Before You Dig

We need
1. Activated watchdog agencies
2. Comprehensive, online, open records with maps
3. Unconditional clean water guarantee
4. Unconditional clean air guarantee
5. Unconditional land value guarantee
6. Unconditional health care
      One fiasco at a time
      West Valley Nuclear Dump Site
      Dioxin in Lake Ontario

We can afford to be cautious.

Did Jesus believe in free market capitalism?

The holy dollar, here.

Is barium in the blood

A sign of water well contamination with fracking fluid?

Combination sink stove

The latest "must have" kitchen appliance.
video

Screen shot from GASLAND @31:30

The Halliburton loophole, click to enlarge.
2005 Energy Act, pdf page 102
Drillers do not want to be subject to the Safe Drinking Water Act. Is there confusion about this?

Excludes injection of fluids
Note that the exclusion is for sand and for fluids.
Barium and arsenic are not fluids at the temperatures and pressures used in fracking. They are dissolved solids.

SUNY at Buffalo / SRSI

In mythology, Circe was a powerful witch who, with the help of herbs, muttering incantations, or praying to her gods, could turn men into animals or create unsubstantial images of beasts. She was able to darken the heavens by hiding the moon or the sun behind clouds.

The problems with fracking

1. Air pollution
2. Water pollution
3. Land destruction
4. Corruption of government

1. Air Pollution
 *  The fracking fluid is allowed to evaporate
 *  Condensate tank venting is not measured
       These vapors destroy animal(human) habitat
       and add to global warming

2. Water Pollution
 *  Fracking fluid cannot be "cleaned"
 *  Aquafers are made undrinkable by coincidence

3. Land is devastated, like
 *  mountain top removal
 *  Love Canal and dioxin
 *  West Valley nuclear reprocessing
 *  British Columbia tar sands pipeline
 *  and earthquakes

4. Government is corrupted
 *  campaign finance
 *  distortions under oath, like tobacco
 *  misinformation campaigns, like seat-belts
 *  opponents treated as insurgents

=====
some problems are related to any drilling
fracking requires more wells
More, with photos

The Meaning of the Superfund

What does the superfund demonstrate?
That when there is short term money to be made that leaves long term problems, the government hasn't managed to avoid the temptation to be buddies to the powerful.

Dee Hoffmeister's condensate tank

To get a fire started, you need fuel, oxygen, and heat.
How did these three things get together, or rather where?
One guess, the condensate tank was venting hydrocarbons at the wrong time. Eh?

Medicare

Moving from fixed-benefit to fixed-contribution.

Another problem with fracking

Natural gas is methane.
The material that comes up the well bore is shale oil and gas: gas and liquid. Some gas is vented, and some liquids vaporize.

Let's finish cleaning up West Valley before we jump into fracking.
What's the rush? The gas isn't going anywhere.

Less impact than what

vendor
It is true that with horizontal drilling, you can choose where to locate the drill rig, so that rigs do not need to be "in your face".
But this flexibility is a feature of horizontal drilling of any kind. The environmental benefit is that this flexibility can be used to minimize disruption of the land surface. It does not address the environmental problems specific to fracking, or automatically result in a better landscape.

It might be the case that the owner of the desired site would not sign the lease agreement, but his neighbor would.

One problem with fracking

vendor
In conventional drilling,
  - The gas has migrated from an oily shale strata
  - to a porous sandstone reservoir.
  - A hole into the reservoir accesses the pressurized gas.
In fracking,
  - The gas has not migrated from the oily shale.
  - Sandy fluid is forced in to make channels for the gas
  - Some of the fluid comes back out and is a disposal problem.

Fracking injects sandy water plus additives into the well, to make cracks in the shale, and jam the cracks open. A third of the fluid that goes in comes out again, but now mixed with hydrocarbons and metals from the oily shale. The first step in disposing of these produced fluids is to allow the fluid to evaporate.
These vapors are one problem with fracking.

Occupy Nairobi