Fracking Is Draining Western Aquifers

This report from the Western Organization of Research Councils on the depletion of Western state aquifers from fracking is available for download at www.worc.org. The Wyoming state engineer estimates it would take 50,000 years to replenish the water loss to fracking in the Fort Union aquifer.

Oil and gas fracking is permanently removing at least seven billion gallons of water from the hydrologic cycle each year in four arid Western states, according to "Gone for Good," a 37-page report from the Western Organization of Research Councils (WORC). Those states are North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

WORC is a network of conservation and family farmers and ranchers in Colo., Montana, S.D., N.D., Oregon and Wyoming. The WORC report says "current level of water use for oil and gas [fracking] production simply cannot be sustained," and this water usage is reaching a crisis point in Western states.

Bob LeResche, a member of the WORC Board of Directors and the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming, says coalbed methane (CBM) production has compromised Wyoming's groundwater quantity. The state engineer reports the Fort Union aquifer has dropped as much as 625 feet since 1997, the result in large part because of extraction and disposal of groundwater used for CBM production. LeResche says it will take nature 50,000 years to replenish the aquifer.

The report says that N.D., Montana and Colorado (but not Wyoming) have "largely delegated key recordkeeping duties to the industry???(R)???AE?sponsored website, FracFocus, making it a de facto arm of government." The report urges states to take back the responsibility for planning and recordkeeping of fracking.