Against fracking 01 (Photo credit: Bosc d’Anjou)
The title of this post is a bit of a cheat as the subject of fracking never came up at the recent People’s Gathering. Instead it was part of Friends of The Earth Scotland‘s AGM that I attended a couple of months ago. At the end of that AGM there were several workshops two of which were on fracking. I went to one to see if they could answer my question: “where is the water going to come from?”.
Fracking – unconventional gas – is in the news a lot and especially with the scare stories from the USA. One method is referred to as Shale Gas while the other is Coal Bed Methane. The former is likely to be used in England while the latter in Scotland. Both require the injection of lots of water (along with chemicals, some of which are in your shampoo bottle) to fracture the rock and extract the gas. A lot of attention is being paid to the potential for contamination at the end of the process. Not much, at the moment, is being paid to where the water will come from.
Dart Energy is the company that has licences from the DECC to ‘drill ‘ in Airth near Stirling and has taken over the company that has similar licences near Canonbie. SEPA issue CAR licences that cover the water environment. Because of the size of these wells, planning permission can be given by a Local Authority Planning Officer without reference to the Planning Committee or elected members. The drills have a very small footprint. But, there could be a lot of them in a very small area.
But nowhere can I find an indication as to where these companies are going to get the water from. It’s unlikely you’ll see constant streams of water bowsers (like petrol tankers) travelling from the coast after picking up sea water instead, it will be direct feeds through normal pipelines. The water companies will not doubt be charging commercial rates. But, consider that almost half of England was in drought conditions a few months ago, that situation could get worse if this technology gets the go-ahead. Most objectors are concentrating on the potentially hazardous waste and ignoring the potential problem of the water supply.
To find out more please visit here.
Related articles
