The view that natural gas will provide a century of clean, inexpensive energy undergoes scrutiny in "Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting with Disaster," a new book by Walter M. Brasch.
Brasch, of Bloomsburg, author of 18 other books and a columnist for The News-Item, researches claims made since the invention of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, launched a gas boom in Pennsylvania and other states, where gas lies deep underground in shale formations.
In "Fracking Pennsylvania" (Greeley & Stone Publishers, $14.95), Brasch details what he says are exaggerations about the size of gas reserves, jobs that the industry creates and the potential for gas to reduce climate change. Fracking - which pumps millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals underground to fracture rock - poses risks to groundwater and the air that the industry and its supporters have discounted, but researchers are starting to study, he says.
He cites a Cornell University report that found the "footprint" for shale gas is greater than for conventional gas or oil over any time frame, and at least 20 percent greater than for coal.
"The large (greenhouse gas) footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming," the report says.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in a three-year study verified by the U.S. Geological Survey, found that fracking polluted 11 wells in Pavilion, Wyo., where the gas reserves were closer to the surface than in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale. Next year, the EPA will complete a study of fracking's effect on 10 sites, including three in Pennsylvania, Brasch writes.
Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer has called all studies showing that methane gets into drinking water bogus, a point that Brasch notes in a section about political infringement upon science.
"Fracking Pennsylvania" recounts the story of 32 families evicted from the Riverdale Mobile Home Park near Jersey Shore in Lycoming County. They had to move when a water company bought the mobile home park to set up a water intake to supply gas drillers.
Brasch quotes financial analyst Deborah Rogers, who estimates that only one in five wells makes money, even where one well costs some $5 million to drill.
"That is a whole lot of land used up in the search for wells that will make money," Rogers says in the book.
"Years from now, thousands of landowners who allowed drilling on their property may wonder if the immediate gratification of a few dollars or even sudden wealth was worth the cost of what happened to the health and lifestyle of the people and their environment," Brasch writes.
Meanwhile, more than a few dollars flow from gas companies to politicians, the books says. U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11, Hazleton, owned stock worth more than $75,000 in eight gas companies as of last year, while Gov. Tom Corbett got $1.1 million for his campaign from the gas industry.