The Link between Natural Gas Fracking and Water Contamination

The Link between Natural Gas Fracking and Water Contamination

     The environmental woes of the world have been debated since the beginning of man. As the human population has gotten immensely larger, the environment has begun to suffer greatly. In the article “EPA: Natural Gas Fracking Linked to Water Contamination”, the pressure applied to the Earth to help combat the large population have created a negative feedback loop in the environment. As of now, the world revolves around natural gases to operate all major machinery and technology, creating an unhealthy dependency on a resource that is not easily renewable. The process to obtain this precious source is also very harsh on the planet as it takes several stages of pollution-causing processes to get the gas up to the surface for humans to use. The process of fracking is harmful to the earth but necessary. The oversized oil and gas companies have overpowered the environmental laws in order to reach maximum profit and reap ample benefits.

     While humans were once oblivious to this gruesome process, the population is slowly starting to grasp the sheer danger associated with the mining and refining processes linked to obtaining these resources. In the Wyoming area, the public has been directly harmed from the fracking process and it is only common knowledge because the clean drinking water sources are being put in danger. The well water supplies are starting to be contaminated by harmful compounds that have risen to the surface layers of the Earth and are now slipping into the cement wells. This has led to a panic among the public as water is one resource that people take for granted yet it is the one resource that people are scared to lose.

     The EPA has been researching the harmful effects and potential issues that come from the fracking since the 1990s when the problems started arising. Instead of stopping this potentially fatal process, the companies have continued to pump natural gas from the Earth, insisting that the water problems and the fracking process have no correlation. Since the several cases have been under investigation, more issues have occurred in society and because of that, the public is becoming more bothered and worried about the situation. The cement well foundations have been tested and flaws have been found as well as changes in directions of flowing gases and compounds, which have also occurred. Both sides, the EPA and the big gas businesses, insist they are in the right. The investigations are still on going but the evidence is becoming more difficult to find as the results are inconsistent and therefore the power of the evidence is slowly fading.