The Sentence

Fracking is safe. Fracking is safe. Fracking is safe.

by Isaiah Thompson

As Pennsylvanians become acquainted with the natural-gas drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" — a good start would be the documentary Gasland, which recently debuted on HBO — they will inevitably come across an odd specimen I call "The Sentence."

It goes like this: "Hydraulic fracturing has never caused groundwater contamination."

Anywhere there is fracking, The Sentence appears. Local drilling industry rep Kathryn Z. Klaber, as I mentioned a few weeks ago ["Spill, Baby, Spill," June 8], used The Sentence in a June 6 op-ed to the Lehigh Valley Express-Times — the same day that a Clearfield County well exploded and spewed at least 35,000 gallons of toxic fracking fluid. The apparent contradiction has a simple explanation: Klaber's claim is bunk. A more accurate sentence would be this: Fracking contaminates groundwater regularly. Our Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recorded 58 illegal "discharges" of toxic waste in 2009; halfway through 2010, there've been 52.

The industry evades these damning facts by sticking to such a narrow definition of "fracking," as to exclude whatever particular phase of the operation was responsible. And why not? It keeps the public — and the federal authorities — off its back.

Less understandable is why Pennsylvania DEP Secretary John Hanger would bust out The Sentence — or something like it — while testifying about the recent explosion to a state Senate committee: "The work that was being done when the blowout was experienced was not ... the fracking of the well. It's what the industry would call 'well-completion' work." Sounds like Klaber-talk to me: The public doesn't care how water gets polluted from drilling, but whether it does.

Even as Hanger rightly seeks new limits on the amount of certain fracking byproducts that can be disposed of in our waterways, those limits don't cover other contaminants — including carcinogen benzene, which a recent report by the Environmental Working Group found to be a sometimes-unlisted ingredient of fracking fluid. Some wells, the report says, are injected with "enough benzene to contaminate more than 100 billion gallons of drinking water."

Of course, that's only if that wastewater spills — which it does, often. Or if the well casing fails — which it has. Or, if the companies just dump that water right back into our streams — which they can, legally.