Why fracking is bad for the environment

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is the process of injecting water, chemicals and sand into horizontal wells under high pressure to crack rock and release oil and gas.

Even though the oil and gas industry often uses a restrictive definition of “fracking” that refers only to the moment in the extraction process where the rock is fractured, the impacts of fracking go far beyond some broken rock.

What is fracking and why is it bad for the environment?

There are many activities needed to bring a gas or oil well into production, and all of them have environmental impacts. 

Fracking requires a lot of water. More than 100,000 gallons of water are used to create a fracking well. Once the well is created, even more water and toxic chemicals are used to operate it.

Once the well has produced gas or oil, transporting it also carries environmental costs. The construction of infrastructure like pipelines and roads can change the shape of a landscape forever, decimating and fragmenting habitat that wildlife need to survive.

Fracking pollutes waterways

Fracking has polluted both groundwater and surface waterways such as rivers, lakes and streams. 

Pollution can enter our waterways at several points in the fracking process. Fracking fluid can leak or spill as it is transported to the site of the well, mixed with chemical additives, and pumped from place to place. Fracking also involves highly pressurizing that liquid — so damage to the well infrastructure can result in blowouts that spew wastewater into the environment.

Wastewater from the fracking process is produced in enormous volumes – both as “flowback” immediately after fracking, and “produced water” over a longer period while a well is producing oil and gas. Fracking operators have no safe, sustainable way of dealing with this toxic waste.

Fracking waste contains dangerous pollutants. The toxic substances in fracking chemicals and wastewater have been associated with a variety of negative health effects, including cancer, endocrine disruption, and neurological and immune system problems.

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health analyzed more than 1,000 chemicals found in fluid fracking and wastewater. Toxicity data were not available for many of them, but of the chemicals for which toxicity data were available, 65% were toxic. 

That means at least 15% of the chemicals used in fracking are toxic or dangerous to human health – and the true number might be much higher.

And fracking doesn’t simply pollute water. It also removes water from the water supply both for us and the broader environment.

Each well that is fracked requires hundreds of thousands or millions of gallons of water. Unlike most industrial uses of water, in which water returns to the water cycle for further use, water used in fracking typically can’t be cleaned up for a broad range of other uses. 

Water from fracking usually either remains in the well, is “recycled” to frack new wells, or is disposed of in deep injection wells. Injecting the water deep underground keeps it separate from natural aquifers, meaning that fracking takes billions of gallons out of the water supply annually.

Fracking damages wild places

Well pads, new access roads, pipelines and other infrastructure built for fracking turn forests and rural landscapes into industrial zones. Infrastructure to support fracking has directly damaged at least 679,000 acres of land since 2005. That’s an enormous area, just slightly smaller than Yosemite National Park. 

What does developing the land to support new fracking wells mean for wild places and critical wildlife habitat?

Before drilling can begin, the land at the well site must be clear-cut and leveled so that drilling equipment, gas collection and processing equipment, and vehicles can operate. The removal of trees and plants completely destroys habitat wildlife need to survive, and leaves the soil vulnerable to erosion.

And the destruction doesn’t stop at the well site itself. Additional land must be cleared for roads to the well site, as well as for any pipelines and compressor stations needed to deliver gas to market. Roads can be especially dangerous to wildlife. By one estimate, each fracking well is responsible for more than 3,000 one way truck trips over its lifetime. Without wildlife crossings, that means a lot of animals end up as roadkill.

Overall, the development of natural gas infrastructure results in up to 23 acres of land cover disturbance per well pad.

Even habitat that isn’t directly destroyed can be damaged. The “edge habitat” surrounding an industrialized area becomes degraded and vulnerable to the spread of invasive plants.

Fracking harms wildlife

The loss of habitat associated with fracking, and the impacts of the operation of fracking wells, can have serious detrimental effects on wild animals.

Fracking creates air pollution that can seriously impact wildlife. A Colorado study revealed that exposure to air pollution from fracking could cause neurological problems, respiratory diseases, and cancer in wild animals.

The loud machines and bright lights of industrial fracking areas can change animals’ behavior and interfere with their ability to make use of the habitat they have left near fracking sites. Research on mule deer in Colorado found that the number of deer living on land essential to the species’ wintertime survival declined by 25 to 50 percent near gas and drilling operations. 

The fragmentation of habitat associated with fracking development is especially hard on bird species that depend on large tracts of undisturbed habitat to survive. Endangered cerulean warblers, who need deep forest habitat, are experiencing population declines across their range, but researchers noted that the decline was 15 percent higher near fracking sites than in the wider region. Species such as the northern harrier, snowy owl, rough-legged hawk and American kestrel rely on 30 to 100 acres of undisturbed grassland for breeding or wintering habitat, which developments like pipelines and roads can fracture.

The clearing of land for well pads, roads and pipelines also threaten aquatic ecosystems by increasing sedimentation of nearby waterways and decreasing shade. One study found an association between increased density of gas drilling activity and degradation of ecologically important headwater streams.

Water contamination related to fracking can cause fish to die. After fracking equipment failed at an Ohio site in 2014, a fire broke out, causing trucks to explode and thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals to leak into an Ohio River tributary. More than 70,000 fish were killed by the pollution.

Take action to stop the permitting of more fracking and drilling on public lands

The environmental impact of fracking is simply too destructive. We need less fossil fuel development, not more.

But this bill would increase oil and gas drilling in America’s public lands and the ocean. It would lock us into more fossil fuel pollution and sell off our special places for dirty drilling and mining.

Tell your U.S. senators: Don’t expand mining and drilling in public lands or the ocean.