Clean water underground? Halliburton says: 'Fugetaboutit!'

"Only after the last tree has been cut down... Only after the last river has been poisoned… Only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." - Cree Indian Prophecy

(LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.) - If you haven’t heard about “fracking,” the use of solvents, exotic chemicals and water injected by extreme high pressure boring tips to literally fracture deep subterranean strata releasing energy resources, then sit up and pay attention America: If it isn’t already in your neighborhood or that of a relative or family friend, believe me, it will be coming soon. If you’re lucky, been safely ensconced under a really dense rock that Halliburton and their cronies haven’t quite reached because the permits haven’t been acquired, it’s just a matter of when, not if.

The technique of fracking (sometimes referred to as “hydro-fracing”) has been around for decades, basically consisting of enhancing, amplifying and expediting boring logistics for oil, natural gas and coal exploration. Originally they drilled vertically but then those wild and crazy, voracious gambling guys down in Houston (Halliburton) came up with horizontal drilling patents. They don’t just drill a mile down, baby, they drill for miles in every which way but loose. Some geologists and seismic experts theorize minor earthquake events and subsidence have already been provoked, is this a wonderful emerging management practice or what? [1]

Never underestimate the ability of economics to trump environmental impacts and distract legitimate long range concerns.

Yes, it wipes out our water supplies but it creates jobs and stimulates economic recovery putting America back to work------illogically working to destroy our long term sustainable resources and population, get it?

If you don't see the contradiction, you must be Sarah Palin and probably see a hazardous waste landfill from your porch as fiscal incentive or neocon nirvana, amber waves of stain that glow at night from the methane torches.

Soaring consumer energy costs with depleting domestic availability equals insidious strategies masked as feel good procurement. And they spin it as doing us a patriotic service. Whenever you hear the words “Balanced approach to America's assured future energy procurement,” be fearful and know that you’re getting screwed by lip-licking, ass-smacking good old boys from Texas who are gambling with a finite, life-sustaining natural resources: Your water and air. Although both belong in common to all under land trust doctrines laid down centuries ago by real thinkers, don't tell these get rich quick elitists and village morons who can look you in the eyes and lie like sociopaths. They're on their iPhones checking the commodities market stock figures and can't be bothered by what BP execs called "small people."

From Pennsylvania to Wyoming, California, Montana, Colorado to Texas, even upstate New York where millions draft their drinking water replenishments, virtually all regions of this country are emerging as victims or eventually will become candidates. Almost nowhere is it safe any longer as these companies tenacious minions of darkness literally perforate and honeycomb our nation, burrowing like termites below the surface, until recently sub rosa, out of the public’s sight and held litigiously harmless from repercussions. Assisted by our own traitorous phony protection agencies, they have undermined (pun intended) our guaranteed right to fresh, non-hazardous air and water. Fluid entropy.

Halliburton and other energy resource firms were given exemptions from the prescriptions of the Safe Drinking Water Act back in 2005. Their energy bill goal was to morph the bastard child from Hell of VP Dick Cheney and his now infamously stealthy “Energy Taskforce” into their pet lapdog: Fracking. Or should we call it “task farce?”

Now demeaned by many as “The Halliburton Loophole," Cheney personally assured exemption for hydraulic fracturing in the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

Insult to injury, these corporate thieves of healthy drinking water supplies are also exempt from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, even affecting EPA oversight controls for runoff and the Superfund Act. There is no liability for these companies infused contaminants that "leak off," to clean up their toxic sludge and runoff from drilling sites, no sanctions/fines for destroying historical drainage patterns or creating toxic vapors. With every breath you take, noxious gases. With every sip you take, petrochemical cocktails. They've been able to light their tapwater as it comes out in Colorado, obviating a need for a home security flashlight. Fill up your sink, set a match and barbecue indoors! Don't forget you hazmat gear.

These energy seekers are allowed to use additives as fracturing fluids which contain toxic mixtures of diesel fuel, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, carbon disulfide, naphthalene, pyridines and xylene---Basically solvents and petroleum distillates, aromatic hydrocarbons and reagents.

Through their combined use of surfactants and solvents they've chemically mimed or duplicated the molecular structure of the dreaded oil dispersants now being vilified by biologists in the Gulf spill cleanup efforts. Take that, Cuyahoga River, burn on from the stream down to the lake for all we care.

Halliburton and their brethren, in an accord with USEPA in 2003, agreed to self-imposed limits for the use of diesel fuel. Now EPA says that they appear to have exceeded that limit, once again they self-monitor, leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse----No need to wonder what else we’re NOT being told, an excellent Sundance Film Festival entry, GASLAND by Director Josh Fox, can help you figure that one out[2].

There are several insightful slideshows and short videos by other news agencies available at You Tube: [3] [4] [5]

Mind-boggling, but they also have proprietary rights, they are not required to divulge their protected patents and formulas, the actual toxic constituents in the fluids they disperse out of their wellbore nozzles into our subterranean systems. Hey, it’s like Christmas every waking minute all around the nation, surprise me Halliburton, what's next?

