When I was enrolled in university, my political science courses discussed future conflict and migrations resulting from water scarcity. I did not think that I would see evidence of this so soon after graduation. A government geological study notes that there is a major cone of depression in the Memphis area as a result of long-term pumping of water at municipal and industrial well fields. This problem is in addition to the $615,000,000 lawsuit from Mississippi against Tennessee challenging the intense pumping of aquifer water in Memphis. This pumping has allegedly caused a depression in the Mississippi water table and altered the direction that water moves underground. This issue of our water aquifer is not a fad of environmentalism, nor is it a fund-raising platform for the Sierra Club. This is the kind of issue that will come to define our era, and Memphians are at the forefront of it in a very real way. With climate change altering rain patterns and, ultimately, aquifer recharge rates, it seems foolish to blindly obligate millions of gallons of this precious resource to the Tennessee Valley Authority for its proposed use in the cooling of their new natural gas plant here. A 2015 study cited that just 6 percent of groundwater is replenished within a “human lifetime” of 50 years. The water we drink from the Memphis Sand Aquifer is 2,000 years old. Let that sink in. While water may be a renewable resource, it is finite in quantity and vulnerable to contamination. Brian Waldron, a researcher at the Ground Water Institute, has warned, “We don’t really know the…

Here’s an overview of some of the key concerns: Groundwater contamination: One big concern is whether the chemicals used in fracking or the natural gas itself could contaminate people’s drinking water.
In recent years, fracking wells have blown out in states like North Dakota.
In another incident, thousands of gallons of fracking fluid leaked out of a storage tank in Dimock, Pennsylvania.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently conducting a big study into this type of contamination and how to prevent it.
A second question is whether chemicals or natural gas could somehow migrate from the fracked shale layer thousands of feet up into the groundwater — even if the wells are perfectly constructed.
Environmental Protection Agency Wastewater pollution: A separate issue is what happens with all that water after it has been used to crack open shale and is pumped back up to the surface.
But when there aren’t enough injection wells available, the water is either stored in tanks and holding ponds or sent off to treatment plants.
That raises the risk of either accidental spills or improper treatment.
Air pollution: Once an area of shale has been fracked, natural gas begins flowing up out of the well.
In 2012, the EPA began requiring oil and gas companies to limit these emissions and capture the escaped gas.

Water Butts Heads With Fracking, Oil & Gas Industry In Oklahoma … Or Not.
The fracking boom has combined with conventional oil and gas drilling to raise a sea of troubles against the doorstep of Oklahoma.
So far, how is the industry responding to the new report?
The Oklahoma Fracking Problem Many (many) risks and hazards are associated with the fracking boom, and earthquakes are one of them.
That wastewater can come from conventional drilling as well as fracking, so to be clear, induced seismicity from wastewater injection is not specific to fracking.
It’s a general wastewater disposal problem for the oil and gas industry, whether the drilling operation involves fracking or not.
In 2014 Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin organized the Coordinating Council on Seismic Activity to study the issue.
Here’s the rundown from Fallin’s office: The act calls for the use of voluntary conservation, water infrastructure improvements and development of marginal water supplies, like produced water, that are currently underutilized.
The Oil & Gas Industry Responds … Not (So Far) CleanTechnica will return to this topic with more details whenever they get around to fixing the link to the new report.
The oil and gas industry also appears to be waiting for that link to go live again.

Duke study finds no water well contamination from fracking.
Opponents of natural gas drilling have consistently spread fear by alleging that hydraulic fracturing contaminates groundwater and releases methane, saline and arsenic into water wells.
(Remember the “documentary” Gasland?)
Duke geochemistry and water quality professor Avner Vengosh and his team examined 112 drinking wells over a three year period in the heavily-drilled area of northwestern West Virginia.
The researchers were able to sample 20 water wells before drilling began to establish a baseline for comparison.
Vengosh reached this unambiguous conclusion: “We did not find any evidence of groundwater contamination from shale gas development.” Yes, the researchers did find varying levels of methane and arsenic, but through the use of special geochemical “tracers,” they determined the substances were naturally occurring or a result of old wells or coal mines from years ago.
Their presence in aquifers “was found to be a widespread phenomenon and likely a result of natural migration of deep brine and natural gas-rich fluids combined with shallow water rock interactions.” In some cases, arsenic concentrations exceeding national drinking water standards were found in water wells before shale gas development.
However, the peer-reviewed study does not let the gas drilling industry off the hook.
The researchers concluded that accidental spills of fracking wastewater at drilling and disposal sites may pose a threat to surface water.
The Agency took so much heat from environmentalists that it struck that that conclusion from its final report.

