Abstract
This paper studied
the water crisis in the City of Lubbock and how well people know about the
fracking and its environmental impacts on the public water supplies. This study
was conducted by the ESL 5301 class in fall, 2013. After an extensive
background study and survey data analysis, we concluded that the engineering
education level could affect the knowledge of people on fracking and its
impacts. Moreover, we found out that how well people know about fracking
depends on geography. People from Texas, where a lot of fracking wells are
operating, tend to know more about fracking and its impacts than non-Texans.
Introduction
The water crisis
is a common problem that has happened everywhere because of the growth of
population, farming, contamination and so on. No exception, The City of Lubbock is also facing a severe water crisis.
Lake Meredith has been the primary water source for years for Lubbock (Reed,
2012) until 2011. As Lake Meredith has completely dried
up, the water crisis has been paid more attention than ever before. In 2013,
the main source of water for Lubbock comes from two well fields in Roberts
County and Bailey County and Lake Alan Henry. The Lubbock Water Department has
acclaimed that the City is constantly exploring water sources for Lubbock and
they have made plans for the residents for the next 100 years (Lubbock Water
Department, 2013). However, using water wisely is always the best way to
protect our water sources.
Background
There are a lot
of articles discussing the solution for
Lubbock's water crisis. "Lubbock residents use 190 gallons per person each
day. If we can cut it off to 170 gallons per person, not only can we save money
but also we can extend the usage of our water sources for several more years"
(KCBD News, 2005). Deputy City Manager Tom Adams says, "If we didn't do
anything, it's possible by 2015, we would need a new source. But if we can
conserve just a little bit, we can push that to 2020, 2025, even 2030"
(KCBD News, 2005, par. 2). Because of the lack of actions to save water, this
prediction already came true in 2013 when we started the new supply of Lake
Alan Henry. Thus Adams, from The Water Advisory Commission, proposed a rate
structure in the way we are charged for water. Adams says, "The more you
use it stays the same rate. The next step would be an increasing rate structure
where the more you use the higher the price is" (KCBD News, 2005, par. 3).
This efficient way to address the water crisis was adopted by many cities such
as Tucson, Portland and Denver.
Unfortunately, it is confirmed by the City of Lubbock that the city had
not applied a water rate structure since 2006 (KCBD News, 2013). "The City
of Lubbock is on a block rate system and it has been encouraging water
conservation for many decades and will still stay on the water conservation
plan" (KCBD News, 2013).
New technology of recycling water may also
plays a crucial role for solving the water crisis in the future. Rainwater from
NASA mentioned that the Johnson Space Center [JSC] has spent years trying to
find a new way to recycle water for long term space flight (KCBD News, 2005). Rainwater
says, "They're trying to look for other means that don't have to use up
the filters as much. So what our work here has been focusing on is biological
means to treat the water where you essentially use microorganisms to degrade
the organic components of our urine" (2005, par. 12). This new technology
could be used in the City of Lubbock to tackle the water crisis. Lubbock's
wastewater treatment plant manager Mary Gonzales says, "We treat about 21
million gallons per day" (KCBD News, 2005, par. 13). Therefore we could
add oxygen to accelerate the bacteria to eat those organic materials in waste
water and create a new renewable source of water for the City of Lubbock (KCBD
news, 2005). If we can use the massive wind energy in Texas in waste water
treatment plants, we will be able to reduce significantly the high cost of
recycling water and make this plan come true in the near future.
When everybody is trying to figure
out the best way of dealing with Lubbock's water crisis, a proposal that leases
lands to a fracking company from Fort Worth was passed during a city council
meeting in March, 2012 (Gonzalez, 2012). However, this big thing for the City
was not presented to any town hall meetings for the public to discuss it.
