Veronica Kronvall Remembers How Excited She Felt About

Veronica Kronvall remembers how excited she felt about buying her house in 2007. It was her first house, in the small city of Ponder, Texas. Her kitchen was filled with her favorite color, purple, everything from mixing bowls to the microwave. She planted roses and planned on having a garden. She planned at living in this house for decades. What Veronica did not imagine was that 4 years later and energy company would drill 5 wells behind her home, with the closest being less than 300 feet from her backyard. Green pipes and tanks loom over her fence. The rumble of trucks and equipment rattled the glasses in her cupboard, and the smell of an acrid blend of chemicals was constant. She began having symptoms she had never had before, her eyes†¦show more content†¦Once the well reaches the right depth, it turns right or left and becomes horizontal. This is called the kick off point. The horizontal section can span anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000 feet. The drill is removed but the sur rounding steel casing remains. These steel casings are meant to protect the groundwater and the surrounding area from any potential leakage during the fracking process. Down at the horizontal section of the well, little holes are punctured through the steel in thousands of spots. Then, a water solution is pumped at a extremely high pressure down the well. This causes tons of cracks and fissures in the rock. Additives and sand in the water mixture hold the cracks open, allowing oil to escape and be brought up to the surface. Hydraulic fracking isn t all good though, there are many controversial things about it. First off, water contamination is a hazard. There are many ways that the water supply could be contaminated by fracking. One way is by groundwater entering through cracks that fracking has made. The water solution that s pumped into the ground is a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals. Water and sand make up 98% of the mixture, while the remaining 2% is chemicals. Although fracking companies have never realised the chemicals used, scientists studying wastewater have found many harmful additives. A few of these are benzene, toluene, and many acids, all of which pose huge threats to humans. For each fracking well, more than 8 million liters of