Rain and snow has returned to California, ending the record-setting drought with record-setting precipitation.
The drought led to forest fires, dead orchards, and brown lawns.
It also took a big bite out of ratepayers’ wallets and increased global warming emissions, due to the loss of low-cost, zero-emission hydropower.
In a study released April 26 by Peter Gleick—a noted water expert at the Pacific Institute in Oakland—researchers found that lower hydropower production cost California ratepayers almost $2.5 billion in higher power prices, and may have raised power sector carbon dioxide emissions 10%, due to increased output from gas-fired generators.
Gleick’s team used data through September 2016 to calculate the figures.
California has 14 GW of hydro capacity, with little growth in recent decades due to environmental, economic, and political constraints.
Hydro output dropped by two-thirds between 2011 and 2016, losing a total of 65,600 GWh of low-cost, zero-emission electricity over the five-year drought.
According to Gleick’s report, the drop in hydroelectricity output was replaced by burning more natural gas, more imports from out-of-state sources, and growing levels of other renewable generation, especially wind and solar.
Retail power demand was almost completely flat through the drought, with a 3% dip in 2016.
To calculate the higher cost, Gleick first found the marginal cost of replacement power during the drought, which averaged $35/MWh.

Residents Want to Keep Natural Gas Compressor Out of Somerset County.
Spokesman for operator says people will hardly notice it’s there, but locals fear noise and pollution at the very least Residents of Franklin Township, South Brunswick, and neighboring communities in Somerset County are rushing to register their objections to a proposed natural gas compressor station with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before a looming Thursday deadline.
Worried residents say the proposed 52-acre site of the station is in the middle of a residential community and would produce loud noise, air and water pollution and, perhaps, worse.
The station would act like an electrical transformer, pushing natural gas north to 1.8 million customers in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island.
It would run “on natural gas, methane and it produces all kinds of VOCs — volatile organic compounds — and other debris and particulate matter that could also cause all kinds of health problems for lungs and cancer,” said Franklin Township resident Ed Potosnak, who is also executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.
The Oklahoma-based Williams Companies, the station operator, says it would take up about six acres, with most of the rest of the 52-acre site left as a buffer.
Williams Companies spokesman Chris Stockton said people are “really not going to even know it’s there.” South Brunswick Councilman Joe Camarota said “… the most egregious issue, at least from my laymen’s perspective, is that this is an active mining drilling site.
It’s on a quarry, trap rock quarry.
They’re still actively mining and blasting.”

It increased electricity bills statewide by $2.45 billion and boosted levels of smog and greenhouse gases, according to a new study released Wednesday.
“The drought has cost us in ways we didn’t necessarily anticipate or think about.
From 1983 to 2013, an average of 18 percent of California’s in-state electricity generation came from hydroelectric power.
In the driest year, 2015, hydroelectric power made up just 7 percent of the electricity generated in California.
Although solar and wind power increased during the drought years, grid operators and other power managers still needed to boost electricity from natural gas-fired power plants.
He noted that in other dry years, hydroelectric power decreases and it has to be made up with other types of electricity.
The overall cost in higher power bills, $2.45 billion over five years, works out to be about $12 per person in California per year, or $60 during the entire drought, he said.
Ominously, 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded in California since modern temperature records were first taken in the late 1800s.
Then that record for statewide average temperature was broken in 2015.
Natural gas generated 60 percent, nuclear power 9 percent, hydroelectric power 7 percent and coal and other sources 1 percent.

