By Josh Harkinson
1 September 2011 At Trinity Park, a popular picnic spot near downtown Fort Worth, Texas, a scorching summer has killed stately oaks and turned lawns into brittle moonscapes. On the park’s eastern edge, loud diesel generators pump some 4 million gallons of water from the Trinity River, though they’re not supplying the park or city residents, who began facing drought-imposed watering restrictions on Monday. Instead, Chesapeake Energy is piping the water across the park to frack a nearby natural gas well. As Texas faces its worst single-year drought ever, many drinking wells have failed, entire towns could go dry, and millions of residential water users face mandatory cutbacks. A study released at a meeting of Texas water districts yesterday predicted that the drought will persist through next summer. But so far, the state’s booming and increasingly thirsty natural gas industry faces no limits to how much water it can pump. “In a drought like this, every drop is important,” says Don Young, a local anti-fracking activist who showed me where Chesapeake’s water pipes had been hoisted over a jogging trail. “And if we’re asked to conserve, then I think the drilling industry should be doing the same thing.” Fracking, which employs high-pressure jets of water to fracture rock and release natural gas, accounts for a fast-growing share of water use in some of the driest parts of Texas. Though the overall affect of fracking on reservoirs and rivers in Fort Worth’s Barnett Shale zone is dwarfed by agriculture and homeowners, its local impacts can be severe. For example, in the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District (UTGCD) west of Fort Worth, the share of groundwater used by frackers was 40 percent in the first half of 2011, up from 25 percent in 2010. “Obviously, that’s a pretty heavy draw on an aquifer when we’re in the midst of a drought,” says Bob Patterson, UTGCD’s general manager. In his water district, 40 to 50 wells have run dry and many municipalities have declared stage two or stage three drought conditions, which involve severe restrictions on residential outdoor water use. But natural gas drillers can still pump as much water from the district as they want. Patterson says restrictions targeting drillers in his area would have to be imposed by state agencies or the Legislature, which “has been fairly lax.” He and many other water managers want Texas Gov. Rick Perry to place limits on the drillers. Critics of fracking claim the industry actually uses far more water than it lets on. Because water used in the fracking process becomes contaminated with hydrocarbons and other toxins, frackers typically sequester it deep underground, removing that wastewater permanently from the hydrologic cycle. Unlike the water used for irrigation or daily living, it doesn’t reenter rivers, aquifers, or the atmosphere. “Fracking water is typically not recycled,” says Paul Hudak, a hydrologist with the University of North Texas. “It’s not really economical.” A similar battle is playing out in the Eagle Ford Shale zone of south Texas, where, due to a quirk of geology, wells typically require four times more fracking water than those in the Barnett Shale area. Each Eagle Ford well uses an average 13 million gallons of water, enough to supply the needs of 240 adults for a year. Some farmers in the area have refused to sell water to the drillers for fear of not having enough for their crops. ExxonMobil has taken to recycling fracking fluids, and Anadarko Petroleum is replacing dirt roads with limestone to cut down on water needed for dust control. Faced with drillers’ booming water needs, some Texas cities have taken matters into their own hands, charging drillers more for water or refusing to sell to them at all. […]

As Texas Withers, Gas Industry Guzzles