Fracking companies won't share data on pre&post drilling water quality with researchers - ProPublica

[Bozita]

Gas Drilling Companies Hold Data Needed by Researchers to Assess Risk to Water Quality
by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica, May 17, 2011, 1:14 p.m.


For years the natural gas drilling industry has decried the lack of data that could prove—or disprove—that drilling can cause drinking water contamination. Only baseline data, they said, could show without a doubt that water was clean before drilling began.

The absence of baseline data was one of the most serious criticisms leveled at a group of Duke researchers last week when they published the first peer-reviewed study linking drilling to methane contamination in water supplies.

That study—which found that methane concentrations in drinking water increased dramatically with proximity to gas wells—contained “no baseline information whatsoever,” wrote Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth, in a statement debunking the study.

Now it turns out that some of that data does exist. It just wasn’t available to the Duke researchers, or to the public.

Ever since high-profile water contamination cases were linked to drilling in Dimock, Pa. in late 2008, drilling companies themselves have been diligently collecting water samples from private wells before they drill, according to several industry consultants who have been working with the data. While Pennsylvania regulations now suggest pre-testing water wells within 1,000 feet of a planned gas well, companies including Chesapeake Energy, Shell and Atlas have been compiling samples from a much larger radius – up to 4,000 feet from every well. The result is one of the largest collections of pre-drilling water samples in the country.

“The industry is sitting on hundreds of thousands of pre and post drilling data sets,” said Robert Jackson, one of the Duke scientists who authored the study, published May 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jackson relied on 68 samples for his study. “I asked them for the data and they wouldn’t share it.”

more...

http://www.propublica.org/article/gas-drilling-companies-have-the-water-quality-methane-risk-data

[louis-t]

1. They are blanketing the airvaes with commercials

telling us how fracking (they never use the word itself) is "safe".

[kristopher]

2. They *are* going to get predrilling data.

The authors have been contacted by a significant number of homeowners who have their own water quality data from samples taken before drilling near their homes and the homeowners are making it available.

Also on May 13th Ira Flatow on NPR's Science Friday did an interview where he brought together one of the authors, Dr. Jackson (of SG1?) and an industry Rep named Conrad. Conrad was confronted with the industry's reluctance to share the data and was shamed into tentatively agreeing to provide it.

It was an excellent discussion. You can listen to the 17min interview or read the transcript here:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/13/136280456/study-links-methane-in-water-to-gas-extraction

[HelenWheels]

3. Chemicals used?

Time magazine claims the frackers refuse to release what type of chemicals they are using. This is a red flag as far as I'm concerned.

[jtrockville]

4. Why are we relying on frackers for test results?

[txlibdem]

8. Because the removal of competent government oversight is nearly complete

Then we'll be relying on for-profit corporations to tell us that everything they do is "perfectly safe."

[MountainLaurel]

5. Of course they won't

Then people might find out just how dangerously polluted the water is.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. where is our Erin Breckenridge?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

7. ..wrong forum...sorry