Factory Farms Effluent

These are exerpts of the article on Grist.com. For the entire article, please click on the title - it'll take you directly to the article...

Agriculture has long been a top source of water pollution in the U.S., but in the last two decades the scale of the problem has grown dramatically with the proliferation of large-scale pork, poultry, beef, and dairy facilities, known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). From 2002 to 2005, the CAFO industry in the U.S. expanded by about 22 percent -- with substantially more animals per facility, and ever-larger piles of their droppings

Today these facilities are responsible for some 500 million tons of animal manure a year -- three times more waste than humans in this country produce, activists say. According to a 1998 report from the Department of Agriculture and U.S. EPA, CAFO muck has fouled roughly 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and groundwater in 17 states. More recent data show that 29 states have reported water contamination from these feedlots.Last week, the EPA proposed a rule [PDF] that purports to address this problem. It would revise a set of rules issued in 2003 that revamped the permitting process required of CAFOs under the Clean Water Act, with the aim of better tracking discharge levels at each facility and holding factory farms accountable for their water pollution.

"The loophole basically renders the Clean Water Act meaningless when it comes to regulating the fecal discharge from CAFOs," says Merkel. "It says to these massive facilities, 'Hey, figure out if you need a permit to pollute, and then come and get one.' It's appalling."The agriculture industry, meanwhile, is applauding the proposed rule. Don Parish, senior director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says it would lighten the regulatory burden on CAFOs. Obtaining permits, he says, is "an onerous process. When you have a permit, every 'i' that you don't dot and every 't' you don't cross is a problem, and creates substantial liability concerns."

"In 2003, EPA's position was that if you're a large-scale facility, it's nearly impossible not to have some amount of discharge," says Merkel. "Therefore all large facilities should have permits."

And yet today the vast majority of factory farms still don't have permits for this runaway pollution: Of the roughly 18,800 CAFOs currently in the United States, the EPA says only about 8,500 have permits.

Natural Gas Drilling Anything But

The following are exerpts from the article Scientific American November 17, 2008.
Drill for Natural Gas, Pollute Water

I have a few comments. #1 - when Halliburton is involved, expect absolutely no protection for workers or the environment. It's their legacy. #2 - anything that is underground will migrate. If it didn't, we wouldn't have earth quakes. Just look at IBM and Endicott Johnson industrial sites in Endicott, NY for proof. A ground water plume of chemicals has traveled farther and faster than scientists imagined. #3 - Until this article, I believed the industry's statements that 'closed' system frakking was completely safe. My brother has 50 acres he wishes to lease to drilling companies. I was for it, as long as they didn't use up the ground water. Well, now I'm not for it in any shape or form. Not until far more research is completed in making the process safer.

The natural gas industry refuses to reveal what is in the mixture of chemicals used to drill for the fossil fuel
By Abrahm Lustgarten and ProPublica

In July a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wy. and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people.

The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.

Sublette County is the home of one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in 9 out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.

Over the last few years, however, a series of contamination incidents have raised questions about that EPA study and ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation’s increasingly precious drinking water supply.

An investigation by ProPublica, which visited Sublette County and six other contamination sites, found that water contamination in drilling areas around the country is far more prevalent than the EPA asserts. Our investigation also found that the 2004 EPA study was not as conclusive as it claimed to be. A close review shows that the body of the study contains damaging information that wasn’t mentioned in the conclusion. In fact, the study foreshadowed many of the problems now being reported across the country.

The contamination in Sublette County is significant because it is the first to be documented by a federal agency, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But more than 1,000 other cases of contamination have been documented by courts and state and local governments in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio and Pennsylvania....

... It is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of each contamination, or measure its spread across the environment accurately, because the precise nature and concentrations of the chemicals used by industry are considered trade secrets. Not even the EPA knows exactly what’s in the drilling fluids...

