Marcellus Shale is a sedimentary rock located beneath Earth’s surface that contains copious amounts of natural gas, however, methods of extracting the natural gas may prove to be environmentally concerning. The motivation of this research project is to quantitatively test for the possibility of local waterway contamination as a result of hydraulic fracturing and to explore ways in which contamination can be reduced. For the past four years weekly water samples were acquired from ten sites and one control and then tested using on site probes and ion chromatography. After comparing data to EPA limits, results showed that five of six tested ion concentrations were within EPA standards. This project has shown that hydraulic fracturing has little to no impact on local water sources of our study that are within close proximity to the fracturing sites.<br/>

Effects of hydraulic fracturing

251st National Meeting (2016)

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