New Lawsuit Filed in Next Chapter of Dimock, Pennsylvania, Fracking Water Pollution Saga.
Kemble lives around the corner from the embattled Carter Road, where his neighbors have been struggling for years with a similar water pollution suit against Cabot.
However, the judge in their case recently overturned the verdict amid an ongoing dispute over the legality of evidence the families’ attorney referenced during the trial.
The Timeline After Kemble filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the lawsuit outlines that Cabot agreed to a consent order in 2009.
Kemble says that doing so led to groundwater contamination, causing his well water to become “brown and cloudy.” In 2009, Costello I was wrapped into the consent order, and in 2013 the Pennsylvania DEP ordered that Cabot plug the well.
Cabot chose to use the horizontal drilling technique on three of them.
The complaint alleges that this led to further discoloration of Kemble’s water, “turning [it] black, like mud, [with] a strong chemical odor” once fracking began in November 2012.
Cabot has already weighed in on the lawsuit and its claims, and is of the opinion that they are without merit.
“Cabot intends to vigorously defend the lawsuit.” Kemble formerly worked for the drilling industry for nearly four years.
DeSmog previously reported that Kemble has developed bladder cancer, which he thinks is linked to the drilling activity.

EPA Chief Takes First Step in Reversing Obama-Era Methane Rule.
Rule sought to curb methane emissions from oil, gas wells EPA issues 90-day stay of rule’s June 3 compliance date U.S. environmental chief Scott Pruitt plans to roll back an Obama-era methane rule expected to cost oil and natural gas operators $320 to $530 million a year.
The Obama administration completed the regulation in June, imposing the first-ever federal standards to limit methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector.
The Environmental Protection Agency will reconsider the regulation in response to industry objections, Pruitt wrote in a letter to the American Petroleum Institute and other petitioners opposed to the regulation.
The EPA will also issue a 90-day administrative stay on part of the rule, which calls for operators to submit emission monitoring surveys by June 3.
“EPA is continuing to follow through with President Trump’s Energy Independence Executive Order,” Pruitt said in a statement Wednesday.
“American businesses should have the opportunity to review new requirements, assess economic impacts and report back.” Pruitt in March withdrew another Obama-rule initiative aimed at cutting emissions from the sector.
That rule asked oil and gas operators to disclose information on leaks at their facilities, as part of an effort to develop a regulation that would govern existing oil and gas wells.
EPA should have a discussion with oil and gas companies about how methane can be captured “without trying to burden industry,” Pruitt said last month at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston, the biggest yearly gathering of oil and gas companies.
Pruitt is also reconsidering an EPA initiative to cut water pollution from power plants, and has said his agency should not defend Obama’s carbon rules in court.

How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit.
In a 58 page ruling, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the country.
Nonetheless, Judge Carlson declined to throw out the lawsuit entirely, ordering Cabot to re-start settlement talks with the Ely and Hubert families.
John-Mark Stensvaag, an environmental law professor at the University of Iowa, said that orders to re-try cases “are not as rare as one might think.” “This does not mean that the plaintiffs have no case,” he added, “it only means that, in [Judge Carlson’s] opinion, they have not presented a case justifying the jury’s verdict and should be given a second opportunity to present an adequate case.” The Ely family leaves the federal courthouse on the first day of trial in 2016. Credit: Laura Evangelisto © 2016 Carter Road Water Contamination There’s little question that something is very wrong with the water on Carter Road, despite lingering questions in the legal battles centering around that contaminated water.
In 2010, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection concluded that Cabot’s drilling operations had contaminated the drinking water supplies of 19 homes in Dimock and reached an agreement with Cabot requiring the company to pay out $4.6 million over the harm to the families’ wells.
That presentation was barred from being entered into evidence by Judge Carlson, despite the plaintiffs’ request to present it to the jury.
Evidence Catch-22 An underlying theme of the case for the plaintiffs’ attorney Lewis and her clients has centered around a struggle over the evidence the plaintiffs could present to the jury, which has come back to haunt them with the recent ruling by Judge Carlson.
Part of the problem is that many of the wells near Carter Road have virtually identical names and it’s not clear that the plaintiffs intended their stipulation to cover all of the “Gesford” wells.
State and federal records also show that Cabot was cited for violating state environmental laws at the Gesford 3 well on June 3, 2008 — a time when Judge Carlson’s order insists that Gesford 3 had not yet been drilled.
Ely, the lead plaintiff at the trial, also said he was harassed by McAleer in a sworn testimony exhibited as part of the same June 2016 court filing submitted to the court by Lewis and Radow.