Ellysa Gonzalez said, "They presented no opportunities for public
discussion on the matter. It was like it was a back room deal" (Gonzalez,
2012, par. 11). After talking to a few people, Gonzalez found out that not one
of them knew that the city had already signed a contract about the fracking
operation. “A lot of people we have talked with do not know that the city of
Lubbock leased out these lands to a company that plans to do fracking on it,” she
said (Gonzalez, 2012, par. 7). “It’s hydraulic fracturing of the underground
bedrock to extract oil and natural gas.” Moreover, an online petition has been
posted by Sandra Manzari, a Lubbock resident, to propose a vote by the
residents about the fracking (Gonzalez, 2012).
“I teach my son that we are a democracy,” Manzari stated in an email. “A
government for the people by the people, yet this city council voted to have
fracking in the city and I never got a say” (Gonzalez, 2012, par. 13). Thus, we
did a survey during this study to find out how much people know about the water
crisis and the fracking problems in Lubbock. Manzari claims the public to be
uninformed. “Something as important as this should be a vote by the people not
a little city council meeting,” she said in an email. “We are not deciding on
if we need more parking meters or not” (Gonzalez, 2012, par.15). Water
contamination, excessive use of water and air contamination by fracking are
highly related to every resident in Lubbock (Magelssen, 2012). Thus,
every resident has rights to be informed and vote to make their own decisions.
In general, people have many
concerns about fracking, which includes Contamination of groundwater, Air
pollution impacts, Exposure to toxic chemicals, Waste disposal,
Fracking-induced earthquakes (Finewood
and Stroup, 2012). Because fracking is a very complicated engineering
process involving injections of poisonous chemicals. "Vertical well bores
are drilled thousands of feet into the earth, through sediment layers, the
water table, and shale rock formations in order to reach the oil and gas. The
drilling is then angled horizontally, where a cement casing is installed and
will serve as a conduit for the massive volume of water, fracking fluid,
chemicals and sand needed to fracture the rock and shale. In some cases, prior
to the injection of fluids, small explosives are used to open up the bedrock.
The fractures allow the gas and oil to be removed from the formerly impervious
rock formations" (Finewood and
Stroup, 2012).
A
2011 article in the journal, Human
and Ecological Risk Assessment, examined the potential health impacts of oil and gas drilling in relation to the chemicals used during
drilling, fracking, processing, and delivery of natural gas (Colborn et
al., 2011). The paper compiled a list of 632 chemicals (an
incomplete list due to trade secrecy exemptions) identified from drilling
operations throughout the U.S. Their research found that 75% of the chemicals
could affect the skin, eyes,and other sensory organs, and the respiratory and
gastrointestinal systems. Approximately 40–50% could affect the brain/nervous
system, immune and cardiovascular systems, and the kidneys; 37% could affect
the endocrine system; and 25% could cause cancer and mutations.
Since
fracking is a new technology, a complete study about the long-term health
impacts by fracking process still need to be investigated in the future. "Health
impacts from fracking are only now being examined by health experts, since such
large-scale drilling is a recent phenomenon. Exposure to toxic chemicals even
at low levels can cause tremendous harm to humans; the endocrine system is
sensitive to chemical exposures measuring in parts-per-billions, or less.
Nevertheless, many of the health risks from the toxins used during the fracking
process do not express themselves immediately, and require studies looking into
long-term health effects" (Colborn
et al., 2011).
As of March 2012
Texas had listed nearly 6,000 oil and gas fracking wells on FracFocus, an
industry fracking disclosure site. The Texas list was by far the most of any
state in the country (Tresaugue, 2012). In 2011, Texas had about 93,000
natural-gas wells, up from around 58,000 in 2000. If Texas were a country, it
would be the third largest producer of natural gas in the world, behind Russia
and the rest of the U.S (Urbina, 2011). Therefore, it is reasonable to believe
that most Texans should know more fracking than people from other places.
In this study, we
did a survey among residents in Lubbock to evaluate if they know about the
fracking proposal, what fracking is, and how well they know about the
environmental impacts of fracking.
