Fracking- there's a .5% chance I'm right...

 There’s a .5% chance I’m right.

By Wally Nichols

Dear Natural Gas Exec:

There must be some reason I am putting up such a fight against your attempts to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale bank deep below my and my fellow New Yorkers’ feet? I know I can be difficult, even obstinate at times, and I know you mock my hippie drum circles of protest, but here’s a secret: I really love the notion of energy independence for our country. I love the notion of clean, abundant natural gas to power the country for 10 years while we fine tune the solar and wind technology into ultra efficiency. I also don’t like the notion of unjustified conflict. Not looking for a fight- Like you, I have other things to do like play with my kid and examine the contents of my navel with wordless wonder.

I think we’re a lot closer to the common goal than this bickering would suggest. We have lawyered up. We hurl facts and figures at each other’s frontal lobes and we have paneled our white coated experts who have data and speculation aplenty to make our arguments crystal clear. We do this until we are red in the face and exasperated. And as we do this, we drain the swamp of the very goodwill we need to co-exist. Hmmmmm.

Here’s where we differ though, and it’s worth at least acknowledging the difference, don’t you think? I believe the process you have perfected called Hydrofracking is not as refined or developed or safe as you claim it is, and if I am right, the consequences are pretty significant. There’s at least a possibility I’m right. I’m gonna say at least a .5% chance I’m right.

You say fracking has a 60 year history, but so does aviation. You are selling us on the safety of a 60 year old airplane with a soup can carburetor that no one in their right mind would fly in today.

You have been a little slippery with the facts, right? To suggest that 99.5 % of the drilling liquid is totally inert (sand and water) is to necessarily marginalize that ‘tiny’ .5% remainder. That .5% remainder, however is one of the dark alleys where tragedy and short sightedness might well linger. The chemicals needed to lube the drill bit and force fractures in the shale to get at the gas are pretty evil, you have to admit- definitely things (like Benzene and ethylene glycol to name a few) that do pretty bad things to us. You’d be in the ER or morgue of you drank them (like some of the residents of Pennsylvania are). (Stop me if I am misspeaking, please. Ok Good).

It’s also not like you are using just a few gallons here and there. The water part of that drilling brine is in the range of millions and millions of gallons per well. The chemical part ( .5%) of even a million is a lot. My goodness- I just did the math! It’s 50,000 gallons, per million of water. And you use millions of gallons per well. And you have thousands of wells going in Penn and thousands more planned in New York. Gulp.

Less of an issue if they stayed down there at the bottom of the well (the chemicals not the poisoned and vocal residents of Penn), right?  But, there’s no way to segregate them and keep them down when that sweet gas comes up. That tiny .5% of nasty cocktail and the now contaminated millions of gallons of water has to be dealt with back on top.

And off it goes to municipal waste water treatment plants that aren’t used to that kind of, ummm, crap.   (Stop me if I am misspeaking, please. Ok Good). That’s not all that comes up though. One such thing is Radium 226, a known radioactive element that mercifully does its bidding in that middle earth vault. Well, until we come along. Then, it comes up just like a hairball in concentrations 260 times greater than we consider safe for hazardous waste disposal and thousands of times higher than we allow in drinking water. It’s really hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube, ya know?  Those municipal waste water treatments facilities?  Not required or equipped to test for radioactivity.

The trip back up to the top happens in steel casing that you have pounded into the ground below the water table to GUARANTY a firewall between the gas that we want on top, and the water we drink that comes from below the surface. This steel casing isn’t strong enough to handle seismic activity nor has it stopped methane from entering the water table. Imagine how crazy it is to turn on your faucet and ignite your water?  We certainly can PRAY there wont be any earthquakes. (hee hee). That’s what they did in Pompeii, and it worked really well! Until it didn’t.

It’s time to remind you respectfully of the Tripod of Truth, as I like to call it. There are 3 legs upon which all projects stand. For anything that needs to be done, one may pick 2 of the following 3 elements: This applies to building a dog house as equally as it applies to paying desperate land owners for mineral rights, drilling a few miles in the earth, shooting horizontally and then blasting apart the shale at super high pressure to get at the gas. The elements are (and remember, you get to pick 2 only!) Cost. Speed. Quality. Ehh ehh, ehhhh, let go! You get 2 not 3!

