Poor, minorities carry the burden of frack waste in South Texas

*Fracking industry representatives say the study is flawed. The concern is that fracking wastewater will contaminate groundwater. And there are 217,000 minorities living within three miles of a fracking waste water well. Eighty-three percent of them are Latino. VL

By Bian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News

Chavel Lopez lives just a few miles north of Texas’ Eagle Ford—one of the many regions in the country recently given a makeover from the fracking industry. “I just have to drive a bit south and see the wells and the flames,” he said.

For Lopez, rather than a booming industry, these are signs of yet another pollution burden for the region’s people of color.

“We already had issues. Right here in San Antonio, fuel storage tanks were all located on the eastside, predominantly African American neighborhoods,” he said. “For some of these Hispanic neighborhoods, they were already dealing with uranium mining impacts and now the fracking of oil and gas.”

And new evidence supports his fears: Poor and minority neighborhoods bear a disproportionate share of fracking wastewater wells in South Texas’ Eagle Ford play, according to a new study.

The findings add to growing evidence that politically marginalized black, Hispanic and poor communities carry more than their share of the nation’s energy waste burden. Fracking wastewater contains potentially harmful chemicals and metals, and has been linked to surface and groundwater contamination and earthquake spikes.

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