Hypotheses
In order to evaluate Lubbock residents' opinions about the
water crisis and fracking, we did a survey on campus asking how much they knew about
fracking and if they worried about Lubbock's water sources. Based on the literature review, it seems
that most people didn't know much about fracking and the huge environmental impacts
on water sources by fracking. Furthermore, it is also likely that engineering
education level will affect the ideas of people on fracking and its impacts. Since
there were much fewer females in engineering fields, it was safe to conclude
that males would tend to have more knowledge about fracking and the water
crisis than females did.
Consequently, males would worry
more about the impacts of fracking to water sources and they would tend to be
more active to save water and avoid any waste of water. As a consequence, we believed that knowing
more about fracking would make people worried more about the water supply in
Lubbock and thus more people would tend to blame the oil drillers.
Methods
This survey (shown in appendix I) was
conducted by the ESL 5301 class in fall, 2013. There were thirteen students (Chandani
Dissanayake, Suranga Gunerathne, Shima Hassanzadeh, Nabiollah Kamyabe, Qing
Chen Kong, Jose Payanchavez, Ritesh Sevanthi Dillipan, Hamed Shirmohammadi,
Shan Yun Huang, Min Tae Kim , Duy Pham, Can Liu, Melissa Fan) and 4
teachers (Thomas Leverett, Jordan Powell, Amanda Kirk and Serena Mangano) in
class. Each of us did 8 surveys with 12 questions in each survey. Because we
wanted to know who cared more, we asked both males and females and we asked
questions about fracking. Therefore, each of us did half of the 8 surveys from
males and the other half from females to compare opinions from males and
females and evaluate the hypotheses. Everyone collected at least five from
Americans to evaluate more accurately how much residents care about the Lubbock
water crisis. In each survey, we asked people about their main concerns about
the environmental issues, fracking problems, water restrictions and so on. Most
of the surveys were finished on campus, because it was a safe and convenient place for everybody. We tried to
choose the targets randomly in the street instead of in the same buildings to
fill out the surveys to avoid any biases due to major backgrounds. Moreover, we
chose some of the non-students on campus as targets to study the different
opinions about the water crisis in Lubbock between students and non-students.
We tried our best to investigate fair and objective surveys to study the opinions
of residents about Lubbock's water crisis. However, there was still some
limitations to this survey. Because of the lack of time and financial support,
this study only performed 150 surveys in total. It was not good enough to
represent the opinions of most of the residents in Lubbock, because of the
location limitations as well. Thus, we need to find some financial support and
devote more time to doing more accurate and objective surveys among thousands
of people in different places in Lubbock.
Results
In figure 1, we compared the number
of people who know what fracking is between men and women. Fifty six (seventy
five percent of) men confirmed it and forty (fifty three percent of) women knew
it. Figure 2 shows the number of people who believe that fracking endangers the
public water supply. Thirty one (forty one percent of) men believed that
fracking endangers the water supply and twenty one (twenty eight percent of)
women believed it. Moreover, as it shown in figure 3, thirty three (forty four
percent of) men worried about Lubbock's ability to get water in the future, and
fifty two (seventy percent of) women worried about it. We also compared the
number of people who know what fracking is between students and non-students in
figure 4. Sixty five (fifty nine percent of) students knew it but thirty one
(seventy seven percent of) non-students knew it. In figure 5, it is shown that
thirty five (thirty one percent of) students thought fracking endangers the
public water supply and seventeen (forty two percent of) non-students believed
it. Furthermore, fifty seven (seventy six percent of) Texans knew what fracking
is and twenty four (sixty six percent of) non-Texans knew it, as shown in
figure 6. As shown in figure 7, thirty six (forty eight percent of) Texans
blamed oil drillers for water crisis and fifteen (forty one percent of)
non-Texans blamed them. In addition, figure 8 showed that thirty (Forty percent
of) Texans believed that fracking endangers the public water supply and twelve
(thirty three percent of) non-Texans believed it.
