Water meters and fracking

They won't be using prime drinking water. Sea water will do, I should think.

What about the salt - not good is it for the environment?

I don't know that the salt would be left in. In any case fracking wells are very, very much deeper down than water tables and the water is used to displace trapped gas so, as I understand it, the water will become trapped water, completely out of the way and harmless to the environment, just as the gas had been.

Interesting OP.
Sea water is only going to be an option if you are doing it near the coast.

Water resources are a complicated issue whitewave. Many farmers and other businesses have "extraction licences" to take huge amounts of water out of rivers. Or aquifers, I believe. Water companies also are allowed to extract water, to turn it into safe drinking water. I don't think a business can just set up shop and just take it.
I don't think the fracking companies will be asking for a mains connection as that would be metered and therefore work out a tad expensive.
I think it is down to the environment agency/dept of the environment (they are two faces of the same thing) to grant new extraction licences for business purposes. And that the impact on water resources in an area will have to be considered.
(all this "i think" is because I'm going to bed now and not reading government websites to check )
Goodness knows how this works in America. They do weird things like irrigating thousands and thousands of square miles of the Central Valley to grow crops like almonds.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/05/fracking-water-america-drought-oil-gas

Well if the water is trapped underground and out of harms way and it isn't taken from the sea, then doesn't that lesson the overall amount of water in the environment.

Not sure how independent the EA is as if the government is keen to frack then the EA will almost certainly be given the directive to look kindly on applications.

Most of the water used in fracking is recycled after use. In the same way water used in the cooling towers of power stations is. All water returned to use has to be stored, cleaned and inspected by the EA before release.

If you think the EA decisions are influenced by government, all I can say is that I represent an environmental charity on a the Local Liaison Committee monitoring our local power station and from my experience the EA have technical standards etc that govern the activities of a wide range of industries and they enforce them to the letter.

Not really what this thread is about but what happens when we are all on water meters, where will the water companies get their profits from? Will all our bills go up?

When we moved here, where there have always been compulsory water meters, we found our bill to be so much cheaper than when it was based on our rateable value where we used to live even though we use the hose on the garden. Then a year ago they reduced it again because they had changed the rules for surface water drainage and put us in a lower band. At the time I wondered who was having to pay more as a result.

Presumably a lot of people will find themselves in the same situation and revenues will be lower. Those with large families will find themselves paying more.

We seem to pay less on a water meter than previously.

In every aspect of life we pay for what we use; fuel, housing, clothing, food. I do believe that there should be help for those whose households include people with disabilities and the elderly frail, but if it is just large families with lots of children...

I think most people plan their families with their resources in mind. This certainly contributed to our decision to just have two children. If families choose to have a lot of children they should be prepared to pay the bills.

Thanks for your comment about water for fracking being recycled. I thought I had read that somewhere but couldn't be sure my memory was right.

We have been told that fracking is one of the major solutions to our energy problems but Tim Morgan in the Telegraph suggests that the figures don't add up. I'm no scientist and don't know if he's right, but this is an assessment on viability that doesn't seem to have got much coverage.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/11006723/fracking-for-Shale-gas-the-dotcom-bubble-of-our-times.html

How good to read an article about onshore fracking that works on the straight forward economics of the situation and not just emotive and largely inaccurate arguments about the technique alone. A technique which has been in use widely in the North Sea and on some (non-shale) onshore UK oil fields for decades.

Very interesting article. Thanks from me too. I have always felt the current government had seized on it with too much enthusiasm and too little perspective. I agree with him about the previous government dithering around - they should have made decisions to build nuclear and renewables but they were far too nervous and in the thrall of the spin doctors. Both lots have been utterly feeble on energy efficiency. Labour did have Warm Front grants but left it to the insulation companies to do the promotion of the scheme. There is a lot more they could have done e.g. linking stamp duty to EPCs etc. Tighter building regulations on extensions and alterations etc.
The present lot put all their eggs in an intricately woven little basket called Green Deal which has been an enormous flop. So they sit around wondering where the energy will come from instead of having a concerted effort to get buildings using less.

All Labour did was dither over nuclear plants, which I am grateful for. I've said before I'd rather have a wind turbine than a nuclear plant near me.
More worrying to me about fracking are the chemicals used in the water.

BUILD THE SEVERN BARRAGE
It would give a lot of employment opportunities, give another exit from Wales for refugees, and provide lots of green energy from our tidal range!

for the Welsh solution. (Sorry JessM et alt)

I agree, Galen. Doesn't Wales have the largest hydro-electric plant in the UK, in North Wales?

Why would that make the Welsh want to seek refuge in England?

People have been talking about it for over 150 years. By the time it's built, the West Country will probably no longer be part of England anyway.

There would appear to be a fair number of English retired folk seeing refuge in N Wales Galen. I agree re the barrage. The RSPB go on about wetlands but if global warming has the consequences that the vast majority of scientist think, all the wetlands will become sea bed. And Eastern England will be one great big salt marsh.

Quite! Ok! I'm a member of the Slimbridge wetlands and wildlife trust, but I agree with you! It is NOT a good reason for not doing a tidal barrage. The environmental impact would be a lot less than other options and the economic gains would be great.

In terms of other concerns about the process.
This paper on fracking might be helpful.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277211/Water.pdf

durhamjen. There was an article in the Independent some months ago about fracking that talked about the chemicals used. Fracking water contained only 0.17% chemicals and 5% sand, nothing else. All the chemicals permitted for use in fracking in the UK are chemicals currently acceptable for human use or contact. To be precise: sodium chloride (table salt), poly acrylamide (used in cosmetics) and hydrochloric acid (used in swimming pools). There are other chemicals, some of them harmful that have been used, but not onshore UK, and probably not offshore UK either.

Galen I am absolutely with you on the use of water power. I am sometimes driven to despair by the cavalier way inefficient wind farms and photovoltaic farms, encouraged by huge subsidies, are forced on an unwilling public and degrade our landscape, while major water power schemes like the Severn barrage and a recently announced scheme for Cardiff Bay and other areas are stamped on and stopped because a few birds or a great crested newt would be inconvenienced. Together the Severn barrage and the new scheme at Cardiff could together supply up to 20% our power demand on a 24/7 basis.

We would then not to have to pay to keep gas-fired turbines fired up, consuming fuel and producing emissions but not producing power so that they can be instantly turned on when wind-power suddenly drops off.

Surely, Flickety, the important thing is to use all our energy resources so that we can replace the fossil fuels. Near where I live is one of the largest windfarms in Britain, because we get a lot of wind up here.
It's not taking up farming land either, because there are fields full of sheep under the wind turbines.
We're also not far from Kielder Water, for hydro-electric, and an Archimedes screw is being built on the river Wear in the centre of Durham. All good ways of producing electricity.
On the news last week Robson Green switched on the hydro electric power to light up Cragside, a system which had been invented by Lord Armstrong in the Victorian era.