Cost. I know you like money. I like it too. That probably means you don’t want to spend too much of it up front (safety costs money!) And you probably want to make as much as soon as possible. That means dropping the drill bit right now, damn it. Your lab coats say it’s safe and we all know it’s easier to say ‘Sorry” than “May I?” Hook it up, turn it on and get that gas out. Hup hup hup! To slap a cliché on it, this trap is frequently called ‘penny wise, pound foolish.’

We should talk when the stratospheric bill to clean up our drinking water comes. (For the moment, hydrofracking is exempt from the Federal Clean Water Drinking Act?!?) We may be long dead but our kids wont be! (on the other hand, maybe they will be too). As my therapist says, “you can pay now, or pay more later.” Sigh. She’s usually right.

Speed. If you had patience, or lacked a sense of urgency on this matter, you might take the time to find out if there are other less or non toxic chemicals that could be used. Perhaps even the fracking process itself might be refined or optimized with different tools or technology not yet invented! Think of all the people who are kicking themselves because they had their hemmorhoids removed with a hammer and chisel, and then later a scalpel instead of waiting a few extra years for lasers to be invented! DOOOOOH!

Not so many airplanes out there anymore with soup can carburetors are there??

Patience, you are a virtue!

We’ll be squealing this mantra with head tumors from cell phone use someday, just as we are saying it now from asbestos and fiberglass use. It all seemed so right at the time! And we were fueled then by an uncanny sense of urgency, as we are now with abundant energy. What if I’m right about the potential damage to our drinking water at least? Never mind even that strong a statement. What if there’s a .5% chance I even MAY be right? How much would the erstwhile asbestos proponents like to turn back the hands of time?? (Stop me if I am misspeaking, please. Ok Good).

Quality. If we want something fast and cheap, the quality WILL suffer. Look at the automotive industry for daily proof. Or McDonalds. The quality we’re talking about here with fracking is the process and the consequences of the process as it relates to our life quality and , related, our planet. The process is flawed and you are not being straight about it. Communities are being ruined because their now worthless properties that you have leased have no potable water, there are diesel belching, Haz-Mat semi-trucks lumbering through depressed rural towns 24/7, and there is increased exposure to isotopic Radium and the toxic drilling sludge / rock tailings back up at the well head (which I’m guessing is far from your office). (Stop me if I am misspeaking, please. Ok Good).

Pennsylvania was your experiment. The experiment has failed pretty miserably from a human consequence perspective. NY is fresh meat, and we’re desperate for revenue. So I understand the attraction at an easy economic level. But this is a complex calculus. We’re like the wounded gazelle on the Discovery Channel. Limping and distracted. Why would a lioness expend extra calories? In nature, she wouldn't.

Should we not be concerned that entire gas-rich countries have banned this hydro fracking practice from a public health perspective?

I’m trying to explain why I (and other New Yorkers who are taking a conservative, long view) am putting up such a fight against this-- to help you understand that I don’t hate your intentions. I just fear your process and think that taking our time on this, spending more money on developing the process , measuring the consequences and being forthright, will yield better , safer , lucrative results.

Nobody, including you, wants to bring devastation to other humans or thrash the delicate balance of nature, so rest assured I don’t hate you (yet). I just think you might not have all the facts. I don’t either.

And you politicians who are reading: Do you hold some safety knowledge you are not sharing with us? Why in the world would you not urge restraint, if not an outright ban? Can the money or power you get otherwise be THAT worth it?? Could you be so myopic? So careless with our welfare?   Go spend a day at a playground.  Why is even a drop of ink or a beat of passion needed to convince you to protect the health interests of your people? I’ll start at the top. Cuomo: step up. NOW.  I’ll go to the bottom: Local town supervisors who thwart fracking with creative , on-the-fly code restrictions: You are wiser and braver than you know. We can’t put this toothpaste back into the tube once it’s out.

So.............Let’s all push ‘pause’ and let science and innovation catch up with our creative spirit and desires. What’s the hurry? Where’s the fire? (see below) There’s room and time for us all to get what we want. The right way.

And if you slow down, Gas Executive, I promise you wont have to hear any more of my hippie drum circles of protest. And you, politician, might even get my vote.

I’m reminded of a cliché regularly trotted out: 'There’s no free lunch.' I’d like to add that there’s no free lunch especially when it bursts into flames when you open a tap and ignite it.