To Frack or Not to Frack, That is the Question

My name is Victoria Shaw, I’m a senior at Kansas State University.  I have bounced around from major to major never really finding my way.  It wasn’t until I just stumbled into a Physical Science major that I realized what I wanted to do.  After taking World Regional Geography, did I realize that I could mash my love for traveling with my wanting to do more for the world. 
Last semester, I took a geography class which had me watch a few documentaries.  I was quite taken with one called “Gasland” (available on Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video).  From the imbd.com Sundance Film Festival synopsis, Gasland is:

“It is happening all across America-rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from an energy company wanting to lease their property. Reason? The company hopes to tap into a reservoir dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas.” Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground-a hydraulic drilling process called ‘Fracking’ and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower.”

It was an odd sort of film at first, exploring the idea of natural gas.  I didn’t realize what a hot topic it had become in our society today.  It’s an alternative resource that we can utilize without consequence—or so it seems.  The topic I want most to explore throughout this blog is what comes along with natural gas.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  After watching Gasland, I see the pros: it’s cheap and we have a huge abundance of it.  Though the cons are what the documentary really focused on. These big companies would come knocking on doors, throwing money at homeowners and landowners telling them that all the others are doing it! Plus hey, they could make a pretty penny out of it themselves.  Most homeowners agreed, because either way it was going to happen.  Next thing you know their land is just a skyline of drills, and once it’s all used up it remains stagnant.  Whole towns destroyed and dried up and forgotten.  But the ones that are still fracking away, have a whole other plethora of problems.  These were the ones that were so fascinating to me: the water and air were being contaminated.  Two elements that we base our existence off of are being ruined and deemed unsuitable for us.  The process of fracking, uses millions of gallons of water that they rush into ground to fracture shale rock to release the natural gas.  Once this water is rushed into the ground, it has a “flowback” which is also known as “produced water.”  This water is mixed with the chemicals used to fracture the shale rocks, along with elements from the gas that seeps into the ground and presents a problem for homeowners.  Their water being so contaminated that it appears brown, murky, and flammable.  FLAMMABLE.  I have heard lots of things about water, like Jesus walked on it.  But never did I think that water could be set on fire.  When these homeowners complained the companies that bought their land, the companies assured them that it wasn’t their fault—it must’ve always been like that but they failed to notice it.  This bewildered me.  Flammable water.  Not only that, but communities were being affected with chronic illness such as headaches, dizziness and blackouts emerged from being around this procedure.  The problem with fracking is that we are in such a deep need for an alternative for our dependency on oil.  Why would we want this? I’m not entirely sure, but this blog is the point of me trying to figure it out.

I’ll admit, I’m a little uneducated about all of this.  I don’t want to sway one way or the other just yet, but learning about alternative fossil fuels are really becoming a thing of the present.  With the Keystone Pipeline wanting to be built throughout various states, these problems could be a reality.  I understand that we want an inexpensive alternative, but do we really need to pay the cost with our health?  We shouldn’t be worried about waking up every day with headaches, and too afraid to turn on the faucet for a quick drink of water.  Though I shouldn’t just rely on a few documentaries to make my case already.  I’m all about exploring my options and I think it should be no different when it comes to natural gas and fracking.  A pro and con list has always been helpful, might as well make my blog one giant list.