The Pros And Cons Of Over Fracking

Should I be freaking out over Fracking?

“Could you feel the earthquake?” My uncle texted me last February, after a 3.6 magnitude earthquake struck the Dallas area. Apparently, earthquakes in Dallas- Fort Worth, an area not prone to tremors, is an important enough occurrence to make the local news in Wisconsin. The earthquake on February 27th, 2015, was one of multiple earthquakes to rock the DFW area, causing researchers to question what exactly is making the earth shake.

Since the 1970’s, North Texas has seen more than 160 earthquakes, 159 of them occurring after 2008. SMU scientists have recently discovered an ancient fault in Irving, but question why a centuries old fault line would begin shifting in the last 8 years. Should North Texas

The waste water from fracking is injected back into the ground, or sent to water treatment facilities before being deposited into rivers, causing many to wonder if our groundwater is being contaminated in the process. US News interviewed Radisav Vidic, author of a study on the impacts of shale on water quality. He noted that while scientists currently do not have enough information to point to fracking as a definite cause of water pollution, there is no way to determine if our current water quality monitoring systems are accurate enough to pick up pollution levels. Meaning, our health could be at stake and we wouldn’t know

Instead, people who live near fracking drill sites are at risk of developing respiratory conditions due to air pollution. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a prosperous gas drilling community, state officials have begun warning the children and elderly from going outside, because of dangerously high smog levels. While the community has enjoyed the economic boom brought by the natural gas industry, pollution levels have risen considerably, due to drilling of new wells for fracking. In Cheyenne, it’s hard not to wonder if human health is the tradeoff for profit.

In North Texas, scientists are investing a possible link between the recent increase in earthquakes and fracking. SMU seismologists have been tracking Dallas earthquakes and drilling sites in Azle and Reno, near Fort Worth, and it’s possible that the fracking process- in which water is pumped at high pressure into the earth- is disrupting fault lines. But fear not, according to the study, there is no proven link between earthquakes and fracking sites at greater distances than six miles, and the distance between the drill sites and the center of the February 2015 earthquakes was more than ten