... Of the 300-odd compounds that private researchers and the Bureau of Land Management suspect are being used, 65 are listed as hazardous by the federal government....

... “Halliburton's proprietary fluids are the result of years of extensive research, development testing,” said Diana Gabriel, a company spokeswoman, in an email response....

... The debate over water arises at a critical time. In his last days in office President George W. Bush has pushed through lease sales and permits for new drilling on thousands of acres of federal land. ...

... In September the Bureau of Land Management approved plans for 4,400 new wells in Sublette County, despite the unresolved water issues. Tests there showed contamination in 88 of the 220 wells examined, and the plume stretched over 28 miles....

... “You have intervening rock in between the area that you are fracturing and the areas that provide water supplies. The notion that fractures are going to migrate up to those shallow formations -- there is just no evidence of that happening,” says Ken Wonstolen, an attorney representing the Colorado Oil and Gas Association who has worked with the petroleum industry for two decades. “I think fracturing has been given a clean bill of health.”...

... The 2004 EPA study is routinely used to dismiss complaints that hydraulic fracturing fluids might be responsible for the water problems in places like Pinedale. The study concluded that hydraulic fracturing posed “no threat” to underground drinking water because fracturing fluids aren’t necessarily hazardous, can’t travel far underground, and that there is "no unequivocal evidence" of a health risk....

... Buried deep within the 424-page report are statements explaining that fluids migrated unpredictably -- through different rock layers, and to greater distances than previously thought -- in as many as half the cases studied in the United States. The EPA identified some of the chemicals as biocides and lubricants that “can cause kidney, liver, heart, blood, and brain damage through prolonged or repeated exposure.” It found that as much as a third of injected fluids, benzene in particular, remains in the ground after drilling and is “likely to be transported by groundwater.”...

... But one of the report’s three main authors, Jeffrey Jollie, an EPA hydrogeologist, now cautions that the research has been misconstrued by industry. The study focused solely on the effect hydraulic fracturing has on drinking water in coal bed methane deposits, typically shallow formations where gas is embedded in coal. It didn’t consider the impact of above-ground drilling or of drilling in geologic formations deep underground, where many of the large new gas reserves are being developed today....

... Much of what is known about the makeup of drilling fluids comes from the personal investigations of Theo Colborn, an independent Colorado-based scientist who specializes in low-dose effects of chemicals on human health and has testified before Congress on drilling issues. Although she opposes drilling, her research is referenced by scientists at the EPA, at the United States Geological Survey, and at state-level regulatory agencies and is widely believed to be the most comprehensive information available...

... In Garfield County there were signs this was already happening. Animals that had produced offspring like clockwork each spring stopped delivering healthy calves, according to Liz Chandler, a veterinarian in Rifle, Co. A bull went sterile, and a herd of beef cows stopped going into heat, as did pigs. In the most striking case, sheep bred on an organic dairy farm had a rash of inexplicable still births ­ all in close proximity to drilling waste pits, where wastewater that includes fracturing fluids is misted into the air for evaporation....

... New Mexico has placed a one year moratorium on drilling around Santa Fe, after a survey found hundreds of cases of water contamination from unlined pits where fracking fluids and other drilling wastes are stored. “Every rule that we have improved . . . industry has taken us to court on,” said Joanna Prukop, New Mexico’s cabinet secretary for Energy Minerals and Natural Resources. “It’s industry that is fighting us on every front as we try to improve our government enforcement, protection, and compliance… We wear Kevlar these days.”...

...As a practical matter, drilling workers in Colorado and Wyoming said in interviews that the fluids are often kept in smaller quantities. That means at least some of the ingredients won’t be disclosed.

“They’ll never get it,” says Bruce Baizel, a Colorado attorney with the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, about the states’ quest for information. “Not unless they are willing to go through a lawsuit. When push comes to shove Halliburton is there with its attorneys.”...

Abraham Lustgarten is an investigative reporter for ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces journalism in the public interest.