While findings from a new study will provide fresh ammunition to both sides in B.C.’s hydraulic fracking debate, environmentalists, energy companies and the province’s citizenry need to heed the warnings over what is the most precious natural resource at stake here: fresh water.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) hydraulic fracturing report found no evidence of widespread “systemic impacts on drinking water resources” from using sand, water and other fluids to fracture rock formations underground to release trapped natural gas.
The study concluded, however, that fracking could affect drinking water and noted that its environmental risks increase substantially during water shortages or in regions where water supplies are low. But aside from water supply contamination worries, more concern needs to be focused on the huge amount of water used in fracking, especially as shifting weather patterns worsen drought conditions in California and in other regions along North America’s west coast.
This year’s spring in southwest B.C. has been unusually hot and dry. It follows a mild and relatively dry winter that resulted in a south coast snowpack 13% of normal. That bodes ill for B.C.’s fish, agriculture and hydroelectric power sectors this summer and should raise more red flags over allocation of the province’s fresh water.
Approximately 90% of the fluid used in fracking is water.
According to the EPA report, hydraulic fracking in the U.S. used on average 44 billion gallons of water per year between 2011 and 2012.
It can take up to 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water to complete one natural gas well. In a report released earlier this year, geoscientist David Hughes estimated that between 37,800 and 43,700 new wells will have to be drilled by 2040 in B.C. to meet projected natural gas export commitments.
Demands on water systems are already rising rapidly as urban populations increase and infrastructure systems reach their limits.
B.C. therefore needs to make water, not natural gas, its top resource management priority.
