Who's Telling The Truth?
Nuanced Duke Study Prompts Half-Truths About Fracking's Danger, Safety
 | | Image: Terry Wild |
Press coverage following the publication of Duke University's study on Marcellus brine in shallow drinking water aquifers left many scratching their heads. Here's a smattering of newspaper headlines on the Duke findings, the first from the front-page of Williamsport's daily newspaper, the Sun-Gazette:
New Research Shows No Marcellus Shale Pollution
Confirmed: Fracking can pollute
New Study: Fluids From Marcellus Shale Likely Seeping Into PA Drinking Water
Fracking Did Not Sully Aquifers, Limited Study Finds
Pennsylvania Fracking Can Put Water at Risk, Duke Study Finds
Phew. What to believe? How about an excerpt from the actual study, published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
"We present geochemical evidence from northeastern Pennsylvania showing that pathways, unrelated to recent drilling activities, exist in some locations between deep underlying formations and shallow drinking water aquifers. The occurrences of saline water do not correlate with the location of shale-gas wells and are consistent with reported data before rapid shale-gas development in the region; however, the presence of these fluids suggests conductive pathways and specific geostructural and/or hydrodynamic regimes in northeastern Pennsylvania that are at increased risk for contamination of shallow drinking water resources, particularly by fugitive gases, because of natural hydraulic connections to deeper formations." Critical readers will easily see why media coverage of this issue is so divergent: As truth often is, the Duke findings are nuanced and complex in implication. Natural pathways exist for fluids to migrate from the Marcellus to groundwater aquifers, but neither the brine nor its migration can be linked to drilling activities.
Both sides of the fracking debate have cherry-picked parts of the study to disseminate and parts to ignore. The media's assumption that Americans are unable to parse subtleties of meaning annihilates the possibility for fact-based dialogue.
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