Friday, May 6, 2011

Update on work, etc.

As Blaise will post shortly, we've arrived at a rough division of labor, in which I'm assigned the question of whether fracking is safe. We'll approach the question not from the angle of trying to find the ultimate answer, but of trying to understand the factors involved and the various groups arguing pro and con.

So here's a link to a newsweak article which discusses the safety problem we've heard about in class: above-ground spills of the fracking liquids caused not by the fracking process itself but by human error:

http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/19/a-toxic-spew.html

The basic gist of the story is this:

A woman named Cathy Behr was nearly killed after what she described as contact with spilled fracking chemicals. The company blamed for this, Weatherford, was unable to give Newsweek a yes-or-no answer as to whether they might be to blame. In the wake of this incident, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission tightened regulatory controls over fracking in August 2008. On the non-governmental environmental groups involved in this process was the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, which we may be able to tap for more information. Newsweek speaks oddly, and, if you ask me, somewhat dishonestly about the contents of fracking liquid, calling the stuff 'largely unregulated' and 'secret', but then admitting that the EPA, which has access to the recipes, found fracking liquids safe for water in 2004. Fracking fluids, typically used far below the water table, are exempt from the Safe Drinking Water act of 2005. There is concern that under current laws companies might not be required to file any paperwork with the government when spills occur, as happened in this case when 130 gallons of ZetaFlow, a fracking mix, were spilled.