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Monday, June 17, 2013

`Oops, we used up all our water,'



Last year I wrote an entry about how Colorado farmer had been outbid by fracking companies for water rights in Colorado – asking the question which is more important, food or fracking.

Today another water/fracking story hit the press on HuffPo.


Think about it
Using water reserves for fossil fuel production
The goal is energy independence

Think about it
You can go weeks without food before you die
You only can go a week to ten days without water before you die.

`Oops, we used up all our water,'

Energy independence means nothing – if you are dead.
The only thing that this energy independence means is that the corporations can make insane profits – using up water that is needed for people to live and to grow crops.
Corporations are not concerned if people die.But corporations are only concerned with profit and their 1% shareholders.

Snips 
By GARANCE BURKE 06/16/13 11:16 PM ET EDT AP
SAN FRANCISCO — The latest domestic energy boom is sweeping through some of the nation's driest pockets, drawing millions of gallons of water to unlock oil and gas reserves from beneath the Earth's surface.

    fracking's new frontier is expanding to the same lands where crops have shriveled and waterways have dried up due to severe drought.


    the exploration method is increasing competition for the precious resource, driving up the price of water and burdening already depleted aquifers and rivers in certain drought-stricken stretches.

Along Colorado's Front Range, fourth-generation farmer Kent Peppler said he is fallowing some of his corn fields this year because he can't afford to irrigate the land for the full growing season, in part because deep-pocketed energy companies have driven up the price of water.

In South Texas,    local water officials said drillers are contributing to a drop in the water table in several areas.

"The oil industry is doing the big fracks and pumping a substantial amount of water around here," said Ed Walker, general manager of the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District,   

The amount of water needed to hydraulically fracture a well varies greatly, depending on how hard it is to extract oil and gas from each geological formation. In Texas, the average well requires up to 6 million gallons of water, while in California each well requires 80,000 to 300,000 gallons, according to estimates by government and trade associations.

"We don't want to look up 20 years from now and say, `Oops, we used up all our water,'" said Jason Banes of the Boulder, Colo.-based Western Resource Advocates.

In California, oil companies are pressing for further exploration of the massive Monterey Shale, a 1,750-square-mile area extending from the agricultural Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean … 

Read the whole article

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