Letter to the Editor: We can't afford frac sand mining

(The following Letter to the Editor has been submitted by John Beard of Decorah):

"Everybody knows the value in planning, protecting assets and investing carefully. Nobody likes waste. For these reasons most county residents I talk to are opposed to frac sand mining. They believe that the county has more to lose than to gain.  While we examine the economics of frac sand mining we must also examine the economics of fracking because it created the demand for sand.

Today we are at an energy crossroads. Renewable energy is becoming cost competitive with fossil energy. Stanford University scientist Mark Jacobson says"100 percent renewable is in our grasp" and has developed energy self- sufficiency plans for all 50 states using a base combination of wind, solar and water. Adopting this plan would better protect our air, water and produce more jobs for more Americans.

Do we allow fossil energy to extend its reign, maximize its profits and damage our natural world or do we begin today to construct the energy infrastructure we will need tomorrow? Choose right and the fuel is free. Forever.

The fossil fuel companies have lots of money to buy lots of propaganda and lots of politicians and they are busy doing exactly that. Exxon Mobil, Americas' most profitable corporation, is also the largest fracker. It is interesting then that one of the strongest critics of fracking is a former Mobil executive vice president whose long and distinguished career included implementing the merger between Exxon and Mobil. Louis W. Allstadt spent 31 years with Mobil, managing all aspects of exploration, production, marketing, refining, trading and transportation. He knew little about fracking until he retired to upstate New York, a state underlain by the same Marcellus Shale that was being extensively fracked in neighboring Pennsylvania. The likelihood that fracking could happen in his new community made him look into the process.

At first he thought there could be technical solutions to his concerns; after all he had been in the industry when it solved the huge technical problems of drilling in hostile places like the iceberg alley 250 miles offshore of Newfoundland. For a man who liked to get things right, fracking presented far too many uncertainties. The fracturing process was wildly unpredictable. Fissures could find their way to the surface, or to ground water or even to seismic faults to trigger earthquakes. All of these results have been documented although the industry has tried to hide them. A recent TV news story showed Texas school children practicing earthquake drills because of the new regularity of fracking induced quakes.

Allstadt is also troubled by the immediate and future leakage of methane from the huge number of new gas wells and related piping. At least one study shows that many wells leak immediately and that all wells leak within 100 years. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short term (less than 100 years).

And that isn't all.  Fracking requires huge amounts of water (up to 12 million gals/well), a real problem as clean water becomes scarcer. Some of the known cancer causing and environmental toxins mixed into fracking fluid are acrylamide, benzene, naphthalene, ethylbenzene, toluene, biocides and kerosene. When this toxic brew comes back to the surface as "produced' water it will bring with it a range of deep earth contaminants like arsenic, lead, chromium, barium, strontium plus radium 226 and other radioactive elements. Thanks to the"Halliburton Loophole" this witches' brew of known and unknown toxics is unregulated. One of Dick Cheney's' first legislative acts as vice president was to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to exclude regulation of fracking fluids.

Even without adding in environmental costs, fracked gas and oil is very expensive to produce relative to conventionally produced oil and gas and the production life of a fracked well is pathetically short compared to the 20-30 plus years of a conventional well. Allstadt calls fracking an increasingly expensive and dangerous "race for what's left."

The good news is that all around the world, countries, investors and businesses are choosing renewables over fossil sources of energy. The uncertainty and the enormous damage caused by extreme weather threaten more than just the insurance industry. Many forward looking businesses like the reliability of supply and price they get from renewables. They also know that as the scale of production for renewables ramps up prices will continue to fall.

Remember how quickly America went to the moon when President Kennedy asked us to. We could do the same with renewable energy if we demand more from our political leadership. American exceptionalism could be something we demonstrate rather than talk about."