Shock: Fracking Used to Inject Nuclear Waste Underground for Decades

TruthStream Media | Mar 4, 2015 | Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton

Unearthed articles from the 1960s detail how nuclear waste was buried beneath the Earth’s surface by Halliburton & Co. for decades as a means of disposing the by-products of post-World War II atomic energy production.

Fracking is already a controversial practice on its face; allowing U.S. industries to inject slurries of toxic, potentially carcinogenic compounds deep beneath the planet’s surface — as a means of “see no evil” waste disposal — already sounds ridiculous, dangerous, and stupid anyway without even going into further detail.

Alleged fracking links to the contamination of the public water supply and critical aquifers, as well as ties to earthquake upticks near drilling locations that are otherwise not prone to seismic activity have created uproar in the years since the 2005 “Cheney loophole,” which allowed the industry to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act by exempting fracking fluids, thus fast tracking shale fracking as a source of cheap natural gas.

Now, it is apparent that the fracking industry is also privvy to many secrets of the nuclear energy industry, and specifically, where the bodies are buried, err… dangerous nuclear waste is buried, rather — waste that atomic researchers have otherwise found so difficult to eliminate.

Truthstream uncovered several published newspaper accounts from the Spring of 1964 concerning a then-newly disclosed plan to dump nuclear waste produced by the atomic energy industry into hydraulic fracturing (fracking) wells using a cement slurry technique developed by Halliburton & Co. The top two fracking companies in the nation at the time were Halliburton and Dowell, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

And here we thought fracking was a relatively new industrial phenomenon growing in popularity over just the last couple of decades. Boy were we wrong. Revealed within these articles is Halliburton’s long-standing relationship with the secret government and deep ties between the oil and nuclear industries.

Teaming up with the U.S. Government and Union Carbide Corp., who operate nuclear materials divisions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee, Halliburton was then credited with “solving” the radioactive waste problem faced by America’s secretive nuclear industry. Dumping waste via fracking had apparently been going on since 1960, according to the reports, but was only made public here in 1964.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Each of the articles Truthstream found carry the same account under different headlines, with four of them using identical copy, and the fifth, published in the San Antonio Express, slightly rewritten based upon the same source information. The photo captions of each story also add some useful tidbits:

These ran in the:

April 19, 1964 edition of the Great Bend Tribune,
the April 22, 1964 edition of the Warren Times-Mirror,
the April 26, 1964 edition of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal,
the May 3, 1964 edition of the San Antonio Express News (original)
and the June 15, 1964 edition of the Denton Record Chronicle.

The story read, in part:

“Two techniques originated by the petroleum industry for its own uses are expected to solve a major problem in the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The problem is the disposal of dangerous, sometimes deadly, radioactive waste by-products.”

“Researchers at Halliburton Co’s. Technical Center here working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists, have combined the oil well cementing technique with the hydraulic fracturing production stimulation technique to entomb radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

“The method used at Oak Ridge begins by mixing the waste with a cement slurry, pumping the mixture down a hole drilled into the Conasuaga shale and then fracturing the shale to create a horizontal crack. The crack fills with the mixture to form a thin, horizontal sheet several hundred feet across. The mix sets to permanently hold the radioactive waste in the formation.”

“Union Carbide Corp., which operates facilities at Oak Ridge for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and Halliburton, which provides specialized oil field services such as cementing fracturing worldwide, have collaborated on the project since 1960.”

The mix remained liquid for 48 hours before it was supposed to permanently set and remain there, entombed, forever.

The articles make clear that the Atomic Energy Commission was preparing to use fracking as a means of disposing of nuclear wastes at additional facilities, with Oak Ridge being simply one of the largest, and the first to publicly disclose these out-of-sight disposal procedures:

“Oak Ridge has a radioactive waste disposal problem typical of the nation’s nuclear sites. Each year about four million gallons of waste, including such fission products as strontium 90, cesium 137 and ruthenium 103, are generated at Oak Ridge.”