Mainstream publications began waking up and addressing the subject earlier this year, and if Americans thought that their surface water impairments are becoming alarming, this exploration technique could be the final nail in the water quality coffin. Major aquifers in America either are, or are becoming, contaminated by the detritus of the volatile, carcinogenic media used for this type of wellboring-----Not to mention the gases released to the surface as a direct result of these aggressive processes. Safe removal of hydrocarbons for processing is a lie. There's no such thing as a free lunch or clean coal.

Since the Gulf oil fiasco began, not only BP but other energy exploration, production and refinement corporations have begun saturating our TV screens and internet search engines with self-aggrandizing propaganda. They tell us, as if we’re retards (sorry, “IQ challenged”) that they are making every attempt to provide safe, dependable and hopefully inexpensive energy to meet our demands. It’s become apparent that what they’ve really saturated is our public ground water systems, filled our air with filthy junk, and the public’s supply wells with pure polluted BS.

As for that old "Life is about trade-offs and compromises" crap, selling out the bastion, the beacon of world freedom for 30 pieces of platinum (betrayal is more expensive these days, ya know), compromising the health of an entire democracy for profit doesn't sound very Christian to me---I don't care how many times Dickhead Cheney goes to church.

The actual subterranean flow paths, the historically undisturbed corridors and charged aquifers that provide approximately 35% of our finite drinking water (potable) are not clearly defined, understood or entirely mapped presently, and the sub-surface migrational potential changes due to porosity variations make for sketchy scientific analyses. Consolidated formations (rock) lay next to and interwoven with unconsolidated/non-compacted sediment, soil and sand. Thus we only have vague ideas or theories about how far, how fast and to what extent fracking will irrevocably alter and affect our watery future. Like their partner BP, Halliburton is experimenting at our expense.

Most of this fracking is taking place on unregulated public land leased cheaply by our own government to energy consortiums: Now who said irony died on 9/11? Many of the potentially large resource reservoirs under our feet are not conducive to typical well boring strategies, and so our benevolent friends from the former Bush Administration will be giving us one very long, protracted legacy: An endless protracted nightmare of guaranteed massive contamination----Lucky Cheney will probably kick pretty soon, he's probably sorry about leaving after the First Act curtain in this Wagnerian/Shakespearian tragedy.

With the barriers between aquifers and other subterranean reservoirs or banks disrupted and redirected, combined with contamination of surface waters that infiltrate downgradient, there is no scientific database or existent modeling that can predict the outcome of these enormously widespread degrading modifications.

About 35% of our national population receive their drinking water from one of the 140,000 public water systems that use groundwater as their primary source[6].

As noted in the Summer 2010 edition of the Trout Unlimited magazine TROUT, TU members are outraged by what's documented about Pennsylvania in GASLAND and are being asked to support the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in its quest to completely ban natural gas wells and further exploration in that state’s floodplains. Apparently this year’s flooding has resulted in “daylighting,” that is introduced the chemicals used for hydro-fracturing into surface drainage through leaching and seepage, creating runoff wastewater that becomes deadly toxic soup for immersed aquatics or foraging land animals---Not to mention health hazards for human recreational uses.

In Pennsylvania, oil and gas regulations don’t allow well pads within 100 feet of tributaries, a pitifully short distance at that, but osmosis and capillary action transports or migrates these polluted brews beyond legal restricted distances. Septic tanks usually require an 800-1200 foot setback, so this mystifies me personally. It is unclear what benefit if any there’d be in capping and abandoning these well sites anyway-----Contaminates like VOCs linger long long after cheaply flaccid remedial efforts. Plus they know that under the 2005 exemption they’re off the hook for major fiscal penalties. This is another example of why eco-protectionistas were frustrated by the Bush era environmental law rollbacks and sleepwalking.

A faucet lights up from the amount of natural gas in the Colorado water supply, in a scene from "GASLAND" (HBO)

This single Safe Drinking Water Act exemption was a Trojan Horse, an in advance "Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card, Just Pass Go" which constituted zero future accountability, zero future responsibility, zero legal exposure. It was intended to be a safe harbor or haven, one for the sheltered criminals who'll never be prosecuted as they could have been under the Clean Water Act---No one forced or pre-disposed to cleanup these enormous regions, only the American taxpayer to pay these deadbeat debtors bills. Ad nauseam.

Non-potable, so-called irrigation or recycled water is not being spared either. Due to the transference, the out-of-control mixing of naturally occurring carcinogens with the chemicals used for fracking, treatment plants for potable and reclaimed are not able to remove these substances even if diverted. Once you add in the pharmaceuticals and other inorganic nasty things waste treatment plants aren't designed to capture, remove or reduce, that are becoming dominant in recycled water, we're just plain old "fracked, " now aren't we?

Aren’t you glad to know that your crops thus the produce at your market is being soaked in these evil couplings before harvesting, then appears on your family's table for consumption, laced with a gamut of substances (supplements!) you never asked for? [7] [8]

So when you watch those ridiculous energy corporation infomercials on TV, telling you what a great job they’re doing to make us safe from foreign addictions, maybe you’ll laugh a little. Then maybe a tear of sadness and remorse will trickle down. America the Beautiful, polluted, mission accomplished, from sea-to-shining-sea.

References:

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing

[1a] epa.gov/ogwdw000/uic/wells_hydrofrac.html

[2] blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/06/22/gasland-director-josh-fox-on-his-controversial-documentary/

[3] youtube.com/watch?v=iYAXnQame-U