March 12 was World Water Day, both a recognition of the importance of water in our lives and an invitation to wrestle with the global water crisis.
Worldwide, we are experiencing faster spring snow melts, glacier loss and reduced precipitation over extended periods of time, causing drought and water scarcity. As the climate continues to warm, drought and resulting water scarcity will become more common.
In the light of water scarcity and global concerns, it is essential to take a look at the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Fracking is a technique that involves blasting a mixture of water, chemicals and sand into a well to break apart the rock formations and release previously inaccessible oil and natural gas deposits. Most fracking today is done in conjunction with horizontal drilling.
Fracking uses large amounts of fresh water — in B.C., the average frack uses between five million and 100 million litres of water and can easily require more than 2,000 truck trips to deliver water, which becomes contaminated after the fracking process and must be disposed of somehow, either in tailing ponds or by being injected deep underground and possibly affecting groundwater.
Translated, the average fracking job uses roughly four million gallons of water per well – or about as much water as New York City uses every six minutes and about 1.3 per cent of the water used by the country’s car washes every day.
Fracking releases methane, 86 times worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2, the other strong reason why new fracking should be banned and the “natural gas” industry wound down now.
Let’s end fracking in B.C. For more information, contact the WildernessCommittee.org or write your local MLA on this subject.
Sandra Hartline
Council of Canadians, West Kootenay Chapter
Nelson