Proposed hydraulic fracturing regulations in New York state

In doing research for a paper I came across a document published in 2011 by the NY Department of Environmental Conservation on newly proposed actions that might be allowed during hydraulic fracturing. The opportunity for public inquiry closed a while ago and the final report has not been completed, but considering that some of these changes might affect the public, I wanted to share. In case you are interested, the document can be found at: http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/rdsgeisch80911.pdf

The DEC is looking to allow opportunities for the following activities:

1) Issuance of a permit to drill when high-volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed shallower than 2,000 feet anywhere along the entire length of the wellbore;
2) Issuance of a permit to drill when high-volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed where the top of the target fracture zone at any point along the entire proposed length of the wellbore is less than 1,000 feet below the base of a known fresh water supply;
3) Issuance of a permit to drill when high-volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed at a well pad within 500 feet of a principal aquifer (to be re-evaluated two years after issuance of the first permit for high-volume hydraulic fracturing);
4) Issuance of a permit to drill when high-volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed on a well pad within 150 feet of a perennial or intermittent stream, storm drain, lake or pond;
5) Issuance of a permit to drill when high-volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed and the source water involves a surface water withdrawal not previously approved by the Department that is not based on the NFRM as described in Chapter 7 (of this document);
6) Any proposed water withdrawal from a pond or lake;
7) Any proposed ground water withdrawal within 500 feet of a private well;
8) Any proposed ground water withdrawal within 500 feet of a wetland that pump test data shows would have an influence on the wetland; and
9) Issuance of a permit to drill any well subject to ECL 23 whose location is determined by NYCDEP to be within 1,000 feet of its subsurface water supply infrastructure.

While it might be completely safe to allow permitting for these activities, they do appear to be loosening regulations on hydraulic fracturing in NY State, which might be of concern to local residents.
FYI.

What's not gray about hydraulic fracturing?

A few months ago, I began working in a microbiology lab that is working towards understanding the ecology of microbes that live in drinking water.
One of the projects I am leading aims to examine the microbiology of well water along the front range of CO (my home!). This area is particularly interesting to me and many others because natural gas extraction activities have exploded here over the past few years. The natural gas is often extracted using hydraulic fracturing techniques, which basically shoots large volumes of water, chemicals, and particles deep into drilled wells at extremely high pressures in order to create fissures in the rocks and to tease out the natural gas hidden within them. It's an amazing engineering feat by any standard and one which is creating an eruption in natural gas production nationwide.

However, hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) can create numerous environmental and human health problems ranging from minor nuisances (noise pollution) to major impacts, such as drinking water contamination.

We've all come to accept that humanity's thirst for energy comes at a financial and environmental cost, and historically we have been willing to accept those costs, or to at least make informed decisions about our energy use. However, fracking has become highly polarizing in the media: supporters assert that the technique poses no risk to human health or the environment, while opponents insist that any fracking at all poses serious risks. Thus, an all-or-nothing environment has developed that stifles actual progress and downplays scientific facts*.

My goal with this post is to compile a list of peer-reviewed, scientific publications that test the effects of fracking activities on human health and the environment. The reason is simple: I don't believe that I know enough about the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing to make an informed decision about how and where it should be allowed and how it should be regulated. Considering that regulation is minimal at this point in time, we've got a lot of work to do. As with many difficult topics, my opinion about fracking becomes more blurred the more I learn. I hope that, by revealing more than just soundbites I can convince you to move toward the grey areas, where compromises live.

If anyone happens to stumble across this list and has suggestions for additional articles, I'd be happy to hear from you.

*As we now know them.

Here is the first set of articles related to Hydraulic Fracturing (added Feb 3, 2014):

Boudet H., Clarke C., Bugden D., Maibach E., Roser-Renouf C. & Leiserowitz A. (2014) “Fracking” controversy and communication: Using national survey data to understand public perceptions of hydraulic fracturing. Energy Policy 65, 57–67.

Boxall P.C., Chan W.H. & McMillan M.L. (2005) The Impact of Oil and Natural Gas Facilities on Rural Residential Property Values: A Spatial Hedonic Analysis. Elsevier B.V.

