Relax,it concerns proprietary information and hydro fracturing . Last winter I ran up against a puzzle when trying to find out what exactly the oatmeal like slurry spread on roads by the Vermont State Highway Dept as an ice melting agent contained .Recently I came across a press release about a company that has been nominated to win a small business award in Massachusetts .The company’s name was Dirt Glue .Intrigued by that name and concept I checked out the website. I found that this business supplies a product that stabilizes soil, potholes and prevents dust from forming on construction sites and livestock areas. Dirt Glue! Great name, great concept. But try to find what the stuff might contain.
These products may be perfectly safe; but it is difficult to find out with clarity what they are made with. The common factor here is proprietary information, genuine real life secret formulas. Allegedly competitors would have an unfair advantage if the ingredients were publicly known. (Oddly a similar argument for secrecy is being made against making public the amount of research funding the pharmaceutical industry gives to doctors and public institutions.) This story below is directly related to Dirt Glue and road slurry only by the fact that it involves secrecy and public safety .In a process called hydro fracturing chemicals are pumped into the ground to release “trapped” oil and natural gas .Bush -era changes to the clean water act exempted this process from some federal regulations .Near a drilling operation in Louisiana cows have died and local EPA officials grant industry an awful lot of leeway.
ProPublica reports sixteen cattle dropped dead in a northwestern Louisiana field this week after apparently drinking from a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig, according to Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality and a report in the Shreveport Times. At least one worker told the newspaper that the fluids, which witnesses described as green and spewing into the air near the drilling derrick, were used for a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. But the company, Chesepeake Energy, has not identified exactly what chemicals are in those fluids and is insisting to state regulators that no spill occurred.
The problem is that both Chesapeake and its contractor doing the work Schlumberger, say that a lot of these fluids are proprietary, said Otis Randle, regional manager for the DEQ. “It can be an obstacle, but we try to be fair to everybody,” he said. “We try to remember that the products they use are theirs and they need them to make a living.”
http://www.propublica.org/special/hydraulic-fracturing-national
http://www.propublica.org/arti…
http://www.shreveporttimes.com…
Hydraulic fracturing — a process in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped deep underground at high pressure to break rock and release natural gas — is controversial because of the secrecy surrounding the fluids and because the process is exempted from protections of the Safe Drinking Water Act and thus from regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress is currently considering legislation to address these issues out of concern that fracturing, and the fluids and waste that are part of the process, may be contaminating drinking water in several states.
Scientists at the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have told ProPublica that it’s difficult for them to assess the environmental risks posed by hydraulic fracturing chemicals because the companies that use them won’t release the exact names and cursory medical advice for workers exposed to the chemical and the amounts of the chemicals. The energy service companies, including Halliburton and Schlumberger, say that disclosing that information would put them at a competitive disadvantage, and they insist the fluids are safe. Some information about the materials is made available through Material Safety Data Sheets, which can provide cursory medical advice for workers exposed to the chemicals.