Marcellus formation (Photo credit: Swarthmore College)

The Marcellus Shale, a natural gas formation underlying the northeastern part of the Ohio River Valley (including Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia) has become a hot bed of activity lately – drilling activity, that is. There’s lots of gas (by some estimates, enough to meet the nation’s needs for the next 10 – 15 years), lots of money to be made, and, when it comes to environmental concerns, cleaner emissions to be had.

But the environmental heat is on another aspect of natural gas drilling: “fracking,” or hydraulic fracturing, which is the use of water and a cocktail of chemicals to force gas out of tight crevices. There’s growing concern that fracking may be harming drinking water.

New York state legislators are considering a moratorium on drilling in the part of the shale that underlies the Empire State. Pennsylvania state legislators are considering several bills that would slow or stop the practice. Federal legislators are mulling a law that would require companies to disclose exactly what chemicals are in their fracking cocktail (a mixture they now consider proprietary). And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced plans to study fracking’s impact on drinking water.  This week, the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association announced the results of an investigation into Marcellus drillers’ environmental violations, 1435 of them in two and a half years.

And those are only a few developments, more of which are nicely detailed here by the news wire service Reuters, in the the Marcellus drilling front.  If further study links fracking to drinking water, millions have a stake in the future of this practice.  Energy companies insist there’s no evidence of any problems.  But energy companies may be on shaky ground these days, given the parade of accidents involving our three major fossil fuel supplies – oil, coal, and gas.