“Among the disposal methods already tried have been dumping concrete-encased barrels of waste in the ocean or burying the waste in lead-lined containers. These are considered either too dangerous or too expensive or both.”

Unfortunately, the ocean has been used as a giant trashcan not only by the nuclear industry, but municipal garbage and landfill companies and many other entities as well, without any real concern about its significant effects on the food supply and larger ecosystem of the planet.

“If this process is successful for disposal of Oak Ridge National Laboratory intermediate-level wastes, it has potential application at other atomic energy sites where suitable geological conditions exist,” the Atomic Energy Commission says.”

The slightly different version in the San Antonio Express News added these details:

“A couple of techniques used by oilmen when they have hopes of production may soon be used by the Atomic Energy Commission for – of all things – radioactive garbage disposal.”

“Final tests are now under way at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, in trying a combination of oil well cementing plus hydraulic fracturing to entomb radioactive wastes in an impermeable shale formation a thousand feet underground.”

Meanwhile, the Great Bend Tribune added information about the Halliburton executives involved in the plan in their caption for a photo which shows businessmen looking at a diagram explaining how nuclear waste like strontium 90 is mixed with cement and injected into shale formations:

“Halliburton engineer Mack Stogner, left, reviews the project with Harry P. Conroy, senior vice president and general manager of the oil field service firm, and W.D. Owsley, senior vice president.”

The process includes remote controlled operation of the hydraulic fracturing drill in order to shield workers from the “medium level” radioactive substances being dumped into the earth’s crust, as the Warren Times Mirror in Pennsylvania notes in the caption:

“Disposing of Waste – Working behind shielding and wearing film badges, Halliburton Company personnel use demounted oil field service units to dispose of radioactive waste generated at the Oak Ridge, Tenn. nuclear site.”

How often this procedure has been used at other facilities since then is not entirely clear, though we know from reports discussed below that the practice continued and there is no indication that it ever stopped.

Five years later, the October 22, 1969 edition of the San Bernardino County Sun carried a report titled, “3 Ways to Manage Radioactive Waste.”

It discussed the ongoing and growing problems with nuclear waste, naming three principle strategies for managing the toxic stuff, summed up as “(1) delay and decay, (2) concentrate and confine and (3) dilute and disperse,” discussing how materials with lower half lives can supposedly be safely sequestered and later dumped, while other materials can be simply diluted and poured into existing groundwater supplies and systems.

The UPI story originating out of Oak Ridge states, in part,

“Since the start of the atomic era in the 1940s, nuclear reactors around the nation have produced 75 million gallons of hazardous high level radioactive waste materials.”

“And scientists here and elsewhere around the nation still are wrestling with the problems of what to do with this material, which promises to become even more plentiful as more and more commercial nuclear reactors go into power production.”

Oak Ridge proclaims that it found a solution to dealing with high level nuclear wastes, which has thus far been to keep it,

“…buried a few feet underground in storage tanks – tanks which must be periodically replaced because of the natural deterioration of the steel and other materials of which they are fabricated.”

“It is in this area of confining the high level wastes, whose radioactive half life ranges up to 30 to 50 years, that the Atomic Energy Commission is pushing dramatic new concepts.”

“One disposal system, involving materials in the medium range of radioactivity, is the hydraulic fracturing procedures. This system is now being used at Oak Ridge and involves mixing the liquid radioactive waste with concrete to form a grout which is pumped into shale formations 500 to 800 feet underground.”

Note, this article cites a shallower depth, at levels as shallow as 500 feet, after the 1964 articles claimed a further removed depth of 1,000 feet to 5,000. The even “higher level wastes” were disposed of in abandoned salt mines, according to Oak Ridge.

