It’s a Fracking Shame: Chessie Attacked By Polluted Rivers
Fracking Map - The Susquehanna Watershed - Courtesy of American Rivers
Unhappily that invading, polluted river, the Susquehanna, is the largest member of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The river is both a friend, and in this case an uninvited guest at the Chesapeake estuary. The American Rivers environmental organization reports that
The Susquehanna River and its tributaries flow over the Marcellus Shale region, a rock formation underlying much of New York and Pennsylvania, containing reserves of natural gas. The rush to develop natural gas has come without consideration of the impacts to clean water, rivers, and the health of these communities.
Note the NY and PA watershed area (Susquehanna Watershed)
The image on the left is a map of the entire Chesapeake Bay Watershed, and there you can see the powerful influence the Susquehanna Watershed has on the bay. Despite the TMDL/WIP program that is being jointly managed and implemented by both the Environmental Protection Agency and the member states of the watershed, the influx of fracking from the Susquehanna can directly impede the success of those efforts.
Fracking? What’s Fracking?
Fracking is a slang word for hydraulic fracturing and American Rivers defines it with respect to Chessie’s watershed,
“.. as … the hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” process to extract natural gas, massive amounts of water are withdrawn from rivers and streams. The water is then mixed with sand and toxic chemicals and pumped underground to fracture the shale under extreme pressure. A portion of that highly toxic, highly saline, and potentially radioactive waste water will return to the surface, and requires specialized treatment, but at this time, only a limited number of waste water treatment facilities have the capacity to handle it.”
So at the moment this heavily polluted water can end up re-entering the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and drastically slow down its restoration.
What Is Being Done or What Can Be Done?
There is a strong battle between industrial advocates and environmental protection organizations. Corporations see the natural gas recovered as a way to keep their energy costs under control and to also reduce their dependence on foreign resources. At the same time, political advocates shout out about the many job opportunities that these operations will provide in our present climate of extreme unemployment. Poverty and joblessness create a special deafness to the warnings being made by most environmental organizations, including American Rivers. So yes, jobs are being created and workers hired, but the potential health effects are yet to be clarified and addressed.
Source: ProgressOhio on flickr.com
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the environmental organization most concerned with Chessie’s restoration, has demanded a Federal analysis of the fracking process with respect to its potential threat to water quality and human health within the entire watershed. Additionally the foundation has produced a report that points out the major threats that fracking of the Marcellus Shale region poses for Chessie. A key point of the report states,”natural gas holds tremendous energy and economic promise. It also could create the next devastating environmental legacy if not handled the right way.”
Most importantly we must realize that when we talk about watershed pollution and damages we are talking about more than just lovely Chessie. We are talking about all that land that lies beside and around each contributing creek, stream, and river that flow into the Chesapeake Bay. All watersheds enrich and sustain life of all kinds. It follows that damaged and polluted watersheds in each of the member states spread that damage across all life that depends upon them. By the way, that includes we humans.
Explorations of our galaxy and beyond are turning up many, many candidates as possible Twin Earths. In all cases the most critical criterion is WATER. Abundant, clean, life supporting and enriching water is an absolute necessity for life to begin and to exist. Knowing this, how can any of us turn our backs on our own water resources as we may be doing with fracking? So it is a personal involvement, an environmental agency involvement, and a political and corporate obligation to take the steps necessary to either make hydraulic fracturing totally safe, or STOP for the sake of you, I, and above all, Sweet Chessie. Make you watermark now. Speak up. Speak out. Be heard.
SUGGESTED REFERENCES:
America’s Most Endangered Rivers, American Rivers
Water Quality Issues: Natural Gas Drilling and Marcellus Shale, Chesapeake Bay Foundation
EPA: Fracking May Cause Ground Water Pollution, EPA USA Today
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