Discussion
We collected one hundred and fifty
surveys in total for this study. We believed that people already were aware of
the importance of Lubbock's water crisis and in fact most people worried about
Lubbock's ability to get water in the future. According to those surveys,
eighty five people (fifty six percent of peopel) worried about Lubbock's
ability to get water and thirty seven percent of people feel confident about
it. However, most people don't know fracking's impacts on water pollution. Even
though ninety six people (sixty four percent of surveyees) answered that they
know what fracking is, only forty seven percent of them feel fracking and its
effects are important issues and fifty five percent of them know that fracking
will endanger the public water supply. These data show that people aren't aware
of the dangerous impacts of fracking to water supplies, which is consistent
with our hypotheses.
In fact, fracking has been the
number one suspect for polluted water supplies in many places in U.S. According
to Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), "Nearly all natural gas
extraction today involves a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
in which dangerous chemicals are mixed with large quantities of water and sand
and injected into wells at extremely high pressure. Fracking is a suspect in
polluted drinking water in Arkansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia,
West Virginia and Wyoming, where residents have reported changes in water
quality or quantity following fracturing operations" (NRDC webpage, par. 2). Fracking is a very
complex engineering technique widely applied in natural gas industries.
Therefore, we hypothesized that the education of people would highly affect how
well people knew the impacts of fracking to the water resources. According to National Science Foundation, men
disproportionately outnumber women in the number of Science and Engineering
(STEM) degrees received. Between 1989 and 2008, the approximate percentages of
women receiving their Bachelor’s degree in any engineering field
were 17% and 19.6%, respectively (NSF, 2013). It seems that men tend to know more
about fracking and its impacts than women due to the difference in engineering
knowledge. This hypothesis was validated by our limited survey data. There were
seventy five percent of men who knew what fracking was but only fifty three
percent of women knew that (figure 38). When they were asked if they knew that
fracking might endanger the public water supply, forty one percent of men
confirmed it and twenty eight percent of women answered "yes" (figure 39). On the other hand, we also believed that more women would worry about the
water supply in Lubbock than men do. This was true according to the survey, in
which seventy percent of women worried about Lubbock's ability to get water in
the future and only forty four percent of men worried about it (figure 40). This
fact disagrees with our original hypothesis that knowing more about fracking would
make people more worried about the water supply. Men know more about fracking
than women but it doesn't necessary mean that more men worried about the water
supply in Lubbock. In fact, women worry more about the water supplies based on
many other issues might contribute to the water crisis. On the other hand, even
though women pay more attention to the water crisis in Lubbock, they worry less
about fracking and its impacts on water supplies than men due to the lack of
engineering knowledge.
Furthermore, if education played a
key role in how well people knew of fracking's impacts on water supplies, we believed
that educated people would know more what fracking was. Thus, students on
campus tend to be aware of the impacts of fracking than non-students because of
the education level of non-students on campus seems to be lower than that of students.
However, this is not the case, according to the survey. Based on the limited
data, fifty nine percent of students on campus know what fracking is and
seventy seven percent of non-students on campus know about fracking (figure 41).
Moreover, only thirty one percent of students believe fracking will endanger
the public water supply and forty two percent of non-students were aware of the
impacts of fracking on the water supply (figure 42). Therefore, the education level
is not the dominant factor in how well people know about fracking and its
impacts. Instead, the life experiences of non-students might be more important
in this problem.
Additionally, we believed that
Texans should know more fracking than people from other places. As a matter of
fact, seventy six percent of Texans from surveyees knew what fracking was and
only sixty six percent of non-Texans knew it (figure 43). Forty percent of
Texans thought fracking will endanger the public water supply and forty eight
percent of Texans blamed oil drillers for the water crisis (figure 44). On the
other hand, only thirty three percent of non-Texans thought fracking can
endanger the water supply and forty one percent of them blamed oil drillers for
the water crisis (figure 45). Thus, it is consistent with our hypothesis that being
from Texas makes people more likely to know about fracking and blame oil
drillers for the water crisis. This could be attributed to the fact that people
living in Texas have more chances to see or hear about fracking and experience
the environmental impacts of fracking.
