Water Water Everywhere... 

Whisky is for drinking; Water is for fighting over.”
– An old western proverb

By Joe Bruns – No resource is more important to civilization than water. But we seldom give it a second thought. Most of us turn on the faucet and an unlimited supply of clean water flows for drinking, cooking, watering our lawns or flushing our toilet waste. For much of the world, though, access to clean water is a matter of daily concern. Just this past week a major aquifer was discovered in Turkana, a desperately arid region of Kenya. If properly managed, this new find can provide water for the next 70 years and transform a way of life.

If we don’t get the water, we won’t need the water.”

Owens Lake, CA

As with many resources, water is unevenly distributed. Abundant, clean water is not always proximate to economic centers. In the American west battles have been waged both in the field and in the courtroom over access to water resources. In the early twentieth century the California water wars were fought between farmers and developers who wanted, and ultimately did, divert water from central California in order to support the growth of Los Angeles, and turn a handsome profit in the process. These manipulations served as the backdrop to the Roman Polanski movie Chinatown. By 1926, the entire Owens Lake on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, had virtually vanished, siphoned off by the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Mono Lake

After draining Owens Lake, Los Angeles turned in 1941 to a new source, the 760,000 year old Mono Lake, diverting its tributary streams to irrigate orange groves, golf courses, and quench the thirst of its growing population. By 1962, Mono Lake’s water level dropped by 25 feet, and threatened the collapse of a unique ecosystem. Only through intense effort by environmental activists was the diversion stopped and the ecosystem substantially restored.

Fissure in Arizona resulting from pumping groundwater

Not only surface water is subject to exploitation and overuse. In Houston, the land has subsided by more than nine feet as a result of pumping ground water. In Arizona, fissures have formed in the earth, as deep as 100 feet, and hundreds of feet long from pumping.

The High Plains aquifer, which waters vast agricultural tracts from South Dakota to Texas, some 174,000 square miles, will be 70% depleted in 50 years. This has not gone unnoticed by investors who see profit in scarcity. Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens is the single largest holder ofwater rights in the US.

Enter Fracking

Fracking is to traditional drilling as twerking is to traditional dancing”

Proponents of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, fracking, point to America’s abundant supply of relatively clean-burning natural gas. The Energy Information Administration estimates there are some 2552 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. Indeed, there is a gas boom underway right now that has brought down energy prices, made us less reliant on coal and imported oil, and reduced some of the most hazardous emissions. With all good things, though, there are tradeoffs. Even the strongest proponents of fracking acknowledge that it takes a lot of water, as much as 7 million gallons to frack a single well. And a large proportion of that water is lost forever, bound up in the shale formations and unrecoverable. Others try to put this in context, such as Carnegie Mellon University environmental professor Jeanne VanBriesen who points out the amount of water required to drill all 2916 of wells permitted in Pennsylvania in the first 11 months of 2010 would equal the amount of drinking water used by just one city, Pittsburgh, during the same period. I’m not certain how Pittsburgh feels about that comparison.

Water not lost immediately in the fracking process is recovered and stored in tanks or lined ponds for eventual treatment. Contrary to some industry proponents, such as Sen.James Inhofe, R-OK, there have been documented contaminations of groundwater and surface spills, while industry scientists insist there has been no significant pollution from fracking. However, given enough fracking at enough sites, environmentalists argue, a disaster is inevitable. The wastewater produced by the fracking process contains not only the toxic chemicals added by the driller, but also material including heavy metals and hydrocarbons washed from the underground layers. They point to some isolated cases of methane filtering into the water table and localized spills contaminating surface water. There is also the unknown impact ofseismic activity related to fracking. Proponents insist, though, that if the overall energy production system is taken into account, fracking is among the best trade-offs available, and far preferable to the life-cycle environmental impact of coal.

Inevitably, though, it is a case of dueling scientists making hair-splitting definitions, citing data, statistics and findings that can seemingly be bent to fit any conclusion. And technology is often safer on the engineer’s drafting table than in the field.

To frack, or not to frack…

The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present an future generations.”

George Washington National Forest

Later this month, the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will make a determination as to whether to allow hydraulic fracture drilling in theGeorge Washington National Forest. This 1.1 million acre site, straddling Virginia and West Virginia, comprise, along with the Thomas Jefferson National Forest, the largest tracts of public lands in the eastern United States. In 2011, the Forest Service proposed a 15 year ban on fracking in the forest. Industry flexed its political muscle, including Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) to have the forestmanagement plan reconsidered.

Within the boundaries of the George Washington National Forest are the headwaters and tributaries of the Shenandoah, James and Potomac rivers, which together supply fresh water to almost 4.5 million people. The US Army Corps of Engineers,  manages the Washington Aqueduct and strongly supports continuation of the moratorium on fracking, as do environmental, wilderness and recreation groups, and municipalities dependent on the watershed for their water supply. Business and industry groups, predictably, oppose the ban. Many argue that the technology for safe drilling, recovery and storage of wastewater is quickly developing. To impose a moratorium up front will be an unfair lockout. Rather, they say, manage drilling through the lease process, allowing more leases as the technology and operations of fracking elsewhere prove their safety.

Natural Gas Flare-Off

It is a tug of war between interests. Unlike many previous battles of this sort, environmentalists and others opposed to industrial development and drilling are well-informed and active. More than 600 letterswere submitted to the Forest Service commenting on the management plan. Many were well researched, fact-based arguments favoring the moratorium on fracking. But industry was robustly represented as well, making the case for ‘clean’ energy development and touting the track record of fracking elsewhere in the Marcellus Shale, where some 500 million cubic feet of gas is trapped, waiting to be put to productive use in the American economy.

– Joe Bruns (Cajun Joe) is a Trail Mix Contributor