{"id":505,"date":"2012-09-10T13:10:37","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T17:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/fracking-water.html"},"modified":"2012-09-10T13:10:37","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T17:10:37","slug":"fracking-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/fracking-water.html","title":{"rendered":"Fracking water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nYet another reason why we should take water into account in\nany development plan:\nfracking for shale gas\nuses huge amounts of water, competing with everything else,\nmaybe even using more than power plants and cities.\n<\/p>\n

\nDelaware Riverkeeper and Protecting Our Waters wrote for Waterkeeper Alliance today,\n\nThe Water Footprint of Shale Gas Development<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n<\/a>\nRecent studies examining potable water supplies on a global scale,\nthe current trends in American water consumption and the causes of\ndepletion of this essential resource are helping us to understand\nthat the footprint of shale gas development expands indefinitely\nwhen measured in water….\n<\/p>\n

\nOf the seven nations where the groundwater footprint is greatest,\nthe U.S. is one of the fastest speeding towards disaster. According\n\n<\/a>\nto Cynthia Barnett’s Blue Revolution, scientists say the 20th\ncentury was the wettest in a thousand years and now drier times are\nahead.[3] This means that many of the management schemes we use\nnow\u2014based on 20th C planning\u2014need to be changed to avoid\ncatastrophe. So the 410 billion gallons of water America uses every\nday will suck the nation dry if we don’t stop over-tapping nearly\nevery river and aquifer.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe biggest U.S. users are power plants and agriculture with private\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\nand public utilities next,\nsupplying the average 147 gallons per\nperson per day that Americans use (four times more than we each used\nin 1950), far greater than the 33 gallons the Dutch use per capita\nand the 5 gallons per day used by people in many impoverished\nnations. Scientists say America’s High Plains and Floridan Aquifers,\nboth enormous and water-rich, are being used faster than they can\nrecharge\u2014Florida can no longer fill its state’s drinking water\nneeds and Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River has\na 50-50 chance of going dry by 2021.[4]…\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nRemember,\n\nNuclear Plant Vogtle already uses more water<\/a>\nthan agriculture for the middle Savannah River watershed,\n\n<\/a>\nand with the two new units will (if it doesn’t already)\nuse more water than the city of Savannah.\nAnd \ncoal and biomass<\/a> are almost as bad for water overuse.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Floridan Aquifer is our aquifer,\nthe one\n\nBen Copeland reminded us<\/a> Jacksonville and Tallahassee and Orlando also\ndrink from.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nWhile\n\nour groundwater has been at historically low levels<\/a>\nfor most of the past year.\nWater levels have finally recently risen back into average ranges\nwith the recent rains,\nbut what will happen if we keep using water like we are,\nand add fracking to that?\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nEnter hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.<\/strong>\nThe water footprint for\nshale gas is defined in two main ways\u2014water consumed and water\npolluted.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nSee\n\nthe article for the details,<\/a> which ain’t pretty.\nWorth thinking about the next time you see\n\nenergy experts making excuses for fracking.<\/a>\nWe don’t need to be doing this, considering already when all costs,\nincluding fuel, are taken into account,\n\nsolar, which needs no fuel, already beats natural gas on price.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n

\nPS: Owed to Michael Noll.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yet another reason why we should take water into account in any development plan: fracking for shale gas uses huge amounts of water, competing with everything else, maybe even using more than power plants and cities. Delaware Riverkeeper and Protecting Our Waters wrote for Waterkeeper Alliance today, The Water Footprint of Shale Gas Development, Recent […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,120,216,14,16,203,8,104,21,22,32,23,55],"tags":[8736,8738,8753,1742,8704,8706,8751,1739,308,8701,7,562,8737,8711,8712,8715,1743,8713,970,6,8727,1741,1740,1744],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-coal","category-economy","category-environment","category-florida","category-georgia","category-nuclear","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-water","tag-activism","tag-biomass","tag-coal","tag-delaware-riverkeeper","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-floridan-aquifier","tag-fracking","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-pollution","tag-protecting-our-waters","tag-renewable-energy","tag-shale-gas","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-water-level","tag-water-table","tag-waterkeeper-alliance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-89","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}