The University of Texas at Arlington posted about the paper on July 26, 2013. On July 26, 2013 the public also starts chiming in. Notice that there is a span of "0" - zero - days before it gets picked up and spun.
Let's look at how a blog called the "Arlington TX Barnett Shale Blogger" writes about these finding from UTA. First, the title of the post:
UTArlington News Release on Tex Well study results NOT GOOD !The author of this blog, Kim Triolo, first copies and pastes the abstract. She then, as she puts it, "(I boldfaced for emphasis)" this part from the abstract:
"arsenic, selenium, strontium and total dissolved solids (TDS) exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s Drinking Water Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL) in some samples from private water wells located within 3 km (1.86 mile) of active natural gas wells."I have spent about seven hours of my weekend reading, re-reading, checking the citations, and looking into the different aspects of this paper. I am kind of a sciency guy, you know, this is my field. I sort of, kind of, understand this stuff. It takes a while to digest. Yet there is Kim Triolo and the news organizations in a span of zero days, writing about the findings.
I have no beef with Ms. Triolo. She is not the issue here, she is, in my opinion, the victim of data given to her by a major university under the banner of peer-reviewed. The lead author on this paper, Brian E. Fontenot, as well as the other ten names on the paper, have presented a paper where they speculate that natural gas is the cause of these elevated levels of contaminants. That's where the title of this series of posts comes from:
Given this limitation, our discussion of the source of elevated constituents is speculative, but we have provided plausible scenarios to explain our data in an effort to increase scientific understanding of this topic and spur future research. At a minimum, these data suggest that private wells located near natural gas wells may be at higher risk for elevated levels of constituents than those located further from natural gas wells.Let's look at the last sentence in the abstract, you know, the only part of an academic paper that 99.999% of people read.
...our data suggest that elevated constituent levels could be due to a variety of factors including mobilization of natural constituents, hydrogeochemical changes from lowering of the water table, or industrial accidents such as faulty gas well casings.That's an example of the "sandwich effect" whereby you place the plausible factor that works against you between two plausible factors that work in you favor. In this case, the non-natural gas cause of "hydrogeochemical changes from lowering of the water table" is sandwiched between "mobilization of natural constituents" from "disturbances from natural gas extraction activities" and "industrial accidents such as faulty gas well casings."
Remember, UTA is not being untruthful here. They are speculating that the drilling and pumping in the Barnett Shale is a "plausible scenario to explain their data."
Let's look at that word "plausible."
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Back to Kim Triolo and her blog called the Arlington TX Barnett Shale Blogger. Here is what Ms. Triolo came to understand about the plausibility presented by UTA:
As a concerned citizen, I want to act upon this study….I'll let you read her concerns yourself. Like I said earlier, this is not about her. With this UTA paper in hand, Ms. Triolo is going to "attempt to contact the up to 300 water well owners within a five mile area of my home." She informs her readers that "I’ve contacted the mayor of Pantego since THEY R on well water…ouch!!!"
With this peer-reviewed article from a reputable university, the effort, funding, and resources will now shift away form Public Health issues that really do impact health and safety and into funding more research on connecting oil and gas drilling and pumping to contamination of groundwater.
/sigh
/off soapbox
Next post: Part 3
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