Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra
Tammy's views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy's neighbors, Earl Fisher, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, Rita Bernhard, her grand kids, Tony Hyde, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia's dog, or Claudia Eagle's Cats. This Tammy's Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she won't take crap off of anyone.

Contaminated drinking water, caused by fracking, some water will catch on fire and burn.


Fracking is a method used for natural gas extraction in deep natural gas wells. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are injected, into the well under high pressure. The pressure fractures the shale and opens fissures that enable natural gas to flow more easily out of the well. These well are 8,000 feet deep. They go through aquifers of fresh drinking water; these aquifers are usually 1,000 feet deep.
The problem with the fracking process is that it requires concrete well casings.  As they drill, often times the cement is inferior or faulty and natural gas and chemicals are leaked into the aquifer of fresh drinking water. The amount of water used to frack a well is from 1-8 million gallons and remember a well can be fracked up to 18 times.

The amount of chemicals that are used in the fracking process is huge, 80-300 tons of chemicals for each frack. Gas companies do not have to identify the chemicals that they use. But scientists have learned and identified the chemicals that are used; they are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.

In the process the gas comes up in the pressured water that was pumped into the well, the gas has to be separated from the wastewater on the surface. Only about 30-50% of the water is recovered from the well. This wastewater can be highly toxic because of the (VOC's). The water should be collected and trucked to a treatment facility. Unfortunately not all of the toxic water is collected to be treated but is left to seep back into the ground water, which will eventually find its way into water ways and water systems. Because only 30-50% of the toxic water is recovered the amount of contamination is huge and will spread quickly into water veins, making potable water un- drinkable.
Horizontal fracking is a way to get into gas deposits that were inaccessible by common drilling. And uses a combination of 596 different chemicals many of them privately owned and patented and uses millions of gallons of water per each fracking. This water then becomes contaminated, and because of the loopholes in the Bush/Cheney Energy Bill, which was enacted in 2005, it exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It also allowed companies from revealing the chemicals used during the fracking process.
The Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill removed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from any authority for enforcement of current laws.

Fracking has cause earthquakes; so far the size of the quakes has been 3 on the Richter scale. But that could increase as huge wells are fracked and the amount of disturbance each well does to the ground beneath.

The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) is a House bill intended to revoke the Halliburton Loophole and to require the natural gas industry to divulge the chemicals they use.