Groundwater in peril
(WorldNews Environment)

Their findings illustrate that groundwater stores are being depleted not only by excessive withdrawals, but due to injection, and potentially contamination, from the oil and gas industry in areas of deep fresh and brackish groundwater. Published this week in Environmental Research Letters, the findings from the USask-led Global Water Futures (GWF) project on sub-surface freshwater provide the first estimates of underground fresh and brackish water depths in some of the most prominent sedimentary basins across the U.S. The authors note that the increase in pressure associated with injection of water, chemicals or sand (as in hydraulic fracturing or `fracking`) or of wastewater may drive...