Would you drink the water?"
Somebody asked us that after they heard about a study our scientific team released Monday showing high levels of methane in well water near sites where companies are drilling for natural gas.
Our analysis of 68 private groundwater wells in Pennsylvania and New York will surely fuel the debate over whether the U.S. should pursue natural gas more vigorously as an alternative to such current energy options as oil and coal, whose unfortunate side effects range from Middle East instability to global warming.
Proponents of using more natural gas highlight its abundance, along with other advantages. Critics have their list as well, including potential damage to people and the environment.
Our team found that methane was 17 times higher, on average, in water wells located within a kilometer of active drilling sites, with some of the concentrations dangerously high. Companies at these sites employ a process called hydrofracking to pump water, sand and chemicals deep underground at high pressure. This opens cracks that enable natural gas to flow more easily into the wells.
Some homeowners say hydrofracking has affected their water. Our study suggests some of them may be right, at least for methane contamination.
Our results are only a first step to resolving the bigger question of how much our country should look to shale gas and hydrofracking to solve its energy problems. The process now accounts for about 15 percent of natural gas production, but some estimates see it rising to nearly half by 2035.
Methane is not benign. It's flammable and poses a risk of explosion. In very high concentrations, it can cause asphyxiation.
However, there's been little research on its health effects in drinking water, and the federal government doesn't regulate it as a contaminant in public water systems.
So when someone asked us whether we'd drink this well water, we thought for a moment and answered that we would drink it once or twice, even once in a while. However, we wouldn't feel safe drinking it regularly and don't think homeowners should have to either.
The hardest part about being environmental scientists is that your job often leads you to expose the warts of different technologies. In this case, our team showed warts with hydrofracking for shale gas. But warts exist with other forms of energy, too, and in some cases they're big. Drilling below the BP Deepwater Horizon platform led to a catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico. An earthquake triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan. In Kingston, Tenn., coal waste caused a river of sludge to flood homes and spill into a river.
In the wake of these incidents, the conclusion we take away from our study is that the U.S. is losing precious time in developing alternatives we know can be greener and safer, namely renewables.
As President Barack Obama stressed Friday at a hybrid-vehicle technology plant in Indianapolis, there are many reasons to promote renewables. Enhance our energy security: check. Reduce our reliance on foreign suppliers: check. Reduce water and air pollution and global warming: check again.
Denmark now generates a fifth of its electricity from wind power. China and Germany are creating jobs while producing solar power. Yet the U.S. continues to lag. We rank 17th worldwide in the clean-tech sector. Our green energy industries have been expanding at a rate of 28 percent a year since 2008, according to a new report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. China's green technologies, by comparison, have grown 77 percent a year.
To be sure, renewables are not immune from warts. Concentrated solar power takes land and lots of water, typically in places where water is scarce. Windmills kill birds and bats. Yet problems like these are far more manageable than what current energy choices are doing to our water, air and national security.
We'll likely be using shale gas for some time, and the problems we've highlighted can probably be solved. It would be inaccurate and unfair for critics to point to our study as proof that hydrofracking should be banned.
Instead of just making shale gas safer, though, we'd like to make it largely unnecessary, along with coal and oil. The faster we develop and adopt renewable energy technologies, the less we will have to worry about whether it's safe for people to drink their water. All of us should be able to raise our glasses to that.
Rob Jackson is Nicholas professor of global change and Avner Vengosh is professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke University. Their study on hydrofracking appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
