Free Republic

Pennsylvania’s top environmental enforcement official said Tuesday that he is confident that wastewater discharged into rivers and streams by the booming natural gas industry hasn’t degraded the state’s drinking water. At least 3.6 million barrels of the ultra-salty, chemically tainted wastewater produced by gas drilling operations were discharged into state waterways in the 12-month period that ended June 30, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press. Drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians is drawn from those rivers and streams. ... The state set new standards in August governing discharges by any new drilling waste treatment plants, but...

The United States has ample natural gas supplies to provide the nation's energy needs for the remainder of the century. The problem is that much of the natural gas is found in deep shale formations several thousand feet below the earth's surface. Geologists have known for years that the natural gas was there, but no one knew how to economically recover it. That has changed with the use of modern hydraulic fracturing technology combined with horizontal drilling techniques. Wind and other alternative energy get most of the attention from politicians and the media, but producing natural gas by hydraulic fracturing,...