What price do you place on quality of life?

By Terry Lyn Grange –

We have some­thing valu­able in Mor­row County. Aes­thet­ics. I would hate to lose it. I’ve been doing a lot of dri­ving through our back roads lately and I’ve found the quaint and the quirky. I’ve seen some­one mow­ing a large yard with an old timey push mower. I’ve seen a gar­den fenced and staked with branches. And I’ve seen injec­tion wells. How many do we have? How many are we going to allow? Penn­syl­va­nia won’t allow the haz­ardous waste to be stored there. The whole state of Ver­mont has banned frack­ing. Bel­gium has banned it.

There is some con­cern that the chem­i­cals used in hydraulic frac­tur­ing may harm human health and the envi­ron­ment. Some of these chem­i­cals are extremely toxic, such as ben­zene and lead. Is it pos­si­ble to carry out an oper­a­tion with­out using the haz­ardous air pol­lu­tants and know carcinogens?

Once a well has been fracked, a sub­stan­tial amount of the fluid used remains under­ground and its migra­tion is unpre­dictable. The Safe Drink­ing Water Act (SDWA) does not pro­tect ground water from these chem­i­cals as of 2005. This is what is known as the Hal­libur­ton loop­hole. The liq­uid that flows back must be stored in an UIC (Under­ground Injec­tion Con­trol Pro­gram). The UIC is sub­ject to the SDWA and is mon­i­tored by the ODNR. A big con­tro­versy exists right now about what to allow in a UIC. Fed­eral law con­tains no pub­lic dis­clo­sure require­ments and state dis­clo­sure require­ments vary greatly. There is some talk of requir­ing the indus­try to place a radio iso­tope in the mix which would be trace­able. Methanol was the most widely used chem­i­cal as reported to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Com­mit­tee on Energy & Com­merce between 2005 and 2009. Methanol is a haz­ardous air pol­lu­tant and sub­ject to reg­u­la­tion under SDWA, unless it falls under the Hal­libur­ton loop­hole. Fol­low­ing methanol is iso­propanol, crys­talline sil­ica, Eth­yl­ene gly­col (2-butoxyethanol) 2BE, Eth­yl­ene gly­col (1,2-ethanediol), Hydrotreated light petro­leum dis­tal­lates, Sodium hydrox­ide (caus­tic soda). 2BE can cause dam­age to the spleen, liver and bone mar­row. I cer­tainly hope we’re not call­ing this brine and spread­ing it on roads, whether they are pub­lic or private.

Par­ties inter­ested in this sub­ject con­tact me at tlg_co@hotmail.com.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.