fracking frack off smaller

I’ve written about fracking a lot. Click here to see our previous posts at RoN. You can also scroll through these rather alarming  and extensive archives from my old stomping grounds at The Political Carnival. Take this oldie but goodie for example: Fracking is linked to methane risks: “When methane concentrations are that high, water can bubble like champagne.” Salud! 

Today’s Los Angeles Times has a California Section front pager that once again illustrates how Big Greedy Oil and Big Greedy Gashats are utterly devoid of foresight, unless, of course, it pertains to their own enormous wallets. Check this out:

Data culled from the first year of those tests found significant concentrations of the human carcinogen benzene in this so-called “flowback fluid.” In some cases, the fracking waste liquid, which is frequently reinjected into groundwater, contained benzene levels thousands of times greater than state and federal agencies consider safe.

The testing results from hundreds of wells showed, on average, benzene levels 700 times higher than federal standards allow, according to a Times analysis of the state data.

The presence of benzene in fracking waste water is raising alarm over potential public health dangers amid admissions by state oil and gas regulators that California for years inadvertently allowed companies to inject fracking flowback water into protected aquifers containing drinking water.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency called the state’s errors “shocking.” The agency’s regional director said that California’s oil field waste water injection program has been mismanaged and does not comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

The discovery adds urgency to a mounting list of problems at the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, which regulates the oil and gas industry.

You know what’s also shocking? That the EPA thinks this is shocking… meaning, it was pretty obvious that fracking is highly toxic and that “errors” would abound. They nearly always do, and they rarely favor the consumer.

Should you be in a perverse mood for even more frustration and anxiety, another L.A. Times article only a couple of pages later reports on how “oil companies, utilities and other business groups viewed 

[climate change] proposals with skepticism, if not outright hostility.” It almost goes without saying that the bills were proposed by Democrats.

frackers cartoon Clay Bennett