Fracking Contaminates Groundwater: Stanford Study
Another scientific report finds evidence of industry’s impact on public resource.
Drilling photo via Shutterstock.
“We have, for the first time, demonstrated impact to Underground Sources of Drinking Water (USDW) as a result of hydraulic fracturing,” says the study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Researchers from Stanford University published their findings after combing through publicly available data on the drilling, fracking and cementing of scores of tight gas wells in Pavillion, Wyoming.
“Given the high frequency of injection of stimulation fluids into USDWs to support [coalbed methane] extraction and unknown frequency in tight gas formations, it is unlikely that impact to USDWs is limited to the Pavillion Field, requiring investigation elsewhere.”
The scientists matched chemical compounds used in fracking to chemicals found in two groundwater monitoring wells drilled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2008.
No jurisdiction in Canada has yet set up long-term groundwater monitoring wells to track the movement of contaminants from oil and gas drilling into groundwater.
The industry routinely contends that fracking is safe because it is occurring miles underground.
But shallow fracking of coal seams and other formations in Colorado, Wyoming, Alabama and Alberta from the 1980s onward has resulted in lawsuits, public protests and evidence of extensive groundwater contamination.
The new study also found that different companies in Pavillion, Wyoming used acid and hydraulic fracturing treatments at the same depths as water wells in the area. Waste disposal pits contaminated groundwater, too.
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