This process is contaminating water all over the state. The "cleaned" waste water is being dumped into our waterways (Monongahela River, Susquehanna River, and others). Drill "cuttings" (the slurry produced when the hole is drilled), that can be highly radioactive, are being hauled to municipal landfills in Cumberland County.
From Yahoo! News:
According to state records treated drilling wastewater was discharged through the town sewage plant into the Neshaminy Creek. The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep. Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush. There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
Industry is drilling for gas more than a mile down and a mile horizontally because all the "conventional" sources of gas are tapped out... We are running out of cheap, easy-to-get fossil fuels. We MUST learn to live without fossil fuels if we want to live in a world free from pollution, wars, and a host of other issues.
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