by Glenn Scherer

The rush to tap vast natural gas reserves trapped in the Marcellus Shale bedrock underlying rural West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio has led to a heated regional debate concerning the safety of a controversial drilling process known as “fracking,” or natural gas hydraulic fracturing. Legislation introduced in the West Virginia House by Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion, would begin to regulate the large volume of water withdrawn for drilling and fracturing. It would also require drilling companies to identify the contents of potentially polluting frac fluids, and set up a system for tracking the disposal of those fluids.

Fracking, combined with horizontal drilling, is a process by which millions of gallons of water, mixed with a brew of chemicals and sand, are pumped thousands of feet underground, then forced sideways for as much as a mile, shattering bedrock strata, and thereby releasing natural gas impounded there. High-end estimates say that there may be more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas locked up in the Marcellus Shale, enough to supply the entire United States for two years. The value of the gas could be as high as $1 trillion.

Fracking in shale, say public health advocates, differs from traditional petroleum fracking. The oil industry has been using freshwater for decades offshore without concerns of chemical contamination of groundwater.

At issue are safety claims made by the drilling industry, as compared to a growing number of citizen complaints about polluted air, poisoned drinking water, dead livestock, and an industrial infrastructure inappropriate to rural and suburban landscapes. Fracking damage has been reported in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, Montana, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

In September 2009, for example, in Dimmick, Pennsylvania an 8,000-gallon gas drilling wastewater spill involving toxic frack chemicals caused a major fish kill in Stephens Creek. Also in Dimmick last year, a home drinking water well exploded after it was contaminated by methane from a fracking operation. In 2007, a home blew up near Cleveland, Ohio, when it was infiltrated by methane from a fracked natural gas well.

A catastrophic fish kill that wiped out all life on a 30-mile stretch of pristine Dunkard Creek on the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border has also raised questions about fracking safety. Though officials are still uncertain as to the disaster’s cause, one source under investigation is the improper disposal of contaminated frack wastewater.

Other U.S. communities have reported fracking problems. Last year, the air above the little town of DISH Texas (pop. 181) turned so foul that officials used one sixth of the annual municipal budget to fund an air quality study. Findings showed that local air seriously violated state carcinogenic and neurotoxin safety standards. Fumes are reportedly rising from natural gas wells, compressors, condensate tanks and pipelines – part of massive fracking operations there, says the Denton Record-Chronicle.

In Louisiana, also last year, 16 cattle died after “apparently drinking from mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig,” according to the Shreveport Times. In 2008, in Hill County, Texas, three landowners found their pristine drinking water wells polluted with sulfates and toluene—a gasoline additive and solvent toxic to humans and animals. All three properties are adjacent to fracking wells, reports the Fort Worth Weekly.

The potential for harm from fracking is not yet known. The concern is that frack water, polluted with toxins, is left underground and could over the years rise through strata to contaminate groundwater. The problem, environmental advocates say, is that neither industry nor government has done any long-term studies. What is known is that aquifers once polluted are nearly impossible to clean up.

Other worries center around the millions of gallons of flowback water that do return to the surface at each well, which must be treated as hazardous waste because it contains toxic fracking chemicals, plus toxins leached from bedrock such as benzene and radioactive materials. Open pits, used to store wastewater, can leak into groundwater and also cause air pollution. Toxic wastewater either must be trucked to already overtaxed waste treatment plants for cleanup, or injected back underground.

Finally, there are concerns about the pressures that the fracking infrastructure places on communities. The tens of thousands of new fracking wells planned for the Marcellus Shale will need acres each for well pads, plus land for noisy air-polluting compressors, wastewater tanks and pits, and miles of pipeline (which may leak) and new roads. Rural homeowners who abut drilling sites compare the foul air and constant roar of compressors to living in an industrial zone.

Oil and Gas Accountability Project Director Gwen Lachelt thinks the industry isn’t looking hard enough for solutions, and notes for example that offshore fracking wells, and coalbed methane wells in Alabama are required to use “freshwater frack” when drilling, a process that is free of toxic chemicals. “So why doesn’t industry use freshwater frack in shale drilling?” she asks. “The industry has armies of engineers and scientists. I have all the faith in the world in them that they can develop fracturing fluids that are not harmful to public health and wildlife.”

Fracking worries have resulted in a push in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio to strengthen state safeguards regarding fracking operations. In Pennsylvania, a statewide debate is ongoing whether to allow further expansion of natural gas drilling on state forestlands.

The West Virginia bill, should it become law, would give public-health advocates what they’ve been asking for, and what industry has been so far unwilling to provide: a table of contents about what is in the fracking fluids. The Bush administration had exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act, allowing industry to guard fracking fluids as trade secrets. Without a list of those chemicals, states and citizens cannot know what toxins to test for in potentially contaminated drinking water. This so-called Halliburton Loophole especially benefited Dick Cheney’s former employer Halliburton, inventor of the fracking process.

Some in Congress want to pass the FRAC Act (the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Bill; S.1215, and H.R. 2766), requiring drilling companies to make fracking chemicals public, and allowing EPA to set fracking minimum standards for states to enforce. The economic downturn has dimmed likelihood of FRAC Act passage this year.

Still, many in the natural gas industry resist revealing secret frack chemicals. “It is much like asking Coca-Cola to disclose the formula of Coke,” said Ron Heyden, a Halliburton executive, in testimony before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2008.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson speaking at a January 2010 congressional hearing concerning the $41 billion merger of Exxon with XTO Energy (one of the world’s biggest natural gas drilling companies), said he could support revealing toxic frack mixes. He added that, by combining the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling processes “we can now find and produce unconventional natural gas supplies miles below the surface in a safe, efficient and environmentally responsible manner.” Exxon has threatened to nix its XTO acquisition if Congress makes fracking “illegal or commercially impractical.”

At press time, Del. Manchin’s bill was moving toward a vote in the House. Senate passage remains uncertain.

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