The president of the United States and the governor of Colorado agree that hydraulic fracking can be a good thing.
The primary virtue of fracking using pressurized fluids to fracture rock layers to free oil and gas resources from underground deposits is that it works. In that sense, especially given the U.S. appetite for fossil fuels, fracking is a very good thing indeed. Further, promoting energy development, which creates well-paying jobs, is a popular political position to take.
Barack Obama and John Hickenlooper also agree that fracking is safe. That may be generally true, although documentation exists to show that it is not universally so. Late last year, the Environmental Protection Agency released a study showing that compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing, had been identified in a Wyoming aquifer.
Thus crucial values come into conflict. Americans want cheap energy, but they also need clean groundwater for agriculture and human consumption.
Hickenlooper and Obama both support the disclosure of the chemical composition of fracking fluids, a move that would enable fracking to be more conclusively blamed or exonerated when suspicious groundwater pollution appears. Thats a positive mood, and it brings more science to bear on an emotional debate in which those who express concerns about water quality are accused of being anti-energy and anti-job.
The next step is to enable state and federal regulators to balance the complaints of individual well owners and water consumers with the goals of the energy industry. As development of the Gothic shale resource in this region moves forward, it is vitally important water concerns not be shouted down as environmentalist hysteria.
Aquifers can be very large and very inaccessible; therefore, they can be impossible to clean once they are contaminated. Fracking can be done safely and in an environmentally responsible manner, the president said.
Fine then there will be no problem addressing the concerns of water advocates. Require that. Deal openly and honestly with the data that show contamination has already taken place.
