Hydraulic fracturing, or“fracking”, is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside.
There are more than 500,000 active natural gas wells in the US.
Each gas well requires an average of400 tanker trucks to carry water and supplies to and from the site.
It takes1-8 million gallons of water to complete each fracturing job.
The water brought in is mixed with sand and chemicals to create fracking fluid.Approximately 40,000 gallons of chemicals are used per fracturing.
Up to600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as…
The fracking fluid is then pressure injected into the ground through a drilled pipeline.
500,000
Active gas wells in the US
8 million
Gallons of water per fracking
18
Times a well can be fracked
72 trillion gallons of waterand360 billion gallons of chemicals needed to run our current gas wells.
The mixture reaches the end of the well where the high pressure causes the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures wherenatural gas flows into the well.
During this process,methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater.
Methane concentrations are17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.
Contaminated well water is used for drinking water for nearby cities and towns.
There have been over1,000 documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases ofsensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water.
Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.
The waste fluid is left in open air pits to evaporate, releasingharmful VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone.
