And I am not confident we have a good handle on what it actually does to the ground water yet. Red, "fracking" has been a common practice in Texas wells since the early fifties.
That's sixty years. And, yes, we've a pretty good handle on it.
I live in the middle of the Barnett Shale play -- which fracking made possible. The only people who have any concern about it are the recently arrived liberal moonbat envirowhackos (from either coast).
And nobody pays any attention to them.
In sixty years of "fracking", not a single case of groundwater contamination has been traced to the process. Not one.
The argument is over. You can relax.
All too often the environmentalists create panic out of complete fantasy. They passed the great lakes directional drilling ban with the use of photos of oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico, oil soaked beaches, and dead seabirds. None of those things were remotely realistic.
The reality....
State geologists estimate that approximately 30 wells could be directionally drilled under the Great Lakes. Directional drilling, sometimes referred to as slant drilling, is performed at an angle, allowing placement of the well head onshore rather than on a drilling platform in the lake. While director of the Department of Environmental Quality in 1996, I was approached by companies interested in exploring for oil and gas under the Great Lakes. I asked the Michigan Environmental Science Board (a group of scientists, mostly from universities, with environmental and natural resource expertise) to study whether directional drilling under the Great Lakes posed any threat to natural resources.
The Board concluded: "There is little to no risk of contamination to the Great Lakes bottom or waters through releases directly above the bottom hole portion of directionally drilled wells." The Board went on to say: "There is, however, a small risk of contamination at the well head." The board made recommendations on steps that could be taken to mitigate any impact to the Great Lakes from the well head, including locating the wells at least 1,000 feet from the shoreline and implementing proper waste disposal measures. Before the ban, eight wells had been directionally drilled under the Great Lakes without environmental harm.
Great Lakes Directional Drilling Ban Should Be Lifted
Today, if you try to bring up directional drilling under the great lakes the idiots start screeching about the Embridge pipeline leak near Kalamazoo Michigan. In fact, the Embridge spill likely wouldn't have happened if my state had obeyed their own law and actually had an inspector on the payroll.