Tap Water Bursting into Flames?

“Tap water set on fire… 50-foot-high flare expected to continue burning for three or four more days… Twenty-eight cattle quarantined… Drinking water turned brown.”

These are just a few of the news items hitting headlines in the last month, from Pennsylvania to Texas, and they’re all related to an increasingly-used destructive practice called hydraulic fracturing.

We’ve seen scores of documented cases of drinking water contamination near natural gas drilling sites, likely from the toxic mixture they inject into the ground for hydraulic fracturing. Due to a legislative loophole, we can’t even hold these energy companies accountable under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and they don’t have to disclose the 596 chemicals that may be contaminating our water. Fortunately, there is a bill in congress that could close the loophole and require companies to disclose the chemicals they are using.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a drilling technique used to extract natural gas from shales and tight rocks by shooting millions of gallons of a mixture of water, chemicals and sand into the ground. As the rock cracks and creates fissures, natural gas flows more freely out of the well. Unfortunately, some of the toxic fluids remain underground after extraction and can seep into groundwater. Contamination of groundwater can affect the quality of drinking water even hundreds of miles away.

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Thanks for taking action,

Meredith Begin, Education & Outreach Organizer
Food & Water Watch