Most of the country is now familiar with hydraulic fracturing (fracking). It’s a method used to extract natural gas buried deep beneath the Earth. Despite some of the jargon that gets passed around, fracking hasn’t been around for 30 or more years. It has been used for around eight, as a means to release natural gas locked in layers of shale rock. I am very familiar with the process as I live in western Maryland which lies over the Marcellus Shale. Right now a war has broken out between those that favor fracturing the shale and releasing the gas and those that believe it will risk resident’s health. In states where fracking has been embraced (NY, WV, PA, TX, CO, etc) the process has become controversial as private water supplies suddenly became filled with chemicals, some even becoming flammable. As I learn more about fracking, I can’t help but wonder what it could mean to reef aquarists anywhere the process is embraced. Even if a clean water supply is available, we still require mass amounts of filtration to create high quality synthetic saltwater. Would it be possible to even maintain a marine aquarium if fracking chemicals leached into an aquarist’s water supply? How would an aquarist know their water had been effected and would you not learn until it was too late? What is fracking?
Fracking combines two processes, horizontal drilling which allows a drill to travel deep beneath the Earth (several thousand feet) and turn horizontally. At this point it enters shale which over millions of years has sealed up natural gas. A round about explanation of natural gas is that it’s decayed organic matter so fermented that it contains all organisms’ original energy harvested from the sun. Since the gas is still sealed up, thousands and thousands of gallons of water and chemicals is pumped into the shale at high pressure. The chemicals, along with sand, help break up the shale rock and release the gas. The now toxic water is pumped back out of the ground and into a containment pond. Fracking is a high tech process that utilizes a variety of equipment. It combines sciences like geology, chemistry and engineering. People familiar with the practice have equated it to rocket science, since there are many variables along with a host of unforeseen circumstances. Even after years of practice, it’s still very much a learning process with a large margin of area.… More:
The post Your right to reef: Fracking and reef keeping … appeared first on reefs.com.