Right to Know?

If you work in an industry in which there exists the possibility that you will be exposed to hazardous chemical materials in your workplace, your employer is required by law to make information available to you regarding the nature of those hazards. If you are a generator of hazardous wastes or a proprietor of a business that manufactures, stores or processes hazardous materials, you are required by law to inform the community in which your business resides of the type, quantity and hazards of the chemicals in your facility. Why then, should companies which pump hazardous materials into the ground (!) to extract hydrocarbons be exempt from such requirements when it comes to revealing the nature of those materials???

This is exactly the question debated in an excellent recent article in the industry magazine Chemical and Engineering News (8/17/09). The text of the article is only accessible to paid subscribers, but the regulatory debate is intense, particularly in areas where the practice is common, or likely to become common, as in the Marcellus Shale region of upstate New York and Pennsylvania.

Hydraulic fracturing, as the method is known, essentially involves the injection of huge volumes of chemical slurry mixtures into solid rock formations containing natural gas. The slurry displaces the gas, which is then recovered for energy generation. This method is especially useful in areas where most of the easy to retrieve gas has already been recovered, or where the gas is inherently difficult to reach, like the Marcellus Shale. Exactly what is in these chemical/water/sand slurries is largely unknown, however. And since it is not difficult to imagine that the process of injecting chemicals into the ground could potentially pose a hazard to nearby groundwater, communities in areas where the practice is used are understandably concerned.

Drilling companies claim that the evidence of groundwater contamination resulting from hydraulic fracturing is anecdotal. Right-to-know regulation is unnecessary, they argue, because hydraulic fracturing is not new and has been practiced safely for years, and that the depths to which the chemicals are injected are sufficiently deep to prevent groundwater contamination. Furthermore, the industry claims that national regulation of this practice would result in a burdensome additional layer of bureaucracy that would require them to obtain drilling permits at both the state and federal levels. And oh by the way, their slurry mixtures are proprietary, and they might not want to let everyone know exactly what they contain.

A number of politicians are not buying it, and are insisting that the drilling firms be held to the same disclosure standards as other industries. Charles Schumer, the Democratic Senator from NY, has introduced legislation that would require such disclosure. Seems to me that if these firms want a piece of the bonanza-waiting-to-happen that is the Marcellus Shale and other under-exploited reserves, they should also be willing to file a bit more paperwork. If I were a neighbor to one of these operations, I would certainly hope I had a right to know.