MITIGATING FRACKING

Today's Waterloo Region Record has an Editorial that first appeared on Bloomberg News' Bloomberg View. The Record have titled it "Another view: Save water". It talks about ways of saving and recycling the massive quantities of water used in the fracking process whereby water under pressure is injected to break up shale formations and release both oil and gas. The suggestion is that fracking water can and should be used over and over again when possible thus saving on overall water use. The state of Pennsylvania also demands that drillers disclose "...how much water a well will use, from where and what effect that will have on local sources.".

O.K. it's hard to argue against those ideas. Or is it? Even with those improvements are the true full costs of fracking worth the additional value of oil and gas released? Is this just one more case whereby private interests pocket the profits and society and the environment get stuck with the bill for the damages done by fracking?