Posted on 08/29/2013 4:11:37 PM PDT by Lorianne
If you had to choose between natural gas production or drinking water in your hometown, which would it be?
Some Texas residents feel they haven't been given this choice—and that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is taking more than its fair share of their groundwater, exacerbating the drought problems in an already parched region. The Guardian recently reported on the predicament facing a small town in Barnhart, Texas—which "appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking."
And fracking appears to play a role in many of these water shortages elsewhere in the state. Another 30 towns in the state are expected to run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. And about 15 million people are under some form of water rationing, wherein they are prevented from watering their lawns and the like.
Beverly McGuire, a resident of Barnhart, told the Guardian that her wells ran dry soon after fracking started near her property two years ago. Another local rancher, Buck Owens, had to sell all of his 500 cattle and 90 percent of his goats because he didn't have enough water to feed them after fracking contractors drilled 104 wells on his land.
Other nearby residents with their own well water have been selling it for use in fracking, a process by which water and other chemicals are forcefully injected into the ground at high pressure to release pockets of oil and gas. In a nearby town, contractor Larry Baxter estimates he could make $36,000 per month selling water for fracking, he told the Guardian.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Oh brother
So in other words, people are pumping and selling the groundwater. Its not fracking, its pumping and selling groundwater. If this pumping of groundwater was being done for a bunch of swimming pools, I am sure the Guardian would have been just as concerned, right?
$36K a month buys a lot of bottled water.
Therefore, ban fracking everywhere, forever! LOL
Depending on the characteristics of the underlying aquifer it makes perfect sense that pumping from 104 new wells in one location could exceed its recharge capacity.
Russia and the Sauds would like that.
no mention of the substitution of butane in place of water.
These guys have no shame
Texas has what is know as the Law of the Deepest Well. Basically, if your well runs dry because your neighbor drilled a well it’s your own fault. You should have drilled a better well. The water, oil, gas, or whatever, does not belong to you until it flows into the bore of your well.
Uh, no, we have what's called a drought. We need rain and lots of it.
Total BS.
Fracking is done far below the water table in sealed system.
The Obamay followers hate it that we are getting middle east oil and becoming self reliant. It does not follow their “Plan”.
The EPA could not justify their numbers and shut up and went away before it could be a black eye.
Yet some “toad” at the MSM wants a by line. No thanks. We get real news from abroad.
Good grief...
So, what’s the broad’s name that we should get the news from? I know. Not funny. Sorry. It’s nearing time for the Friday silliness thread.
Finish the Keystone XL pipeline. Ignore the anti-competition NIMBYs.
http://www.northernoil.com/drilling-video
Got this link from another poster on another thread...shows that they go way below the water table and seal of the bore hole before continuing...
You have to read on down to find out that the area has been under an extended drought, too.
Thorium Reactors powering massive desalinsation on the coasts pumping massive amounts of fresh water BACK into the middle of continents.
Mwahahaha
It's true fracking uses a LOT of water .. and it has to come from somewhere .. I'd like to know the company ... is it Fractech ?
Living in a semi-arid region (ca. 20-22 inches annual precip, virtually none of it escaping the rooting zone by downward percolation), in a city pumping its domestic supply from an underground reservoir that is being steadily lowered and not recharged from any source, so far as can be discerned, one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind when I began reading about the fracking procedure was one of concern for the supply of water for other necessary purposes.
Believe me, bottled water is not a rational alternative.
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