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<p>No, I’m asking for greater regulation, that’s all. It’s a very promising technology. The companies need to be responsible for the kinks, not rather than the communities left holding the bag.</p>
<p>A friend is working on developing safer chemicals to be used in fracking. He says it looks promising.</p>
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<p>First, I tell the Chicken Littles that the sky is not falling. Second, I tell them maybe they should think about out nation’s energy security rather than their personal inconvenience, if any. Third, I remind them that water treatment plans are able to clean up all the stuff that runs off yards and into sewers. Fourth, I remind them that I am more worried about what the mercury in compact florescent lights can do to contaminate water than speculating on what can happen well below the water table. In short, frack everywhere.</p>
<p>“Second, I tell them maybe they should think about out nation’s energy security rather than their personal inconvenience, if any”</p>
<p>It isn’t much of an inconvenience to drink a torch. Or to drink cow fart flavored water.</p>
<p>This is a country based on individual rights. Who cares about what is good for society? The homeowners are entitled to their individual rights as American citizens. The energy corporations are not people. </p>
<p>Oops.</p>
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<p>Speaking of cows, dstark, I suspect you are still eating burgers and steaks. Meanwhile those cows are creating gas that is eating the ozone layer of my planet. It’s time for you to go beef free before I get a sunburn 24/7.</p>
<p>Actually, the pollutants that run off yards are not treated. That stuff does not go into sewers. It’s called non point source pollution and is actually quite a problem. One of the reason pooper scooper laws were passed is because all that dog poo uncollected is quite a large source of non point source pollution passing untreated into waterways. It has been about two decades since I worked in the environmental field but non point source pollution was a primary problem after we stopped letting factories and wastewater treatment plants dump through pipes into rivers and bays. The thought of injecting carcinogens into the ground seems to me like handing out cigarettes to sixth graders. Hey it’ll create jobs, right? Kill the kids? Whasamattafuhyouweneedjobs. Okay then. </p>
<p>Regulate, please.</p>
<p>Razorsharp, it is my right to eat cow food…</p>
<p>I can do whatever I want…I am supporting the beef industry.</p>
<p>Sorry about that sunburn…</p>
<p>Hugcheck…I like your posts. </p>
<p>I would like fracking to work out.</p>
<p>I have friend that has business in the Bakken oil field area.</p>
<p>Let me just say…we can’t rely on business to keep pollution away.</p>
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<p>Am I supposed to believe you or my eyes? I watch my neighbor put down fertalizer, lime, and magic sauce on his yard in the morning and watch it all float away in the afternoon in the big rain and watch the water go down the street into the sewer drain. Somehow I think that poisonous sewer water makes it way to the water treatment plant where it is converted to good old American H2O. Then I watch my neighbor do it all over again the next day.</p>
<p>^^^
Where I live, the sewers dump into a creek, and the fertilizer and pesticide kill the fish and other wildlife. I am sure other cities are the same.</p>
<p>The trouble with fracking, is that the chemicals are unknown - the companies don’t disclose what they are.</p>
<p>There are multiple 60 Minutes episodes about fracking and the documentary Gasland.</p>
<p>But you knew all of the above.</p>
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<p>Where I live, the sewers go into a waste water treatment plant. The fish are well represented in the local government.</p>
<p>Storm sewers and sanitary sewers frequently go to different disposal sources. Coastal areas often have both storm and sanitary sewers dumping into the oceans and they are washed back on beaches. Same for rivers throughout the country.</p>
<p>Treatment plants generally are designed to deal with at most, large amounts of group(I) and group(II) metals (sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, etc.) and maybe zinc. They don’t fare as well with heavy transition metals that seem to either get pushed up by fracking or was added to the ground with fracking fluid.</p>
<p>Parent and Evita are right, Razor. I was shocked to learn about it, too. Those storm sewer drains on all the streets? You would think they would be piped to the local wastewater treatment plant like your toilet is, right? Surprise! (Yep but it’s sadly true.) Totally. Different. Set. Of. Pipes. I know, right? Street drains go right into the lakes, streams, rivers, ocean. That magic sauce on your neighbor’s lawn? The fishies are swimming in it. Why? Because it’s just waaayyyyy too much water to treat. And it doesn’t have poop or industrial point source pollutants. It was a giant huge controversial ("this will cost our jobs it’s way too expensive!!!) fight to get the poop and the industrial pipes connected to the treatment plants. Heck it was (still is) a fight to get the frackin’ (oops don’t mean to confuse here so editing) to get the friggin’ wastewater treatment plants built. Those babies are mega expensive. Gov. Ern. Ment. Pro. Jects. </p>
<p>Anywho. Thanks for the props Dstark but now my sarcasm filter is even less present. But thank you. And right back atcha.</p>
<p>Ok. So. The controversial, expensive, government funded wastewater treatment plants required by the EPA before it was defanged starting under Reagan, only treat household wastewater connected to sewers (not septic systems) AND factory wastes of plants connected to the sewers (not the ones that Gov’t hasn’t tagged yet and there are lots of those little pipes sticking out and discharging into waterways still but groups like Sierra Club and the many local ones that ppl love to demonize canoe all over the place looking for the pipes and have to fight with photos and lawyers and threats to help ID point source discharges to force the gov’t to require them to hook up to the sewer system “but it’s too expensive and we’ll send our yobs to China”).</p>
