Fracking could create new Dust Bowl

4:50 PM, Oct. 1, 2012  |  Comments
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In his book, "The Worst Hard Time," author Tim Egan relates the horrendous impact of the farming practice that, in the 1930s, destroys the life of the region farmed. The particular region is the Midwest from the Dakotas to northern Texas, with the hardest hit areas being southern Colorado, Kansas, western Oklahoma and northern Texas. But make no mistake, the "Dusters" generated from this practice reached as far as New York and Washington, D.C. Had legislators not seen with their own eyes and been compelled by the experience to try and do something about it, these areas today very well could have continued to be the Sahara of this country.

It wasn't the farmers' fault. After the Comanche and other native cultures were kicked off the land in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, settlers were given the "opportunity" to homestead 160 acres of their "own" land. They had no idea ripping up millions of acres, 160 at a time - and with little choice, leaving them bare when the markets were no longer lucrative - would have the effect it did. For years the crops grown provided a good living and prosperity. But when the market for wheat collapsed and the droughts that were part of a natural cycle occurred, the winds that always blow in the region blew the topsoil completely away. The suffering from the dust is unimaginable, though Egan does a good job of describing it.

The native grasslands that for thousands of years had held the soil down through flood and drought while nourishing the millions of buffalo supporting the native cultures were plowed under and destroyed in fewer than 50 years.

Bad practice!

Maybe the farming techniques of fewer than 100 years ago and the technique of hydraulic fracturing today are similar only insofar as bad practices are concerned.

Still, it is a real comparison. Hydraulic fracturing does not bode well for the ecology of the land of which we humans are all a part.

The first initial act of "fracking" is to secure the water necessary to perform the operation. Per site, millions of gallons of good, potable water are mixed with toxic chemicals. This toxic soup is then injected into the ground. The water is the vehicle carrying the chemicals, which in combination fracture the underground rock, releasing the gas trapped therein. Twenty percent of that poison liquid is retrieved to the surface, where it is held in toxic holding ponds. What's to be done with it, I don't know. Eighty percent of it remains in the ground. Where does it go? There is ample evidence that shows these chemicals have tainted and ruined the water wells of many rural landowners.

Hydraulic fracturing is becoming rampant, as was the rush to plow up the lands a hundred years ago. But "fracking" is everywhere in the country. Thousands of frack sites are in operation and thousands more proposed. This is a man-made underground disaster.

Water, elemental to life itself, is threatened and destroyed both at the beginning and end of these operations. The industry denies responsibility for well contamination. I suppose that is to be expected from an industry that contaminates water as a crucial part of its procedure.

Bad practice!

Joe Kissell lives in Fort Collins.