weekly newspaper.
Swimming against a global tide to ban fracking outright, the government has published new proposals to safeguard South Africa’s declining water resources through “controlled” fracking – while simultaneously leaving the door wide open for oil and gas corporations to blast vast quantities of water underground to extract fossil fuels.
The new plans by Water Affairs Minister Lindiwe Sisulu propose a 5km buffer zone to separate fracking operations from strategic water resources, wells and dams, along with a ban on certain toxic fracking fluids.
Fracking – or hydraulic fracturing – is a water-intensive technology pioneered in the United States and Canada to get access to declining reserves of fossil fuels by injecting a high-pressure cocktail of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to smash apart underground rock formations, raising major concerns about the pollution of surface and underground water supplies – and increasing the likelihood of earth
Agency permanently bans fracking near Delaware River
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Agency permanently bans fracking near Delaware River – Times News Online
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Michael Rubinkam
A regulatory agency that’s responsible for the water supply of more than 13 million people in four Northeastern states voted Thursday to permanently ban natural gas drilling and fracking near a crucial waterway, asserting that gas development poses an unacceptable risk.
The Delaware River Basin Commission cited “significant immediate and long-term risks” from gas extraction, saying in a resolution that drillers have “adversely impacted surface-water and groundwater resources, including sources of drinking water, and have harmed aquatic life in some regions.”
The ban applies to two counties in Pennsylvania’s northeastern tip that are part of the nation’s largest gas field, the Marcellus Shale. Nearly 13,000 wells have been drilled elsewhere in the vast Marcellus formation, turning Pennsylvania into the nation’s No. 2 gas-producing state.