North Carolina’s fracking law, passed just a year ago, is one of the most forward-looking
fracking laws in the nation. It puts a moratorium on the controversial gas and oil drilling
practice, which threatens to pollute North Carolina’s precious clean water supplies and
release significant amounts of the greenhouse gas methane into our atmosphere. The
law requires that a panel of experts—the North Carolina Mining and Energy
Commission—create rules to protect the public, including rules about the disclosure of
chemicals used in the drilling process. It prohibits deep-well injection of dangerous
waste fluids and allows local communities to create fracking ordinances that are more
stringent than the state’s.
Thankfully, that law is still on the books. Last week, Republican legislators who, all spring,
had been gunning to overturn the legislation found themselves short of votes at the end
of the legislative session. One of the leaders of the charge, Representative Mike Hager,
explained the defeat this way: “We like for controversial legislation to go through the
committee process. I’m not going to hurry—we’ve been accused of that before.” The
Rutherfordton Republican, who chairs the Public Utilities and Energy committee, earlier
this year led an unsuccessful effort to overturn the state’s popular and extremely
successful renewable energy standard.
The truth is, though Governor McCrory and many House and Senate Republicans have
promised to keep fighting, there’s no good reason to change the fracking law as it now
stands. To begin with, natural gas drillers aren’t exactly beating down North Carolina’s
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door. The industry is actually in a bit of a tailspin, with an oversupply of shale gas that’s
lowered the commodity price significantly and caused many gas producers to let their
existing drilling leases lapse.
Even if fracking were a safe process—and, as it currently stands, there are far too many
unanswered questions about the practice—North Carolina’s shale gas resources are
minimal at best. In fact, the assistant state geologist, Kenneth Taylor, says that resource
is equivalent to about five year’s worth of state natural gas use. Not exactly a
motherlode.
But the truth is, the more we learn about fracking, the less safe it appears. Just this
week, Duke University researchers found that in private water wells near fracking
operations in the Marcellus Shale basin in Pennsylvania, methane concentrations are six
times higher and ethane concentrations are 23 times as high as in more distant wells.
(Ethane is another natural gas component.) Propane was found in 10 of the 141 samples
tested, all from wells within 1 kilometer of drilling sites. “Distance to gas wells was, by
far, the most significant factor influencing gases in the drinking water we sampled,”
Duke Professor Robert Jackson told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Also this week, leaked EPA documents showed fracking caused methane to seep into
water wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania—something the Agency had previously denied. The
jury on methane release into the atmosphere is still out. But keep this in mind: the gas
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packs between 20-25 times as much of a global-warming punch as the main greenhouse
gas, carbon dioxide. The less that seeps out in drilling operations, the better. And, finally,
while many natural gas companies claim that the names of the chemicals they use to
break up shale in the fracking process are proprietary, these chemicals are known to
include carcinogenic substances such as benzene as well as other toxic compounds such
as ethylene glycol, methanol and naphthalene.
North Carolina shouldn’t risk our precious water resources for a pay-off like this. From
around the country, companies are moving to North Carolina and creating much-needed
jobs for these water resources alone. Consider just one example: the brewing industry.
Already, Western beer makers Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Oskar Blues have
decided to expand their operations to North Carolina because of the quality and
plentitude of our water. In many places around the country, impacted already by
climate change, the reality and the prospect of drought looms large. In North Carolina,
we have been lucky to be spared. “Water is the new gold,” state Representative Rick
Catlin, a first-term Republican and hydrogeologist, told Stateline. “Why would we want
to ruin that resource?”
Why indeed?
If Governor McCrory, Representative Hager and others want new legislation that drives
jobs in energy, they should turn their attention from skimpy shale gas stores to our
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abundant clean energy resources. Already, over the last five years, laws and policies
promoting solar power, energy efficiency and other clean-energy technologies have
helped create more than 21,000 jobs in our state, saved consumers money on their
energy bills, contributed $113 million to our nearly empty state and local government
coffers, and contributed more than $2.5 billion to the state economy.
These resources, like our current fracking law, safeguard our water, our health, and the
natural beauty that, from the mountains to the beaches, makes us North Carolinians
proud.
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