properties.
The EPA's finding is the centerpiece of a year-long investigation by
Environmental Working Group and its 35-page report on fracking titled
"Cracks in the Facade."
According to that EWG report, several abandoned natural gas wells near
the Kaiser gas well could have been conduits that allowed fracking gel
to migrate into water wells on properties owned by the Parsons and Hagy
families.
The gel is a common chemical additive in fracking fluid, which is
pumped deep underground under high pressure to crack the shale
formation and release the gas it contains.
The report noted parallels between the 1982 well contamination and a
2006 sandstone and shale gas well that was also drilled in Jackson
County in western West Virginia and allegedly contaminated two nearby
water wells.
There were also abandoned gas wells near the 2006 well that could have
provided pathways for contamination of the water wells.
"When you add up the gel in the water, the presence of abandoned wells
and the documented ability of drilling fluids to migrate through these
wells into underground water supplies, there is a lot of evidence that
the EPA got it right and that this was indeed a case of hydraulic
fracturing contamination of groundwater," said Dusty Horwitt, EWG's
senior oil and gas analyst and author of the organization's report.
"Now it's up to the EPA to pick up where it left off 25 years ago and
determine the true risks of fracking so that our drinking water can be
protected," he said.
Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a
pro-drilling industry lobbying organization, said the EWG report relies
on an isolated, 30-year-old incident and is part of a "campaign to
malign the modern-day shale gas revolution underway in America." And it
ignores fracking's "long and clear record of environmental safety."
In a phone interview Wednesday, Mr. Horwitt said there was a chance
that other parts of the drilling operation could have caused the water
well contamination, although West Virginia Department of Environmental
Protection reports at the time indicated no problems with well drilling
or casings.
But he said documents he reviewed indicated the water well
contamination was "representative" of the industry and suggested the
contamination of the Parsons and Hagy water wells was not an isolated
occurrence.
The report notes that an unnamed EPA official knew of fracking
contamination cases but didn't include them in the 1987 report because
the details were sealed under confidential settlement between drilling
companies and surface property owners.
In 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted from regulation and
enforcement under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act based on a 2004
EPA study of fracked methane wells in coal beds that found minimal risk
to well water supplies and ground water, the source of drinking water
for more than 100 million Americans, according to the U.S. Geological
Survey.
The EWG report recommends that local, state and federal governments
implement a moratorium on fracking near drinking water supplies until a
comprehensive risk evaluation is performed, that fracking's Clean Water
Act exemption be repealed and that pre-drilling surveys be required to
identify and remediate old abandoned wells that could funnel fracking
fluids or gas into groundwater.
A spokeswoman for the EPA declined to comment on the report, saying the
agency hadn't seen it. An ongoing $1.9 million EPA study of fracking's
impacts, ordered by Congress, is scheduled to be completed in January.
Also on the fracking issue, the nonprofit environmental law firm
Earthjustice announced it is filing a petition Thursday on behalf of
more than 100 groups from across the U.S. asking the EPA to draft rules
that would, for the first time, require the safety testing of chemicals
used in drilling and fracking and the evaluation of health and
environmental risks from those mixtures.
The petition also asks the EPA to require that nine fracking chemical
manufacturers, including Halliburton, provide information about
environmental or health problems associated with the chemicals they
manufacture, process, or distribute.
The drilling industry has hydraulically fractured hundreds of thousands
of wells in the last 25 years and in 2002 began combining fracking with
horizontal drilling in the Barnett Shale formation in Texas.
The fracked 1982 Kaiser well was a vertical well, but the industry has
used horizontal drilling and fracking together at hundreds of Marcellus
Shale deep gas wells in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland and in
other shale formations in the South and West.
According to a recent U.S. Energy Information Agency report, shale gas
production, which requires use of fracking technology, will make up
about half of the total natural gas production in the United States in
the next 25 years.
John Hanger, a former state DEP secretary for Gov. Ed Rendell when many
of the shale drilling regulations were enacted, said he's glad the old
EPA finding surfaced and thinks the ongoing EPA study is an important
next step.
"We tested for frack fluids returning from depths a number of times and
never found them," Mr. Hanger said of his time as DEP secretary. "But I
think it's important for the EPA to do the work, too."
Because there are thousands of old and abandoned gas wells in the
state, Mr. Hanger said it wouldn't be uncommon for drillers to sink
Marcellus Shale wells near some of those existing wells, like
Dallas-based Kaiser Gas did in West Virginia.
But he said well design and materials -- especially casing cements that
line a deep well through shallow groundwater aquifers -- are better
than they were when Kaiser drilled in 1982.
"Fracking is not a new technology, but it's an evolving one," Mr.
Hanger said. "I'd be very surprised if there have not been significant
technical improvements over the years."
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.