More and more fracking.............

[CathyA]

Heard on the news last night that Ohio has alot of new fracking sites. Apparently, its very lucrative for farmers to give some of the rights to their land to the gas/oil companies. One area near Youngstown, Ohio in eastern Ohio had over 18 millionaire farmers because of their giving up the rights so fracking can be done. We're going to kill ourselves off, aren't we?
One farm family they interviewed said not much as changed since they were given a few million dollars to use their land........they still continue to have a farm stand, selling apple butter. I just wondered how soon it would be, that they realized they sold their souls to the devil. How soon will it be that we have no safe water to drink?
Anyone here live near that area or any other fracking site?

[pinkytoe]

Several large areas here in Texas. We drove through them on a recent trip and the small towns had become crazy busy with huge truck traffic and lots of commerce. Ironically, I received a call from a land man a month ago saying my brothers and I had inherited some Colorado mineral rights on 116 acres that they want to lease for fracking. I had no idea that I even had them so that in itself was a surprise. The offer includes an up front bonus and 17% royalty payments when/if they produce. My brothers jumped on it; I don't want anything to do with it. A conundrum...I believe that some types of development are able to "heal" once the activity stops but it seems like when one destroys the very bedrock the earth is made of and uses such massive amounts of water to do so - how can it have anything but a long-term detrimental effect. I guess our children will find out.

[Gregg]

I've had the opportunity to watch a fair bit of fracking in progress and visit multiple sites before and after (all but a couple were in Colorado the rest in Oklahoma). The impacts varied to a huge degree. Some were reclaimed to the point that, other than a well head sticking out of the ground, you could not tell any activity had taken place. Full disclosure, you could also see the road to those sites, but it was nothing more than two tracks to allow access, not something that was terribly disruptive. On the other end there were some sites that had pools of water mixed with the various chemicals that are used standing open next to the drill site. Typically more than 99% of what goes down a well is nothing more than water and sand, but it is obviously that <1% that is the issue.

My personal view is that hydraulic fracturing in and of itself isn't a bad thing, its actually fascinating technology. What I think we need to do is put some real teeth in the regulation to avoid surface and ground water contamination. There are options that do not involve toxic chemicals that will work in most cases, they just won't work as efficiently so the recovered gas and oil will cost more. Full site reclamation is also very expensive, at least in remote locations. It does, not surprisingly, boil down to money. The oil companies are simply using the most efficient, legal methods to recover as much raw material as possible. We all like the end result, cheap fuel. Tighter regulation needs to come at the State level, IMO. The conditions vary so widely from one region to the next that Federal oversight just doesn't make much sense.

Anyway, knowing what I do (just enough to be dangerous) I'd probably support a plan that allowed fracking with no chemicals, only natural fiber materials like cotton seed hulls or inert materials like silica sand or ceramic beads. There just isn’t any way I can see where the chemicals are a better alternative in the end. Site reclamation would have to be as close to complete as possible; restoring the topography that existed before the drilling took place, revegetating the entire site, etc. I'd support that with the full knowledge that less gas or oil would be recovered and that the entire cost of the change would be passed along to me. Unfortunately, I'm not sure a majority of American's feel the same way.

[ctg492]

We watched it to on WTOL last night.
We have fracking in our area going on by the OH border in Mi. Dah I was not really informed on fracking when two years ago we were approached on a lease. Everyone in the township was. It had been settled before we moved here that the township approved it. So sign or not it was going to happen. We at the time before understanding it, thought $585 a month/3 years for out little piece of subdivision land was a good deal. We then got about $350 to sign I think. We had heard two neighbors would not sign. Again the fracking was going to happen if they signed or not, the signing was for payment. I am not sure but somewhere around 6-10 wells have been sunk. The actual biggest payout for cash winners were the farmers that leased the land and the golf course leased for the wells. We have had two wells started and closed for our section, nothing. The area in the next neighborhood got on average $25/month a far cry from the $585 if they got the maxium from the wells.
What this has done is opened many peoples eyes to fracking. The effects that could happen for what. Alsa it will keep happening because not many will say no to money that comes from something they can not even see happening.
On a side note, 1/2 mile away is a small creek running out of the farm land where the well was being constructed. Some nut went and dumped a few 55 gallon drums of used oil in the pretty creek. The idea was to scare people into thinking this was the result of the fracking. It took minutes to get out to everyone that someone dumped and polluted the little creek. Seems like there were other ways to get the point across.