Dash for Gas Raises Environmental Worries

American politicians often extol natural gas as abundant, cleaner-burning than other fossil fuels, and domestically produced, unlike Middle Eastern oil. But the process of extracting it is raising concerns among people with wells in their backyards. Anger and fear were on display last week at a public meeting convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Fort Worth, a gas-drilling hub. Dozens of local residents took turns at the microphone to voice concerns about potential contamination of drinking water. A film called “Gasland,” released last month on the cable channel HBO, showed people in drilling areas lighting their tap water on fire, as gas found its way into their water supply. “I am frustrated and angry,” said State Representative Lon Burnam, Democrat of Fort Worth, who spoke at the meeting and decried the “inadequacies” of state regulators. At issue is a procedure known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has been adopted widely in the United States over the past 10 years to extract gas trapped in shale formations. It is just starting to spread to other parts of the world, including Europe, China and Australia. More than 20,000 wells of this nature have been drilled in the past 10 years, according to a study of natural gas released last month by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...more