New in town: the introduction
This new neighbor promises a cleaner, greener energy source, job opportunities and improvements for the future, but all good things come with a price.
In the exciting buzz of revolutionizing energy and environmental cleanliness, big industrial drilling operations have discreetly settled in the backyards of many towns and cities. This new neighbor offers nearly 5,400 jobs along with the opportunity of harvesting cleaner-burning energy that will replace the very familiar but “dirtier” fossil fuel of oil and coal.
Cleaner energy is not a myth. This cleaner energy source is known as natural gas: a pure form of fossil fuel that when burned emits less carbon dioxide than other fuels, and when captured requires less processing than oil. Overall the production and use of natural gas creates fewer emissions than oil and coal; it is odorless; it is cleaner; it is abundant. Natural gas can easily become the cleaner-burning alternative to energy, and it can ease the transition towards renewable energy supplies such as wind, solar, and hydropower. It can be said that natural gas is the future of our children’s cleaner world.
A popular practice known as hydraulic fracturing is entrusted to collect the natural gas. Hydrofracking for short, has boomed in the last decade as the most effective method of natural gas extraction. One might say that hydrofracking puts the United States back on track for a cleaner energy. The practice of hydrofracking was first toyed with in the 1940's, when it’s potential was quickly realized. Since then, ongoing measures have been put in place to enhance the overall productivity of these oil and gas extraction wells. The practice of hydrofracking involves drilling into the gas reservoir deep in the ground and injecting a mixture of fluids at high pressure to crack open the rocky layers and release the trapped gas. The gas then flows to the top of the hydrofracking well and is collected.
Today, our new neighbor of hydrofracking wells is acquiring natural gas to serve Americans in generating 36 percent of electricity, provide heat for over half of American homes and commercial establishments, as well as power stoves, water heaters, clothes dryers, and other appliances.
This process sounds simple and sweet enough: drill, collect, use cleaner energy. Yet, in the past decade of true popularization of hydrofracking across the nation, several concerns are beginning to hum over the cheers of industrial excitement. Although the mechanism of hydrofracking has improved production efficiency over the past few decades, awareness of inefficient control of pollution and waste products from the drilling practices are gradually becoming hard facts for the everyday life of the people.
Even though a hydrofracking well site may appear to be a good neighbor, a closer look into the new neighbors yard uncovers a spewing concoction of volatile air toxins that are originating from on site machinery, as well as chemical spills, leaking pipes and valves, and air emissions. Not to mention the mass traffic of roughly 56 trucks coming in and out of each well site for fresh or wastewater transportation, averaging to about 1,400 trips by truck per site, required to sustain the well. Now there’s an increase in noisy traffic, increase in road repair issues that result from the movement of all the trucks, and a decrease in air quality as a result from truck emissions and fumes from other heavy machinery.
The recent awareness of these air quality issues brings to attention a lack of concern for pollutant control that has always existed in the practice of hydrofracking, but was never addressed. In the technological development for efficiency of the wells over the years, development of pollutant control has been disregarded or poorly advanced. The focus has been centered on increasing production economically, but not on ensuring local safety for communities that are stuck housing these drilling operations in their backyards. Development decisions that do not factor pollution regulations indicate that legislature is more inclined on protecting the economic well being of the natural gas industry than it is in protecting the residential health of nearby communities.
Sure these wells are new in town, but their methods, technology and consequences should have been further explored since the birth of the innovation back in the 1940’s.
