Guest op-ed: Fracking by the numbers

New Yorkers continue to wait for the long-expected health study on fracking to be released. But does New York really need this study to decide its fate?

Scarcely a month goes by without some new incident.

Contamination of drinking water is one of the key threats posed by fracking. In reviewing state records, we found more than 1,000 documented cases where dirty drilling has contaminated drinking water sources.  While such contamination can happen at several points in the fracking process, perhaps the greatest threat to our water comes from the toxic waste that fracking generates.

Often laced with cancer-causing and even radioactive material, this fracking waste has leaked from waste pits into groundwater, has been dumped into rivers and streams, and spread onto roadways.

So how much of this fracking waste are we talking about? Using state and industry-submitted data, we calculated that fracking generated 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater in 2012, enough fracking waste to flood all of New York City in a four-foot toxic lagoon.

And yet, this toxic fracking waste is exempt from our nation’s hazardous waste laws.

We also looked at how much water is used by fracking. Using data submitted by fracking operators, we calculated that fracking has used 250 billion gallons of fresh water since 2005. And unlike other water uses, to the extent fracking converts water into toxic waste injected into the ground, water used for fracking is gone for good.

The numbers on fracking look equally appalling with respect to health, natural heritage and the planet.

With a growing number of residents experiencing illness near fracking operations, we found that fracking operations produced 450,000 tons of air pollution in one year and have directly degraded 360,000 acres of land since 2005.

Our calculations understate the true toll of fracking which also inflicts other damage we did not quantify in our report—from contamination of residential wells to ruined roads to earthquakes near disposal sites.

Viewed in their totality, the numbers on fracking add up to an environmental nightmare. Given the number and severity of threats posed by fracking, constructing a regulatory regime sufficient to protect our water and our health—much less enforcing it at more than 80,000 wells, plus processing and waste disposal sites—seems implausible. At the end of the day, protecting our environment and public health will require a ban on fracking.

To the dire fracking numbers presented in our research, we should add a more hopeful one: recently, the People’s Climate March united over 300,000 concerned citizens, demonstrating that the public is indeed concerned about fracking and other processes that damage the environment. Perhaps it is time Governor Cuomo, President Obama and Congress begin to show indications of similar concern.

Heather Leibowitz is the director of Environment New York & Policy Center.

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