Brantley S.L., Yoxtheimer D., Arjmand S., Grieve P., Vidic R., Pollak J., et al. (2014) Water Resource Impacts during Unconventional Shale Gas Development: the Pennsylvania Experience. International Journal of Coal Geology.
Cluff, M.A., A. Hartsock, J. D. MacRae, K. Carter, & P. J. Mouser (2014) Temporal Changes in Microbial Ecology and Geochemistry in Produced Water from Hydraulically Fractured Marcellus Shale Gas Wells. Environmental Science & Technology 48: 6508–6517. 

Darrah, T.H., A. Vengosh, R.B. Jackson, N.R. Warner, & R.J. Poreda (2014) Noble gases identify the mechanisms of fugitive gas contamination in drinking water wells overlying the Marcellus and Barnett shales. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111:39 14076-14081.
D J. (2012) Shale gas in South Africa: Fracking the Karoo. The Economist.

Ecology and Environment, Inc. (2011) Economic assessment report for the supplemental generic environmental impact statement on New York State’s oil, gas, and solution mining regulatory program. Ecology and Environment, Inc., Lancaster, NY.

Eltschlager K.K., Hawkins K.K., Ehler W.C. & Baldassare F. (2001) Technical measures for the investigation and mitigation of fugitive methane hazards in areas of coal mining. Appalachian Regional Coordinating Center.

Gunningham N. (2014) A shale gas revolution for China? Climate Policy 14, 302–320.

Hamilton S.K., Golding S.D., Baublys K.A. & Esterle J.S. (2014) Stable isotopic and molecular composition of desorbed coal seam gases from the Walloon Subgroup, eastern Surat Basin, Australia. International Journal of Coal Geology 122, 21–36.

Heilweil V.M., Stolp B.J., Kimball B.A., Susong D.D., Marston T.M. & Gardner P.M. (2013) A Stream-Based Methane Monitoring Approach for Evaluating Groundwater Impacts Associated with Unconventional Gas Development. Groundwater.

Howarth R.W., Ingraffea A. & Engelder T. (2011a) Natural gas: Should fracking stop? Nature 477, 271–275.

Howarth R.W., Santoro R. & Ingraffea A. (2011b) Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations. Climatic Change 106, 679–690.

Hultman N., Rebois D., Scholten M. & Ramig C. (2011) The greenhouse impact of unconventional gas for electricity generation. Environmental Research Letters 6, 044008.

Integra Realty Resources (2011) Flower Mound Well Site Impact Study. Integra Realty Resources, Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX.

IPCC (2007) The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK.

Jackson R.B., Vengosh A., Darrah T.H., Warner N.R., Down A., Poreda R.J., et al. (2013) Increased stray gas abundance in a subset of drinking water wells near Marcellus shale gas extraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, 11250–11255.

Katzenstein A.S., Doezema L.A., Simpson I.J., Blake D.R. & Rowland F.S. (2003) Extensive regional atmospheric hydrocarbon pollution in the southwestern United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100, 11975–11979.

King J.C., Bryan J.L. & Clark M. (2012) Factual causation: The missing link in hydraulic fracture-groundwater contamination litigation. Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 22, 341–360.

Li H. & Carlson K.H. (2014) Distribution and origin of groundwater methane in the Wattenberg oil and gas field of Northern Colorado. Environmental science & technology.

Molofsky L.J., Connor J.A., Wylie A.S., Wagner T. & Farhat S.K. (2013) Evaluation of Methane Sources in Groundwater in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Groundwater.

Moniz E.J., Jacoby H.D., Meggs A.J.M., Armtrong R.C., Cohn D.R., Connors S.R., et al. (2011) The future of natural gas - an interdisciplinary study. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Muehlenbachs L., Spiller E. & Timmins C. (2014) The Housing Market Impacts of Shale Gas Development. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Myers T. (2012) Potential contaminant pathways from hydraulically fractured shale to aquifers. Ground Water 50, 872–882.

Osborn S.G., Vengosh A., Warner N.R. & Jackson R.B. (2011) Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, 8172–8176.

Paltsev S., Jacoby H.D., Reilly J.M., Ejaz Q.J., Morris J., O’Sullivan F., et al. (2011) The future of US natural gas production, use, and trade. Energy Policy 39, 5309–5321.

Pétron G., Frost G., Miller B.R., Hirsch A.I., Montzka S.A., Karion A., et al. (2012) Hydrocarbon emissions characterization in the Colorado Front Range: A pilot study. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 117, 1–19.

BBC Research and Consulting B. (2001) Measuring the Impact of Coalbed Methane Wells on Property Values. BBC Research and Consulting, Denver, CO.

