The English called it the “phony war,” that period of military inactivity that followed their 1939 declaration of war on Germany. To the Germans it was the “armchair war;” to the French it was the “funny war.” But Europe and then the world would soon discover there was nothing funny about World War II.
So it is with many political and industrial processes, they start small, grow bigger, then reach a stage where they are no longer controllable. A good example of this is what's happening throughout Pennsylvania.
At first there were only a few hundred natural gas fracking wells. Not much spread over the state's 46,000 square miles. They were eyesores to some, to others they were harbingers of jobs, prosperity, and opportunities.
But then the hundreds became thousands and the thousands will in time become tens of thousands, and yes, even hundreds of thousands.
The gas frenzy in Pennsylvania started in earnest four years ago. Since then about 4,000 gas wells have been fracked. Since each well requires an average of five million gallons of water that adds up to 20 billion gallons of highly toxic frack fluid force pumped into the ground.
The pressure used to push this liquid though thousands of feet of rock and soil are unearthly, between 60,000 psi and 80,000 psi. But to be correct, wells are not fracked, they are re-fracked.
The multiple layers of sandstone and shale are fractured by nature with cracks, fissures, and faults. These crevices are then re-fracked by man, prying them apart with super-pressurized water to release the trapped gases. But if a seismic fault is encountered, fracking can cause earthquakes as it has in Ohio, Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
Frackers maintain that this chemically laden frack fluid will remain underground as stagnant pools forever. Let's hope they're right. This is a state where 85 percent of the population depends on potable groundwater.
But what if they're wrong? What if eventually the mammoth pressure used in fracking drives these noxious waters up into aquifers and private wells? What then?
And don't be misled by frack-tales assuring us that this effluent is 98 percent pure water. That's a truth in service of a lie. Try drinking a glass of 98 percent pure water spiked with 2 percent carcinogens, neurotoxins, biocides, and sprinkled with an assortment of radioactive isotopes.
About 20 percent of frack fluid flows back up a well. This flowback is trucked to special facilities where it is partially treated, then discharged into rivers. But people live downstream. In a sense, don't we all live downstream and drink that water?
But the gas companies state that treated flowback dumped into a river becomes so highly diluted that it is rendered harmless. Not so, says Dr. Theo Colborn, an expert in the health effects of pollution. In her judgment, “these chemicals can undermine one's health in concentrations as infinitesimal as one part per billion.”
Just how infinitesimal is one part per billion? Imagine a single drop in 11,000 gallons of water.
But this is just the beginning. Eventually the number of gas wells will climb to 3,000 to 5,000 new wells per year, according to fracking authority Dr. Tony Ingraffea. And over the next 50 years Dr. Terry Engelder, professor of geoscience at Penn State, predicts there will be 200,000 fracked wells.
“I am afraid for the future of this state,” said John Quigley, former head of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection.
What's happening today is reminiscent of the degradation of the environment by the timber barons of the 19th century, the coal barons of the 20th century, and now the gas barons of the 21st century. However, “The cumulative impacts of Marcellus development,” said Quigley, “will dwarf all of the impacts on timbering, oil, and coal, combined.”
The consequences of this are staggering, but not today. Today it is only the few who protest the sacrifice of land, water, and air quality, on Mammon's altar. And they are not necessarily environmentalists.
The protestors are ordinary folks whose foremost concerns are the threat fracking poses to the value of their homes and property and their quality of life, all of which depend on potable water from their wells.
But for now it's still the phony war. A few anti-frackers versus the deep pockets of the gas companies, TV ads, paid-off politicos, and those bedazzled by royalties.
But gradually the few will become the many, then the many will swell to a majority. Finally, the tradeoff of land, water, and air quality, for short-term gains will be seen for what it is, a tragic and irreversible mistake, but by then it will be too late.
Sincerely,
Bob Scroggins
New Milford, PA