Riverkeeper

Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.org (a fantastic site that you should bookmark and visit often)

Authored by Mackenzie Schoonmaker and Mike Dulong from Riverkeeper

Every time the gas industry fracks, the public loses. We forfeit an enormous amount of fresh water from our rivers, lakes and streams, and we get a toxic waste disposal nightmare in return.

Rather than acknowledge these losses and work toward real solutions, the gas industry consistently sidesteps these issues, and falsely claims to have fixed them.  Recently, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon told us: “We heard that we were using too much water, so today we recycle 90% to 100%.” He later stated: “Then you talk about water consumption, and we start to recycle 99%.” Unfortunately, like so many of the industry’s empty promises, this story is not consistent with the reality of how much water the gas industry uses and how much waste it generates.

First, most of the chemically-laced water used for fracking (as much as 85 percent according to Pro Publica reports; other estimates range from 10 to 40 percent), does not return to the surface. Rather, it stays underground, where it can potentially migrate to and pollute fresh water supplies (another serious problem that deserves further discussion). Thus, recycling does not significantly change the amount of fresh water needed to frack a well.