Nuclear Waste ‘Safely Flushed Away’ into the Water Supply

The 1969 article states that “low level waste” is “material which can safely be flushed away into rivers and lakes or released into the atmosphere because the level of radioactivity is so low that is presents no hazard when diluted and flushed into man’s natural environment. The more difficult problem is involved in the high level, liquid and solid wastes which are produced in the reprocessing of used fuel elements from nuclear reactor cores.”

The idea that the waste dumped into water supplies was so “low level” as to be completely harmless is likely dubious and hopeful at best. Fluoride, a by-product of the nuclear power industry, was one of those constituents, and was transformed from being known as a rat poison to being known as a dental benefit by the original spin doctor and propagandist, Edward Bernays.

In his book “The Fluoride Deception,” author Christopher Bryson revealed how the nuclear industry also used fluoridation of the public water supply as a means of secretly dumping industrial waste after fluoride was a major by-product in the uranium enrichment process for building the atomic bomb. Bryson told Democracy Now:

The Manhattan Project needed fluoride to enrich uranium. That’s how they did it. The biggest industrial building in the world, for a time, was the fluoride gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee the Manhattan Project and Dr. Hodge as the senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project, were scared stiff less that workers would realize that the fluoride they were going to be breathing inside these plants was going to injury them and that the Manhattan Project, the key — the key of U.S. Strategic power in the Cold War Era, would be jeopardized because the Manhattan Project and the industrial contractors making the atomic bomb would be facing all these lawsuits from workers, all these lawsuits from farmers living around these industrial plants and so Harold Hodge assures us that fluoride is safe and good for children.

More recently, an Associated Press investigation found in 2011 that 48 of 65 nuclear sites in the United States were leaking tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, into groundwater supplies via corroded pipes and tunnels. AP found at least 37 locations were in direct violation of federal drinking water standards for tritium, in some cases hundreds of times over.

Fracking Nuclear Waste ‘Safe for Millions of Years’… Unless It Leaks

Some 30 trillion gallons of toxic waste has been kept out of sight, out of mind by U.S. industries that have injected it hundreds and thousands of feet underground into wells since the 1960s.

Scientists who work for these corporations have used computer modeling to assure the Environmental Protection Agency that this waste poses no threat to our aquifers and that layers of rock deep within the Earth would safely store this stuff like Tupperware for millenia.

Already, several incidents have proven that scientific computer models are no match for reality.

It is clear from a December 21, 1973 article that disposal of nuclear waste via fracking continued, along with promises that it would be safe for millions of years to come.

The Dixon Evening Telegraph wrote in “Geologists look at energy crunch”:

“The U.S. Government is disposing of approximately 250,000 gallons of intermediate-level wastes each year using a technique called hydraulic fracturing. Liquids are pumped into impervious shales 1,000 to 5,000 feet below the surface. High pressure is applied causing the rocks to fracture and the liquid moves out laterally. Because the rock and radioactive wastes it contains will not be exposed to the biosphere for millions of years, this method should be safe unless leakage into an overlying aquifer occurs.”

That is, as the article points out, unless there are leaks.

As we found in research, leakage is exactly what has happened time and again throughout the years, including at disposal sites for Oak Ridge National Laboratories, according to reports in the following cases.

Via ProPublica:

In April, 1967 pesticide waste injected by a chemical plant at Denver’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal destabilized a seismic fault, causing a magnitude 5.0 earthquake — strong enough to shatter windows and close schools — and jolting scientists with newfound risks of injection, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A year later, a corroded hazardous waste well for pulping liquor at the Hammermill Paper Co., in Erie, Pa., ruptured. Five miles away, according to an EPA report, “a noxious black liquid seeped from an abandoned gas well” in Presque Isle State Park.

In 1975 in Beaumont, Texas, dioxin and a highly acidic herbicide injected underground by the Velsicol Chemical Corp. burned a hole through its well casing, sending as much as five million gallons of the waste into a nearby drinking water aquifer.

And these are hardly the only examples… in fact, it is just scratching the surface of an issue that is almost as incomprehensible as it is unfathomable.

