Imagine developers want to frack gas, near a nuclear power plant, and many geological faults less than 20 miles from where you live. Imagine your town gets water from a river that flows through the formation that would be fracked. Imagine that 100 years ago the largest industrial accident in the state happened in a mine in that formation. Imagine your state legislature has just been overtaken by clueless Republicans seeing dollar signs from resource exploitation. That's what's happening where I live in central North Carolina. When my daughter in Pittsboro put me in touch with local activists who are fighting to stop this disaster from happening, I stopped blogging and got active locally.
We live in a fault bounded basin that formed in the beginning of the age of the Dinosaurs as Africa began the process of breaking up from North America. The Shearon Harris nuclear power plant is located close to the main boundary fault of the basin. Triassic basin boundary faults in other basins have shown a tendency to be reactivated by stress changes. And hydrofracturing has been shown to cause earthquakes. My daughter's friend was very concerned about the possibility that gas fracking could induce an earthquake that might affect the nuclear power plant. Recent reports on induced seismicity support her concerns.
A previously unreported study out of the Oklahoma Geological Survey has found that hydraulic fracturing may have triggered a swarm of small earthquakes earlier this year in Oklahoma. The quakes, which struck on Jan. 18 in a rural area near Elmore City, peaked at magnitude 2.8 and caused no deaths or property damage.The study, currently being prepared for peer review, follows news today that Cuadrilla Resources, a British shale gas developer, has found that it was “highly probable” its fracturing operations caused minor quakes of magnitude 2.3 and 1.5 in Lancashire, England. The Cuadrilla study could complicate the expansion of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in risk-averse Europe, where France has already banned the practice.
That’s E&E News PM on the twin earth-shaking reports on an emerging concern about fracking, which involves blasting massive amounts of water through rock under high pressure to get the gas out.
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The geology of the Deep River Triassic basin in North Carolina is far more complex than the geology of shale gas plays that have had induced earthquakes and water contamination problems. Our source rock is actually a coal bearing formation, not a true shale. And the formation is very shallow on the northwest side of the basin near the Deep River which we get our drinking water from.
Local residents filled the large conference room. People who arrived on time had to stand in the hall outside. The state geologist and several other state representatives spoke, then the meeting was turned over to public comments.
I was amazed by quality of the comments. Each person except for one industry man presented a personal perspective on how fracking could damage our health, our water, our farmland and our communities. Local politicians talked about stopping predatory contracts by unscrupulous gas drilling companies. I talked about how the faults and basaltic dikes in the basin's geology would provide barriers to horizontal hydrofracturing and pathways for hydrofracking fluids to go to the surface. I closed by pointing out that the state had budgeted a small fraction of the money and time to develop an effective plan to permit and regulate gas development. My daughter's friend discussed the risk of earthquakes near the nuclear power plant.
This will be an ongoing battle for our communities in central NC.
My written comments follow the Kos croissant.