Soeder D.J., Sharma S., Pekney N., Hopkinson L., Dilmore R., Kutchko B., et al. (2014) An approach for assessing engineering risk from shale gas wells in the United States. International Journal of Coal Geology.

Strait R., Roe S., Bailie A., Lindquist H. & Jamison A. (2007) Colorado greenhouse gas inventory and reference case projections 1990–2020. CDPHE, Denver, CO.

Talma A.S. & Esterhuyse C. (2013) Natural Methane in the Karoo: Its Occurrence and Isotope Clues to its Origin. In: Groundwater conference, Durban. .

US EPA Hydraulic Fracturing.

US GAO (2012) Unconventional oil and gas development: Key environmental and public health requirements. U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Vengosh A., Warner N., Jackson R. & Darrah T. (2013) The Effects of Shale Gas Exploration and Hydraulic Fracturing on the Quality of Water Resources in the United States. Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 7, 863–866.

Vidic R.D., Brantley S.L., Vandenbossche J.M., Yoxtheimer D. & Abad J.D. (2013) Impact of shale gas development on regional water quality. Science 340, 826–834.

Wang Q., Chen X., Jha A.N. & Rogers H. (2014) Natural gas from shale formation–The evolution, evidences and challenges of shale gas revolution in United States. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 30, 1–28.

White J.S. & Mathes M.V. (2006) Dissolved gas concentrations in ground water in West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey.

Willow A.J., Zak R., Vilaplana D. & Sheeley D. (2014) The contested landscape of unconventional energy development: a report from Ohio’s shale gas country. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 1–9.

Yang C. China drills Into shale gas, targeting huge reserves amid challenges. National Geographic.

Zoback M., Kitasei S. & Copithorne B. (2010) Addressing the environmental risks from shale gas development.

E. coli

o We’ve all heard the name: E. coli.  

Escherichia coli.

All good stories should start with a bunch of dudes in
white lab coats. This one involve the Nobel laureates
(L to R) Francois Jacob, Jacques Monod, and Andre
Lwoff. Source: nobelprize.org.

Most of us only care about this bacterium after an outbreak of food-borne illness^a, causing us to shun leafy greens or hamburgers for a while. But E. coli has another, brighter story to tell that might change your perspective, and it starts with the advent of modern microbiology. During the mid-20^th century, a man by the name of Jacques Monod and his research compadre Francois Jacob were trying to understand gene regulation. E. coli was already becoming a model organism in microbiology, with its nutrition and growth characteristics and some genetic features already well described. Using the regulation of lactose metabolism in E. coli as a model, Monod and his colleagues uncovered a novel way by which organisms can regulate gene expression so as to maximize cellular efficiency (1) (For those of you who are reminded of introductory biology and the negative feedback loop of the lac operon, that’s what I’m talking about). As it turns out, Monod and his colleagues identified a universal mechanism of gene regulation, which is used by many different species and on many different genes (i.e. Tryptophan, 2). This discovery won the posse of Frenchmen the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1965.

In case this esoteric example isn't enough, E. coli has also been responsible for the careers of many other influential scientists: visit the Nobel Laureates website and search for “E. coli”, for instance, and you’ll get 75 hits^b. Clearly this microbe has played a leading role in discovering much of what we know about modern microbiology and genetics, and that role continues to this day in thousands of labs all over the world (including many labs I have worked in over the years, for topics ranging from neuron physiology to genetic engineering).

Microscopic image of E. coli after Gram staining. Based on traditional
microbiological methods, E. coli is a gram-negative rod that typically
occurs as single cells or doublets. Phylogenetically, it belongs to the
gammaproteobacterial group. Source: G.Kaiser.

E. coli is also one of the fastest reproducing bacteria on the planet, with a generation time in the lab of less than 20 minutes^c. That equates to 24 generations in a single 8-hour work day, something that would take about 480^d years for humans to achieve!

A recently published article in the journal Nature (4) takes advantage of this fast growth rate to trace the evolution of mutations in laboratory strains of E. coli, in what must be the longest laboratory study of evolution ever. You see, when it comes to evolution, what really matters is the rate of mutations. To get mutations in a normal population, you need DNA replication, which means you need cell division. Each time a cell replicates its DNA, it is guaranteed to make mistakes (at an immeasurably small rate of about 10^-9 mistakes per base pair. A cool new study suggests that this rate might be slowing in humans![3]).

