A THREATENED fish has been fracked to within an inch of its life. Chemicals used in the controversial extraction process spilled into a river in 2007, killing off the local population of the vulnerable blackside dace.
Fracking is a way of extracting natural gas by pumping a cocktail of chemicals underground to crack open shale rock, releasing the gas trapped within. One of the reasons it is controversial is because of concerns that the chemicals might contaminate drinking water, although the evidence for this is weak. In all the kerfuffle, little attention has been paid to fracking鈥檚 effects on ecosystems.
Yet, in May and June 2007, fracking chemicals leaked into a 2-kilometre stretch of Acorn Fork Creek in Kentucky. The chemicals were being stored in surface pits, which overflowed. and all visible life forms died.
Advertisement
鈥淭his may be the first report of effects on aquatic biota,鈥� says of the US Geological Survey, who investigated the incident with Anthony Velasco of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Frankfort, Kentucky. They examined 45 fish from the polluted stretch, belonging to two species, and found severe gill lesions. Moving healthy fish into the leak zone caused them to develop lesions within hours ().
聯Fish in the polluted stretch of the creek had severe gill lesions, while no live fish of one species were found聰
Acorn Fork Creek is one of the few remaining habitats for . Papoulias couldn鈥檛 find any alive in the worst-affected stretch. Dace in neighbouring regions were clearly distressed: they were moving slowly, rocking back and forth just beneath the surface.
As fracking often takes place in remote areas, it鈥檚 unclear how frequent such events are. 鈥淭his accident was not reported by the company,鈥� says Papoulias, 鈥渂ut by a resident who noticed the water turned red and fish had died.鈥�
This article will appear in print under the headline 鈥淔racking kills fish鈥�
