ABSTRACT
As we editors write this introduction, the coal, oil and gas industries are engaging in mountain-top mining, tar-sands oil extraction, and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). Driven by humans’ ongoing reliance on fossil fuels, these processes result in massive environmental degradation and harm to all living species. The process begins with clear-cutting forests or destroying farmland to create a well pad of 5 to 15 acres. A wastewater pool of 3-5 acres and approximately 20 feet deep is then dug and lined with plastic-a polymer that can (and does) tear1 Next, holes (conventionally called wells) are drilled roughly 7,000 feet deep and, from that depth, another 1 or 2 miles horizontally. The well shaft is lined with casing and cement to inhibit chemicals and gas from leeching into the soil, streams, and aquifers (although leeching too often occurs). Millions of gallons of water are trucked in to the site, often pulled from nearby streams and lakes, never to be returned to the watershed. Explosives are detonated to fracture the shale, followed by the injection of up to 7 million gallons of “slick water” (water mixed with “secret,” proprietary toxic chemicals and sand and ceramic “proppants”), at pressures of up to 9,000 pounds per inch. The chemical-laced water “shatter[s] the shale for a few yards on either side of the pipe . . ., allowing the gas to rise under its own pressure and escape” (McGraw qtd. in McKibben, “Why Not Frack?” 2).2