Then in August 1984 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., radioactive waste was turned up by water monitoring near a deep injection well at a government nuclear facility.

Bingo…

There it is. The infallible, permanent, and “impermeable” deep injection wells that Halliburton and the Atomic Energy Commission considered as a solution to nuclear waste for eons to come were found turning up radioactive nuclear waste at the very Oak Ridge site where these 1960s disposal projects were taking place.

Subterranean Waste Disposal a ‘Cornerstone of the Nation’s Economy’

Those cemented wells, filled with injected disposal substances may be safely secured for a few years or even decades, but that is no guarantee for the years down the road and its certainly not the millenia as promised by Halliburton and others in the industry. In fact, many of the wells have been forgotten, abandoned, and are lost to the record books.
As ProPublica reports:

There are upwards of 2 million abandoned and plugged oil and gas wells in the U.S., more than 100,000 of which may not appear in regulators’ records. Sometimes they are just broken off tubes of steel, buried or sticking out of the ground. Many are supposed to be sealed shut with cement, but studies show that cement breaks down over time, allowing seepage up the well structure.

And many of these are injection wells, where all kinds of unwanted, toxic substances are dumped in order to be forgotten… though not necessarily gone.

Not only are these practices taking place, they are widespread… and widely defended, even with the known failures and safety issues.

Many scientists and regulators say the alternatives to the injection process — burning waste, treating wastewater, recycling, or disposing of waste on the surface — are far more expensive or bring additional environmental risks.

Subterranean waste disposal, they point out, is a cornerstone of the nation’s economy, relied on by the pharmaceutical, agricultural and chemical industries. It’s also critical to a future less dependent on foreign oil: Hydraulic fracturing, “clean coal” technologies, nuclear fuel production and carbon storage (the keystone of the strategy to address climate change) all count on pushing waste into rock formations below the earth’s surface. (source)

Sure, maybe it’s better than dumping it directly into the waterways, but still. This isn’t just playing with fire, this is playing with the lives of everyone in the nation for generations to come.

Please read ProPublica’s full series of reports on this, starting here. Things have to change.

These people should not have started messing with something they did not know how to fully and safely manage.

How long can this madness continue until it winds up tainting every drinking glass in America?

Engineer Mario Salazar, who worked as a technical expert for 25 years with the EPA’s underground injection program in Washington, told ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten something that should give us all pause about how radioactive nuclear waste and industrial pollutants in general are being handled, and where they may ultimately end up:

“In 10 to 100 years we are going to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted. A lot of people are going to get sick, and a lot of people may die.”

California wants to close fracking wells to protect drinking water during historic drought

RT | Feb 11, 2015

The US Environmental Protection Agency has waded into the fight between oil and water in drought-stricken California. A mandated review of oil and gas injection wells used in hydraulic fracturing ‒ better known as fracking ‒ discovered that over 2,500 wells are injecting fluid into water aquifers. Now state regulators are set to take action. RT’s Lindsay France takes a closer look at how the Golden State proposes protecting drinking water from fracking chemicals.

Inexcusable! Waste water from oil fracking injected into clean aquifers

SOTT | Nov 14, 2014 | Stephen Stock, Liza Meak, Mark Villarreal and Scott Pham

California Dept. of Conservation Deputy Director admits that errors were made

More Newsletters In a time when California faces an historic drought, the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has uncovered that state officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump billions of gallons of waste water into protected aquifers. Video here.

State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation.

Those aquifers are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, protected by the EPA.

"It's inexcusable," said Hollin Kretzmann, at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. "At (a) time when California is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history, we're allowing oil companies to contaminate what could otherwise be very useful ground water resources for irrigation and for drinking. It's possible these aquifers are now contaminated irreparably."

California's Department of Conservation's Chief Deputy Director, Jason Marshall, told NBC Bay Area, "In multiple different places of the permitting process an error could have been made."