<p>As for non point source pollution? We are just getting to it. SOME of the local storm sewers are connecting, but not most, and it’s very expensive, and it’s relatively less densely toxic than straight poop and solvents and heavy metals.</p>
<p>But. Just so you know - that magic fertilizer goo on your neighbor’s lawn? In the vast majority of towns across our great nation that stuff is most assuredly not going to your local waste water treatment plant. Just sayin’.</p>
<p>And for the record, in fairness it IS true that many jobs HAVE been lost because production is cheaper in places like China and Mexico where there is no regulation of pollution. Wages are lower and that is a primary reason for jobs being sent offshore but it is also true, sadly, that these places do regulate less. They are terribly polluted. It’s awful. The air and water pollution is just awful. </p>
<p>So - if we will be mining our own gas in our own nation in our own way, please oh please oh please regulate to make it safe for human life. And also, please do it in Iowa and Illinois and Kansas where they are growing our corn and wheat and soy, too, because those places are allowing non point source pollution of fertilizers and herbiceds to trickle on down right into the aquifers. Non point source pollution is a much bigger problem than just your local storm sewers. The whole bread basket of our nation is wallowing in non point source pollution now and you are eating lots of residue with every sandwich.</p>
<p>Would you want to play a football game without the ref’s present? I don’t think so. I don’t want to play a chemicals game without a ref, either.</p>
<p>I heard a story on NPR about the financial industry and one guy (forget who) spoke about privatizing profit while we socialize risk. It’s the same problem in the chemical and energy industry. I call no fair.</p>
<p>Hugcheck - “privatizing profit while socializing risk” - that is what I am seeing also.</p>
<p>Fracking is not a long term solution to our energy problems.</p>
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<p>Yes, yes and yes. I wish I had heard this story.</p>
<p>My go to podcast for this subject is from This American Life:</p>
<p>[Game</a> Changer | This American Life](<a href=“http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/440/game-changer]Game”>http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/440/game-changer)</p>
<p>You can read the transcript for free:</p>
<p>[Transcript</a> | This American Life](<a href=“http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/440/transcript]Transcript”>http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/440/transcript)</p>
<p>Wo. Fendrock thanks that’s an amazing link. More goodness from Happy Valley, too, huh. Man.</p>
<p>That is a good link. The rhetoric is that the poor local people will get money, then the finance world gets all excited because the company will make money, then the politicians get all excited because maybe it will mean “jobs” …and in the glee of money from everyone who doesn’t live there…those “everyones” forgets about the earth, the environment, the people that live there, the animals that live there…</p>
<p>I’m not “against” big business or finding good energy sources but the vast majority of people get all wrapped up in “money” that they forget to stop and assess the risks and the losses and these companies don’t live in the area, don’t even really understand what is happening locally - it’s just a push pin on a map…no one “likes” the risk managers…they like the people that “make money” no matter how they make it. Did we learn nothing about diminishing the concept of risk from wall street and housing? </p>
<p>Cripes we, as a country, are still all hot on commercial wind turbines (another questionable energy source) yet the Scandinavian countries who are light years ahead of us in balancing risk are backing away from commercialized wind energy…and yet big business and politicians keep pressing forward in the US with promises of money and jobs.</p>
<p>I’m alittle weary of the “go big move fast” mentality…or maybe with fracking it’s the “go deep go fast” mentality. How about “go slowly” for awhile?</p>
<p>From Fendrock’s link in post #37:</p>
<p>"At the University of Pittsburgh, Dan Volz did go public. He works in public health; he felt it was his duty to go public. A couple of years ago, people started calling in to the Center for Healthy Environments & Communities where Volz worked. At first, three or four people a week, then as many as 25 a week. The callers lived near gas wells or compressor stations and they had health complaints.</p>
<p>"… People complaining of bloody noses, of tingling in their distal portions of their fingers and their toes, of problems sometimes remembering things, getting headaches. And the same problems are being reported in Colorado, and Wyoming, and in Texas. And there’s just no investigation on the part of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the state DEPs. So we started investigating this."</p>
<p>(He got fired from Pitt, right? No - editing after reading more - he quit when the Dean of his dept. emailed him to NOT provide data to EPA showing that treated water - water that had already been sent through the clean up process -from one of the fracking operations still had levels of toxics above legal health proteaction limits.)</p>
<p>And from the same link:</p>
<p>"Also around this time, in late 2009, people started noticing that fish were dying in Dunkard Creek, which runs for 35 miles along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border. Not just fish, but salamanders and shellfish. In fact, all the aquatic life had turned belly up. The cause was said to be golden algae.</p>
<p>"…What was puzzling about this was that golden algae only grows in salty water. So where is all the salt coming from? So I got very interested after that in the issue of, what’s adding all of this total dissolved solids to rivers like the Monongahela? Why are we seeing problems associated with high bromide levels in finished drinking water? What is going on here?"</p>
<p>Finished drinking water = what comes to your home after it has been fully and completely treated by the local water department.</p>