Science Focus
original post »Public arguments about fracking (at least among those who have heard of the natural gas production technique) have become contentious—a situation not helped by the technical and complicated topic. Lots of information and claims fly around, but there's little in the way of an established framework to help make sense of them.
Claims that fracking has contaminated water can be difficult to resolve, and some turn out to be unrelated to fracking. Geology differs from place to place in important ways that have to be taken into consideration when analyzing water. Regulations governing fracking vary from state to state, too. And the practice has been scrutinized at a level we haven’t subjected conventional oil and gas production to, meaning we might be discovering problems that are common to other techniques.
The illusion of simplicity
Still, we occasionally get a relatively simple case, even if its broader implications are minimal. In the summer of 2010, three nearby homes in northeast Pennsylvania started having disturbing problems with their water wells. Methane was seeping up—in one case accumulating to levels that necessitated evacuating a home due to the explosion risk—and the wells were muddy and foaming. (A nearby river even began bubbling a few months later.)
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