Drinking water contaminated
by fracking wastewater can affect a person's normal respiratory, sensory and neurological processes as well as other biological functions.
Not exact matches
Fracking is part of the problem, but the report states that most human - induced quakes are caused
by the oil and gas industry's use of injection wells to dispose of
wastewater - the contaminated liquid that gets pumped out of the well during oil and gas extraction.
The State Assembly, led
by Democrats, passed a package of one house bills for Earth Day, including requiring private drinking wells to be tested before
fracking occurs, and to classify
fracking wastewater as hazardous waste.
If passed, the law would be the first in the state
by a county legislature banning the use of the chemical - laden
wastewater from
fracking wells as a road deicer.
It is possible that massive
wastewater disposal in the U.S. is «masking another signal» of induced seismicity caused
by fracking, Atkinson said.
Investigations
by The New York Times last winter revealed that sewage - treatment plants processing
fracking wastewater are discharging radioactive fluid into public waterways, in some cases upstream of intake sites for drinking water.
Compounding concerns, reports from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) leaked earlier in the year indicated that
fracking wastewater is too radioactive to be handled safely
by water treatment plants.
Although
fracking in the U.S. produces more than 100 billion gallons of
wastewater per year, the process requires significantly less water per unit of energy than extraction and processing for coal and nuclear power, according to past research
by Jackson and his colleagues.
Although it has long been known that the injection of
wastewater into disposal wells can trigger earthquakes
by increasing pore pressure and destabilizing fault lines, rarely has
fracking itself been identified as the source of tremors.
Scientists suspected that the Arkansas earthquakes were triggered
by the injection of approximately 94.5 million gallons of
fracking wastewater into to nearby wells, which then made its way into the basement layer during a nine - month period.
«EPA has identified significant flaws in the state's
fracking proposals, particularly inadequate plans to treat hazardous
wastewater, questions about unsafe levels of radiation in
fracking waste, and the absence of any consideration of the environmental impacts of the infrastructure associated with
fracking, such as pipelines and compressor stations,» said a statement issued
by a coalition of hydrofracking opponents including Catskill Mountainkeeper, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Environmental Advocates of New York, Natural Resources Defense Council and others.