Fracking - where is it headed ?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

P.S. Not having a DNR in the patient's file may well lead to a very nasty situation...

True, I forgot to add that the DNR was instead at the nurse's station in the hall. But I agree it's still a violation and could, under certain circumstances, be a problem.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Glatt, I'm not sure your examples are analogous

My analogies are not perfect, and my made-up example of a truck invoice may not be how minor some of the infractions are. I don't trust the oil industry at all, but that doesn't mean I completely trust that map either. I'm sure it's mapping something, but I don't know what.

[Lamplighter]

Operators (businesses/corporations/etc) seem to disappear
when significant problems arise. The federal government
has the EPA and the SuperFund to fall back on in severe cases,
but even there the number of such sites is small.

Maybe California and New York have the resources, but I doubt
many other states have such excess state taxes just lying about.

So when it comes to managing risks to public health, paying
heed to the "broken window" model of enforcement may be
the only/most effective path available to State governments.

[Undertoad]

violations like not having a DNR form in a holder on the back of a patient's room door

Not having a DNR in the patient's file may well lead to a very nasty situation

If you can't win an argument, just change it to something winnable.

If you post maps and don't know what they say, just talk about all the worst things that can happen. Holy shit, look at all the yellow dots! Every watershed in the entire state is in danger!

Not just "Inspected industry found violations!"

That's sort of what you hope would happen, that 1% of inspections would find something, that would be corrected, and the result is a safe, inspected industry. If that were what the maps showed, then mission accomplished. WaPo correct.

I read the local restaurant inspection reports, and 100% of them find something. Are we all in danger of being horribly poisoned?

~

So I went and looked into what the maps actually say.

Very good news: In Pennsylvania the state puts all the inspections on file online so you can search for them and figure out what they say.

The worst one I found, an operator accidentally ignited fumes in a holding tank by checking it with a cell phone instead of an ignition-free flashlight, which resulted in the loss of about half a backyard pool's worth of backflow water. (This resulted in 7 different violations and a fine.)

In the least worst, an operator plugged a well and sold it but failed to mark it with an embossed metal tag within 90 days. (This is the, "form was at the nurses' station instead of on the door" kind of violation.)

Many violations are the result of spillage of diesel fuel or brine on the well pad itself. Sometimes there was equipment failure. Sometimes someone put a hole in a few 55 gallon drums by accident.

So now we know what the maps mean. Inspected industry found violations. Awesome, it's good news. If they found nothing I would assume the inspection system is badly broken. It would mean our asses are swimming in benzene, if they found nothing. They found small incidents that could not threaten aquifers and it resulted in thorough reports and non-trivial fines. That's what I would hope to find out.

[Undertoad]

Last I read the state only has six inspectors

Yes, but you have to realize, all the facts you have read and remembered are from 1994 and earlier.

Today there are 80 inspectors.

We know there should be at least 1%

Made-up facts. It should be embarrassing.

[classicman]

BAM!
Bwahahahahaaaaaa

[xoxoxoBruce]

Fracking Chemicals Detected in Pennsylvania Drinking Water

An analysis of drinking water sampled from three homes in Bradford County, Pa., revealed traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids, according to a study published on Monday.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, addresses a longstanding question about potential risks to underground drinking water from the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The authors suggested a chain of events by which the drilling chemical ended up in a homeowner’s water supply.

“This is the first case published with a complete story showing organic compounds attributed to shale gas development found in a homeowner’s well,” said Susan Brantley, one of the study’s authors and a geoscientist from Pennsylvania State University.

NYT

[xoxoxoBruce]

Oil and natural gas fracking, on average, uses more than 28 times the water it did 15 years ago, gulping up to 9.6 million gallons of water per well and putting farming and drinking sources at risk in arid states, especially during drought. Those are the results of a U.S. Geological Survey study published by the American Geophysical Union, the first national-scale analysis and map of water use from hydraulic fracturing operations.
~snip~
The amount of water used for fracking in each well varies widely by region. In southern Illinois, an operation can use as little as 2,600 gallons of water each time fracking triggers the flow of oil or gas into a well. In West Texas’ Permian Basin surrounding Midland and Odessa, fracking uses between 264,000 and 2.6 million gallons of water each time. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, south and eastern Texas, Arkansas, northern Colorado and Montana, fracking can use more than 9 million gallons of water.

Scientific American

[Lamplighter]

This article may be faux-science ... or it may not !
(Unfortunately there is no author or link back to an original article)

Penn’s fracking sites tied with higher hospitalization rates
Daily Times Gazette - - 7/18/15

Fracking is associated with higher hospitalization rates claims the research done by the Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania.
…
They compared Bradford and Susquehanna where drilling is active to their control group, Wayne County where extraction has been banned.

Researchers connected the dots when they analyzed 198,000 hospitalization records from 2007 to 2011 in Northern Pennsylvania counties. They categorized at least 25 medical scenarios and linked those cases with their proximity within different fracking sites.
…
The results showed that indeed, hospitalization rates are higher in places where fracking is practice than those that do not. Around 18 zip code areas have been identified to have a well density higher than 0.79 wells per square kilometer. Those citizens residing in those zip codes have at least 27% risk higher than those areas situated far from extraction points.

[xoxoxoBruce]

NEWSWEEK

In a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania looked at hospital admittance rates from 2007 to 2011 for 18 ZIP codes in three counties in northeastern Pennsylvania, where the fracking industry has boomed in recent years. Two of the counties, Bradford and Susquehanna, saw a surge in new drilling activity during this period. The third, Wayne County, functioned as a control; it had no producing natural gas wells after a 2010 ban on drilling due to its proximity to the Delaware River watershed.

[Undertoad]

If drilling is beginning in Wayne County, make sure your relatives have selected a good urologist.

[glatt]

So I did a bit of Googling, and apparently there was going to be tons of fracking in Wayne county, but the Delaware River Basin Commission, the agency that oversees the Delaware River watershed, banned it while it studied the impact on the basin. And it doesn't seem to be working very hard at completing that study. So all the oil companies pulled out and broke their leases with 1,300 or so landowners in Wayne.

Sucks for the economy there, but is great news for the environment. I'm happy because to me, this is what makes Wayne county valuable:

[Griff]

http://www.npr.org/2015/10/13/448182...about-fracking

[Lamplighter]

Among the 94 comments (as of today) the comment by ScottCannon is also worth reading.

[xoxoxoBruce]

So if you've got a little piece of ground away from the maddening crowd, spent your life and treasure building a comfortable home, say like Griftopia.
Now your water supply is gone along with your life's work and most of your net worth, because who'd buy it without water?
Well, fuck you, you're going to have to sacrifice for the greater good, we'll just make you into soylent green so you won't be a burden on society.
No wonder they want to take away your guns.

[Undertoad]

...$20 more in the pocket each month to spend on something else = lots of economic activity = more jobs = security = consumer confidence = more economic activity

inspired me to get the graph of miles traveled - it's on the upswing again

http://cellar.org/showpost.php?p=943990&postcount=1099