Write letters and make phone calls to put a halt to natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale until strict regulations are put in place to protect drinking water.

Natural gas wastewater ponds hold millions of gallons of highly contaminated water. Photo courtesy of PA Forest Coalition.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—With no stringent regulations in place and a Bush-era exemption to the Safe Drinking Water Act, natural gas drilling companies are flocking to areas containing Marcellus Shale, a deep geological formation found in parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia, where natural gas occurs naturally within the rock. The Marcellus Shale formation can be found in 63 percent of Pennsylvania, and also underlies a significant portion of New York.

Until recently, drilling a mile-plus deep shaft into the earth and blasting through this type of shale to release natural gas was inefficient and unprofitable. But thanks to the coupling of two types of technology—horizontal drilling and Halliburton-developed hydraulic fracturing—now, it's just inefficient. With huge gas-drilling companies standing to make a profit using the new combo method, which includes the use of carcinogenic chemicals and millions of gallons of water, the clean drinking-water supplies of millions are at serious risk. And taxpayers could be on the hook to clean up the mess years down the line unless strict regulations are put in place soon.

"Clean water is not limitless; it needs to be protected," says Louis Kaplan, PhD, senior research scientist and principal investigator of biogeochemistry at Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, PA. "Anytime that we consider something like mining for coal or drilling for gas, all of those processes need to be viewed through a lens of environmental protection and sustainability." Right now, that is not the case. And while there's a drilling moratorium in New York as an environmental impact statement is being finalized, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is handing out natural gas drilling permits like Halloween candy, issuing more than 3,500 so far this year alone.

THE DETAILS: This type of natural gas drilling has been going on for some time in places like Texas and Wyoming. But what makes drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region even more appealing to investors and energy companies is its location, explains Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania state director of Clean Water Action. There's a big demand for natural gas on the East Coast, where there's already an existing pipeline to run the fuel and up and down the coast.

Geologists have known for a long time that the Marcellus Shale contained a lot of natural gas. But until recently, it wasn't cost-effective to go after it. The development of horizontal drilling, where a well bore is directed about a mile deep, and then at least a mile horizontally, has made it more economical to tap into more natural gas stored in the rolling blankets of deep shale. But drilling alone isn't enough to release the natural gas. Enter hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, in which a proprietary blend of chemicals, including ones listed as carcinogensCapable of causing cancer. A suspected carcinogen is a substance that may cause cancer in humans or animals but for which the evidence is not conclusive., are mixed with sand and water and blasted into the rock formation, fracturing it to release the natural gas.

You know the saying, "What goes up must come down?" Well in fracking, some of what goes down comes back up, and that's known as flowback. Some of the hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals used in the frack fluid include formaldehydeFormaldehyde is a highly reactive environmental human carcinogen. The general population may be exposed to formaldehyde through its use in construction materials, wood products, textiles, home furnishings, paper, cosmetics, cigarette smoke, and pharmaceuticals. Automobile exhaust is a major source of formaldehyde in ambient air. In addition, formaldehyde can be absorbed through the skin from cosmetics or contact with other consumer products containing formaldehyde., acids, and pesticides. This toxic stew is mixed with the about 4 million gallons of clean water required for the average fracking process. Some of this returns to the surface in the flowback, but on the way back up, the now-contaminated water sometimes picks up another harmful hitchhiker—normally occurring radioactive materials, or NORMS, found deep in the earth. Flowback water is stored in plastic-lined open pits at the drilling site, and eventually trucked away to wastewater-treatment facilities, which aren't adequately equipped to remove all of the toxins. The still-contaminated water, potentially laced with heavy metals like arsenic, chlorides, and toluene, and radioactive material, is then released back into streams and rivers.

In essence, some of the 2 percent of drinkable water on the planet is being traded in for a polluting gas.

WHAT IT MEANS: The natural gas industry has done a very good job of greenwashing the fuel, making people think that it's clean compared to other fossil-fuel energy sources like coal or oil. But when you consider it from a cradle-to-grave perspective—the entire process of extracting, transporting, storing, and burning, along with the depletion of clean drinking water and the creation of hazardous wastewater—hydrofracked natural gas looks less than clean.

Here are some other problems associated with the fracking process for natural gas:

•  Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) last week fined Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation $150,000 after methane gas leaked from a drilling operation site and seeped into nearby residential wells in Dimock Township, PA. An explosion in one of the wells blew off the homeowner's cement well cap. "This is not that unusual a problem, unfortunately," says Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a nonprofit clean-water watchdog group based in Pennsylvania. "The problem of having methane migrate and get into groundwater is very serious. It's a dangerous gas. You're not supposed to drink water, shower, or wash clothing using water with methane in it."