"There have been past issues where permits were issued to operators that they shouldn't be injecting into those zones and so we're fixing that," Marshall added.

In "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing operations, oil and gas companies use massive amounts of water to force the release of underground fossil fuels. The practice produces large amounts of waste water that must then be disposed of.

Marshall said that often times, oil and gas companies simply re-inject that waste water back deep underground where the oil extraction took place. But other times, Marshall said, the waste water is re-injected into aquifers closer to the surface. Those injections are supposed to go into aquifers that the EPA calls "exempt" - in other words, not clean enough for humans to drink or use.

But in the State's letter to the EPA, officials admit that in at least nine waste water injection wells, the waste water was injected into "non-exempt" or clean aquifers containing high quality water.

For the EPA, "non-exempt" aquifers are underground bodies of water that are "containing high quality water" that can be used by humans to drink, water animals or irrigate crops.

If the waste water re-injection well "went into a non-exempt aquifer. It should not have been permitted," said Marshall.

The department ended up shutting down 11 wells: the nine that were known to be injecting into non-exempt aquifers, and another two in an abundance of caution.

In its reply letter to the EPA, California's Water Resources Control Board said its "staff identified 108 water supply wells located within a one-mile radius of seven...injection wells" and that The Central Valley Water Board conducted sampling of "eight water supply wells in the vicinity of some of these... wells."

"This is something that is going to slowly contaminate everything we know around here," said fourth- generation Kern County almond grower Tom Frantz, who lives down the road from several of the injection wells in question.

According to state records, as many as 40 water supply wells, including domestic drinking wells, are located within one mile of a single well that's been injecting into non-exempt aquifers.

That well is located in an area with several homes nearby, right in the middle of a citrus grove southeast of Bakersfield.

This well is one of nine that were known to be injecting waste water into "non-exempt" aquifers. It's located just east of Bakersfield.

State records show waste water from several sources, including from the oil and gas industry, has gone into the aquifer below where 60 different water supply wells are located within a one mile radius.

"That's a huge concern and communities who rely on water supply wells near these injection wells have a lot of reason to be concerned that they're finding high levels of arsenic and thallium and other chemicals nearby where these injection wells have been allowed to operate," said Kretzmann.

"It is a clear worry," said Juan Flores, a Kern County community organizer for the Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment. "We're in a drought. The worst drought we've seen in decades. Probably the worst in the history of agriculture in California."

"No one from this community will drink from the water from out of their well," said Flores. "The people are worried. They're scared."

The trade association that represents many of California's oil and gas companies says the water-injection is a "paperwork issue." In a statement issued to NBC Bay Area, Western States Petroleum Association spokesman Tupper Hull said "there has never been a bona vide claim or evidence presented that the paperwork confusion resulted in any contamination of drinking supplies near the disputed injection wells."

However, state officials tested 8 water supply wells within a one-mile radius of some of those wells.

Four water samples came back with higher than allowable levels of nitrate, arsenic, and thallium.

Those same chemicals are used by the oil and gas industry in the hydraulic fracturing process and can be found in oil recovery waste-water.

"We are still comparing the testing of what was the injection water to what is the tested water that came out of these wells to find out if they were background levels or whether that's the result of oil and gas operation, but so far it's looking like it's background," said James Marshall from the California Department of Conservation.

Marshall acknowledged that those chemicals could have come from oil extraction, and not necessarily wastewater disposal.

"But when those (further) test results come back, we'll know for sure," Marshall said.

When asked how this could happen in the first place, Marshall said that the long history of these wells makes it difficult to know exactly what the thinking was.

"When you're talking about wells that were permitted in 1985 to 1992, we've tried to go back and talk to some of the permitting engineers," said Marshall. "And it's unfortunate but in some cases they (the permitting engineers) are deceased."

Kern County's Water Board referred the Investigative Unit to the state for comment.

