Bad News: Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water

[kelemvor]

There's a fresh and credible challenge to this legislation! I'm usually a Gators fan, but not today. Go Seminoles!

Seminole Tribe challenges water pollution limits

 

[Buliwyf]

Frickin' Fracking. Fracking is a business that is just a complete disaster for Americans. I hadn't put that together until I saw your post. I think you're right.

Fracking is just this years scape goat. I've been on dozens of fracking ops. It's completely blown out of proportion. All of the byproducts and fracking fluids are $$$$. They store them, not dump them. Spilling a bucket of fracking fluid is about the same as spilling out your wallet. It was actually an amazingly clean operation because of that. Maybe there's some messy ones, but I haven;t seen them yet.

If people want to shutdown coal plants, and not build nuclear (assuming the fuel is available), then you're stuck with fracking for a supply of NG. No real way around it, until people cut their homes power demands.

The biggest problem I've seen lately is cities and farms polluting. Farms are way over spraying and fertilizing. (not even going to mention asian farm carp) But since the eco people don't stand a chance in heck going toe to toe with the farm industry, they don't bother fighting them.

I've even witnessed farmers ask to get DDT back! That's how ignorant that industry has become.

 

[kelemvor]

Well from a power perspective, I prefer nuclear until solar and wind or some other option becomes more viable. However, I was under the impression that during fracking the fluid was pumped into the ground in order to break or move the rocks and release NG. Does the fluid that's been pumped down there get sucked back up? There's a pretty big anti fracking movement and lots of articles about that not being the case. Until now I'd never heard anyone claim anything contrary. I'm not an anti fracking activist or anything like that but what I've seen in the news doesn't look good to me.

Our power company here does have a substantial solar installation generating 75MW.

Personally, I'd like to see individual power generation take over. Especially where I live, both wind and solar are viable from a technical perspective. I can't legally install it because it's an "eyesore" and "wind kills birds" - at least it did before helical turbines were created. Oddly enough, it's legal to heat my pool with solar, but not legal to put up a pv panel.

 

[Buliwyf]

The fracking fluid get's pumped into the well to fracture the earth about 10,000 feet down. Then the fluid and the oil/gas come back up in the well. The fluid never leaves the well or gas deposit. When it comes back up it's stored and reused at the next drill sight.

Most of the nasty chemicals in the fracking fluid are actually picked up from the earth it's being pushed through. But still, you have to be responsible for that when it comes back up. Any of the fluid that doesn't come up, is still left behind inside the oil well. So if the oil well wasn't already leaking up 9,000 feet to our water wells, neither will the fracking fluid.

No different than oil really. As long as you don't spill anything, it's pretty fair. The huge push against it, is mostly political, and has nothing to do with the environment at all. Green is just a tool.

The only problem I've currently witness is with oil fracking. Shale oil is only worthwhile to produce when the price of gasoline is over $4.00. Thanks to the Saudi's desperate attempt to artificially lower the price of fuel to put fracking out of biz, we have a bunch of wells that are shut down. So that means that the fracking fluid has to be stored or cleaned. Because it's usually recycled to the next well. If we aren't drilling more wells, then we have excess fluid. So fluid storage and cleaning/disposal is becoming a very quick growing industry right now.

Solar is the best residential option. I have about a dozen customers that are 100% solar. (except for heat in the winter) They still have utility electric connected, and the solar system power module can seamlessly transfer load to utility if the batteries get low. Resi natural gas generators are a poor option. Good for standby only, and they stink at that, even.

I'm amazed that solar hasn't become more popular. The price is coming down. It's hardly more expensive than a standby generator. If we could get 50% of our residential load from solar and not the grid, the positive environmental effect would be huge. Keep in mind that most of the power output of a power plant, is lost traveling through the grid.