![]() "We wanted to better understand the risk to domestic water wells," said Perrone. Spills are the most common, with an average of about 1 in 40 hydraulically fractured well sites experiencing that type of contamination event. Previously published studies suggest that chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may be able to migrate horizontal distances 1 to 3 kilometers, so wells within 1, 2 and 3 kilometers were identified.Ĭontamination from oil and gas extraction can occur in a few ways, including a spill at the ground surface, a “frac hit” where injected fluids enter a nearby pre-existing well during injections, or with a failure of well integrity. The goal was to identify any domestic water wells that sat within 2 kilometers of a hydraulically fractured well. ![]() “To increase the likelihood of a domestic-water well being used in 2014, we focused on wells constructed between 20.” “In some states, it is difficult to identify abandoned wells due to lack of information or inconsistency in state water datasets,” said Perrone. They chose these recent years to improve the chance that the groundwater wells were being used. The team then plotted domestic water wells that were constructed between 20, to see how close the domestic groundwater wells were to wells for hydraulic fracturing, and oil and gas production. The researchers concentrated on 14 states spanning the United States that had an active hydraulic fracturing program in 2014, and collected locations for all oil and gas wells that were stimulated for production in 2014. Map of the United States showing the percentage of domestic groundwater wells constructed between 20 that lie within a 2 km radius of at least one hydraulically fractured (stimulated during 2014). The study found that more than half of hydraulically fractured wells lie within 2 to 3 kilometers of a domestic well-potentially close enough for contaminants to enter these wells, should they be released by hydraulic fracturing operations. Unlike public water supplies that undergo routine testing, water testing of private wells is voluntary and contamination events might go unnoticed by the well owner. In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jasechko and co-author Debra Perrone, formerly a post doctoral scholar with Stanford’s Water in the West program and now an assistant professor in the Environmental Studies Program at University of California at Santa Barbara, determined what percentage of domestic groundwater wells might be next-door neighbors to active hydraulic fracturing. “We wanted to address the knowledge gap on how close private wells are to hydraulically fractured wells.” “Forty-five million Americans rely on private groundwater wells for their drinking water,” says Scott Jasechko, assistant professor at Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California at Santa Barbara. Previous reports from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the potential safety and contamination issues involved with hydraulic fracturing impacts to drinking water have focused mainly on public water systems without delving into the status of private wells. ![]() Though wells for drinking water and wells for oil and gas production are known to exist in the same geographic regions, their proximity to one another across the United States was uncertain. Although the majority of Americans get their drinking water from a municipal, public supply, 1 in 7 rely on private water wells.
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