Schematic of the development of aerobic citrate (cit) metabolism in E. coli, as depicted by Hendrickson and Rainey (doi:/10.1038/nature11487). Lineages that end in a dot went extinct due to competition. Cit+ lineages acquired the ability to metabolize citrate when oxygen was present, a clear advantage. 3 evolutionary steps were outlined (4) starting with "potentiation", or the development of mutations that provide the potential for aerobic citrate metabolism; followed by "actualization", or organization of the new genes to actually metabolize citrate, and eventually led to "refinement", or increased gene activity that increased growth on citrate. Interestingly, only 1 of the 3 citrate-metabolizing lineages made it to the "refinement" stage...

Most of these mistakes go unnoticed because they don’t change the physical appearance or function of the organism. But, after many generations (and we are talking about thousands of generations), a non-lethal, life-changing mistake can happen. The astonishing feature of this study is that these laboratory strains of E. coli have been growing for over 40,000 generations. The populations were grown under selective (low glucose, high citrate) conditions to test the ability of E. coli to adapt to growth on citrate, a compound that the original populations were unable to metabolize. Amazingly, after about 10,000 generations some select individuals ‘evolved’ the ability to transport citrate in the presence of oxygen, and again after another ~8,000 generations.

To put this into perspective, if the cells divided at a conservative rate of once every 30 minutes, then 10,000 generations will have past in just over 200 days. Humans, for their entire existence (assuming that we evolved ~1 million years ago and reproduce every 20 years) have undergone only about 50,000 generations, highlighting one of the great values in studying evolutionary processes in microbes. Thus, this study demonstrates that the accumulation of mutations over time can lead to truly revolutionary changes in a species. Amazing! From there, one could easily envision a species becoming so different from it’s original conception that it would be considered novel.

Schematic Venn diagram illustrating the gene overlap between
different strains of E. coli (not to scale). The outlined area in the
center highlights the amount of genetic code shared by all strains.
Pretty small, huh? 

Most people will continue to associate E. coli with illness, and certain populations can pose a serious public health risk. But modern genomics has taught us that we cannot judge all strains based on the evil of a few. Most strains live harmoniously in our guts and do helpful things, like aiding in vitamin absorption (5). In fact, of 60 randomly sequenced E. coli isolates, only 20% of their genetic code is shared! This means that different E. coli isolates are less genetically related than we humans are to apes (~98%), and are only slightly more closely related than we are to dogs (we share about 5% of our genetic code with our "best friends", 7). 

So, I hope that after reading this you now have a great deal more appreciation than apprehension when you hear the name E. coli, one of the powerhouses of modern microbiology.

Notes and References

a. For the record, most E. coli strains (serotypes) are completely harmless and reside within many people’s guts all of the time. There are a few pathogenic strains – such as O157:H7 – that do cause seriously disgusting illness in people. Yet another reason to avoid eating poop.

b For comparison, S. aureus has 10 hits, Bacillus subtilis has about 10 hits; Yeast has 179 hits! Go yeast!

c. They were strong contenders for the gold in the microbial Olympics sprinting event, “Most Progeny”, but sadly they were overcome by phage … (for an entertaining review, check out: Youle et al., Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2012, 583-588).

d. Assuming an average generation time of 20 years.

1. Jacob F, Monod J (1961). Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins. Journal of Molecular Biology 3: 318-356. PMID: 13718526.

2. Santillan M, Mackey MC (2001). Dynamic regulation of the tryptophan operonL A modeling study and comparison with experimental data. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 80: 1364–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.98.4.1364.

3. Scally A, Durbin R (2012). Revising the human mutation rate: implications for understanding human evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics 13 (824). doi:10.1038/nrg3353

4. Blount ZD, Barrick JE, Davidson CJ, Lenski RE (2012). Genomic analysis of a key innovation in an experimental Escherichia coli population. Nature 489: 513-520. doi: 10.1038/nature11514.
5. Bentley R, Meganathan R (1982). Biosynthesis of vitamin K in bacteria. Microbiol and Molecular Biol. Reviews 46: 241-280.
6. Lukjanenko O, Wassenaar TM, Ussery DW (2010). Comparison of 61 sequenced Escherichia coli genomes. Microbial Ecology 60: 708-720. doi:10.1007/s00248-010-9717-3.
7. Lindblad-Toh K, Wade CM, Mikkelsen TS, Karlsson EK (2005) Genome sequence, comparative analysis and haplotype structure of the domestic dog. Nature 438: 803-819. doi 10.1038/nature04338.