We became painfully aware off groundwater contamination in Lower Frederick Twp. Montgomery County PA. Intrinsic to fracking is the contamination of groundwater with fracking chemicals

The rock crystals you see on Rock Hill are not boulders. You see the tip of what is more than a mile deep wall of impervious rock splitting Lower Frederick’s well water in half. 

It was discovered that a gas station (there could have been other sources) was spilling Trichloroethylene (TCE) into the ground rendering the largest water source in Lower Frederick Township unusable. 

TCE contamination is the reason we ran out of water for a time until Philadelphia Suburban Water Company connected us to the Green Lane Reservoir. The pump station for the water from Green Lane Reservoir is at the confluence of the Perkiomen Creek at the Schuylkill River. 

I used to walk to the top of Rock Hill in the Meng Preserve from my home in Lower Frederick Township.

Jurassic or Triassic Rock of molten magma from the same volcanic rock Brunswick Formation at Devil’s Den in Gettysburg National Park is at the top of Rock Hill in Limerick Township, PA.  The rocks, which go more than a mile under the earth, look something like Superman’s crystal cave. 

FROM: http://www.docs.dcnr.pa.gov/topogeo/publications/pgspub/map/map1/index.htm

Some of my neighbors ran completely out of water

FROM:

Monday, July 9, 2018

Reading about the kids trapped in a cave reminded me that we lived over mine shafts.

I’m re-looking up stuff about the Copper mines under our house in Lower Frederick. They go back to about 1720 & William Penn:

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Intrinsic to fracking is the contamination of groundwater with fracking chemicals. 

"The EPA report found evidence that fracking has contributed to drinking water contamination — “cases of impact” — in all stages of the process: water withdrawals for hydraulic fracturing; spills during the management of hydraulic fracturing fluids and chemicals; injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids directly into groundwater resources; discharge of inadequately treated hydraulic fracturing wastewater to surface water resources; and disposal or storage of hydraulic fracturing wastewater in unlined pits, resulting in contamination of groundwater resources."

FROM:

EPA Concludes Fracking a Threat to U.S. Water Supplies

The EPA’s finding, endorsed by environmentalists, comes as the Trump administration prepares to rethink regulation of the gas drilling industry.

by Patrick G. Lee

Dec. 14, 2016, 6:02 p.m. EST

We could begin preserving water by stopping the permanent contamination of groundwater that is an intrinsic part of fracking. 

In the east groundwater is the source of tiny streams that branch into rivers & fill lakes. 

To preserve groundwater, fracking is illegal in New York. Pennsylvania is rapidly destroying groundwater contaminating it with fracking chemicals. 

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"The Central Valley of California supplies a quarter of the food on the nation’s dinner tables. But beneath this image of plenty and abundance, a crisis is brewing — an invisible one, under our feet — and it is not limited to California.

Coast to coast, our food producing regions, especially those stretching from the southern Great Plains across the sunny, dry Southwest, rely heavily and sometimes exclusively on groundwater for irrigation. And it’s disappearing — fast.

What happens to the nation’s food production if the groundwater runs out altogether? Unless we act now, we could soon reach a point where water must be piped from the wetter parts of the country, such as the Great Lakes, to drier, sunnier regions where the bulk of the nation’s food is produced. No one wants unsightly pipelines snaking across the country, draining Lake Michigan to feed the citrus groves of the Central Valley. But that future is drawing closer by the day, and at some point, we may look back on this moment and wish we’d acted differently." 

MORE AT:

The New York Times

Opinion | We Might Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed America - The New York Times

By Jay Famiglietti 

Aug. 5, 2024