This study has been taken with some
limitations such as time, finance, locations and so on. For a complete study in
the future, we would like to do the survey with at least two thousand people in
different places in Lubbock. We will try to ask the surveyees' career and
education level to evaluate more accurately about how education level affect
people's perception about fracking. Moreover, we would like to evaluate whether
people tells the truth.
Bibliography
Gonzalez, E. (2012, Aug. 6). Should
we vote on fracking. Retrieved on Oct 3, 2013 from
http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2012-08-06/should-we-vote-fracking#.UnHPPY0jK4Q
KCBD News. (2005, Nov. 5). Lubbock's Water Crisis: Keys to
the Future. Retrieved on Sep 26, 2013 from
KCBD News. (2013, Aug. 16). City of Lubbock disputes water shortage claims. Retrieved on Sep 26, 2013 from http://www.kcbd.com/story/23156106/city-of-lubbock-disputes-water-shortage-claims
Lubbock Water Department. Retrieved
on Sep 26, 2013 from http://www.mylubbock.us/departmental- websites/departments/water-department/home
Magelssen, T. (2012, Mar. 12). Hydraulic fracturing experts discuss problems associated with process. Retrieved on Oct 3, 2013 from http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2012-03-12/hydraulic- fracturing-experts-discuss-problems-associated-process#.Uk2OSI0jLXa
National Science
Foundation (NSF). (2013). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in
Science and Engineering:
2013. Retrieved on Nov 7, 2013 from http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/nsf13304_digest.pdf
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) webpage. The rapid expansion of natural gas drilling across the nation endangers human health and the environment. Retrieved on Nov 7, 2013 from http://www.nrdc.org/energy/gasdrilling/
Reed, A. (2012, Feb. 9). Lubbock's water crisis, how did we
get here. Retrieved on Sep 26, 2013 from
Tresaugue, M. (2012, Mar. 31). Fracking chemicals disclosures set off few alarms. Retrieved on Nov 17, 2013 from http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Fracking-chemicals-disclosures- set-off-few-alarms-3450152.php#license-4f7afdd469928
Urbina, I. (2011, Feb. 26). Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers. Retrieved on Nov 17, 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&
Appendix
I
ESL 5301
Survey
Thank you for filling out our survey!
I am from
____ Texas
____ USA, not Texas
____ international, not USA
I am ____
student
____ non-student
I am ____
Male
____ Female
1. Check the issues that you feel are most important. Check as many as
you like.
____ rising sea levels
____ global warming
____ increasing storms, tornados, & hurricanes
____ increasing flooding
____ drought
____ fresh water supply
____ fracking& drilling and their effects
____ air pollution
____ water pollution
2. Do you know what fracking is?
____ Y ____ N
3. Do you believe fracking endangers the public water supply?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
4. How knowledgeable are you about
where Lubbock gets its water supply?
_____
Veryknowlegeable _____ Somewhat _____ Not very
5. Do you know where Lubbock is getting its water for public use, now?
_____ Y _____ N
6. Do you know how Lake Meredith is related to the question of Lubbock's
water supply?
_____ Y ______ N
7. Do you believe in water restrictions for the city of Lubbock?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
8. Do you think Lubbock enforces its water restrictions effectively?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
9. Do you believe in water restrictions for farmers in the area?
____ Y ____ N ____ Don't know
10. Do you usually, generally, try to save water (for example, turn it
off while brushing teeth?
____ Y ____ N
11. Which of the people on this list take MORE water than they should,
based on the availability of the resource? Check as many as you like.
_____ farmers
_____ oil drillers
_____ people who
water their lawns
12. Which best describes your feeling about Lubbock's ability to get
water in the future?
_____ confident
_____ worried
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