How Fracking Is Drying Up One Unlucky Texas Town

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.

They use brine for fracking... higher S.G.

Thats true but not very common, few fracing companies have the equipment needed for salt water frac. It’s highly corrosive and will destroy standard steel pumps and lines. This is actually the way to go since every well produces some salt water naturaly and has to be hauled off on a regulat basis and disposed of. If the equipment is there it can be saved and used for fracing. The only problem with saltwater besides it’s corrosive properties is it’s weight which has a tendency to hold back the flow in the formation.

Thanks for the insight. My experience is more in the material transportation... sand and acid in, crude oil out.

Seeing what has been going on in the Permian Basin over the last 2 years is nothing short of uneffingbelievable. This nation has amazing... I mean, AMAZING natural resources, and I find it particularly disturbing that the obstructionist liberals in this country insist upon roadblocks to prosperity... and our energy security.

The hypocrites are driving their daughters to dance class in SUVs, air conditioning and heating their underwater McMansions, and you ever notice that the same people driving 20 miles to go to Zumba Class are the same people that pay Mexicans to cut their grass?

I swear, the solution here is to cut off all entitlements starting TODAY, like right now.

Every kid starting today, ought not be entitled to a college education, and future student loan forgiveness on the taxpayer dime (eriously, that is the next bubble). Rather, they ought to get a job in the oilfield, picking fruit, mowing grass, swinging a spiking maul building railroad track... BEING PRODUCERS and not CONSUMERS.

</rant>

OK... now I best get my fat ass back to work.

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