He’s also the founder of the environmental consulting firm Inform Environmental, LLC. “Rob Jackson’s study is really the first study to shed light on shallow wells” and their associated risk to groundwater, said Zacariah Hildenbrand, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Arlington. While most fracking is occurring at those depths, said Williams, this paper reveals a “surprising” number of shallow wells “and that’s a concern.” Consequently, migration of fracking fluid or methane from a frack zone more than a mile underground (deeper than 5,000 feet) to a shallow aquifer (around 1,000 feet) would be nearly impossible, industry contends. That’s because as concern has grown about fracking’s potential threat to well water in recent years, industry has sought to reassure the public by saying that fracking occurs at depths far below the water table. “You’ll hear from industry all the time that fracking only occurs a mile or two underground…it’s something that they push really hard,” said Mark Williams, a University of Colorado geography professor who was not involved with the study. Stanford University scientist Robert Jackson and his colleagues reviewed about 44,000 wells and found that nearly 7,000 of the sites were fracked less than a mile below the surface, according to research published this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The nation’s first survey of fracking well depths shows shallow fracking is more widespread than previously thought, occurring at 16 percent of publicly recorded sites in 27 states, posing a potential threat to underground sources of drinking water.
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