California State officials assured the EPA in its letter that the owners of the wells where chemicals were found have been warned and could ask for further testing of their drinking wells.

Source: NBC Bay Area

14 California communities now on verge of waterless-ness; mass migration out of California seems imminent

© Natural News

Natural News | Oct 20, 2014 | Jonathan Benson

Unless California gets some heavy rain, and soon, the state's roughly 38 million residents will eventually be up a creek without a paddle -- or without a creek, for that matter. The latest media reports indicate that some 14 communities throughout the state are now on the verge of running completely dry, and many more could join them in the coming year if conditions remain as they are.

A few months ago, the official count was 28 communities bordering on complete waterless-ness, according to the Water Resources Control Board. Those that have since dropped off the list were able to come up with a fix, at least for now. The other 14, though, face an unprecedented resource collapse that could leave thousands of Californians with no other choice but to pack their bags and head to greener pastures.

"It's a sign of how severe this drought is," verbalized Bruce Burton, an assistant deputy director for the board, to the Los Angeles Times about some of the drastic measures being taken. For the first time ever, the water board has begun tracking communities throughout the state that are bordering on complete water loss, a situation that has never before occurred.

Most of the communities on the brink are located in California's Central Valley, the "food basket" of America that The New York Times (NYT) once declared to be the nation's greatest food resource. Most of America's carrots are grown there, as are the bulk of salad greens, almonds and citrus fruits that we all take for granted -- but that could soon disappear due to the continued drought.

'Larger, more sophisticated communities' face total water depletion

In some stricken areas, water facilities have been able to secure temporary supplies from neighboring communities as they figure out longer-term solutions. In Siskiyou County near the Oregon border, the city of Montague was actually able to construct a brand-new irrigation ditch to transport water from a lake 25 miles away, replacing an old ditch that had run dry back in April.

While most of the communities facing total water depletion are relatively small in size, with only a few thousand residents each, the prospect of larger communities also becoming affected is increasingly likely. Tom Quinn, the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, says that, if the drought continues, many of the more iconic regions of California will suffer.

"If this drought keeps on going, some larger, more sophisticated communities are going to be in trouble next year," he told the LA Times.

Mountains shifting due to water losses 

It isn't just that no new water is coming into California -- underground aquifers and other former backup sources are also running dry. According to research published in the journal Science, the entire Western United states has lost an astounding 240 gigatons of water since 2013, an amount equivalent to 1 billion tons.

In spatial terms, this amount of water could be spread out across the entire Western U.S. in a solid 10-centimeter sheet, constituting about 63 trillion gallons, or enough to fill 75,000 football stadiums. This loss has not only altered the gravitational field of California, according to the study, but also caused mountains throughout the state to rise up out of the ground in some areas.

"100 percent of the state is in drought, with 82 percent of the land designated as in 'extreme' or 'exceptional' drought, the highest levels on the U.S. Drought Monitor scale," explains the National Journal. "Thirty-seven million people are affected by the drought."

Groups Demand End of Everglades Oil Drilling, Fracking And Fix Water Problems

© Green Med Info

Green Med Info | Oct 15, 2014 | Dr. Karen Dwyer

Citizens draw the line against new oil drilling in Greater Everglades after unauthorized fracking threatens water supplies and triggers county and state lawsuits; they call on Scott to shut down all new Everglades oil drilling and update state regulations to 1) ban fracking and all forms of extreme extraction, 2) set a one mile buffer zone from drill site to family home, 3) secure DEP stronger enforcement powers, with significant penalties and fines.

NAPLES, FL—The Stonecrab Alliance, Food & Water Watch, Clean Water Initiative, and ReThink Energy Florida are organizing an "It's All About the Water" march to Governor's Rick Scott's beachfront home starting at 4 p.m., Saturday, October 18, beginning at the Naples Pier.  The groups intend to shut down new Everglades oil drilling and fracking and urge Scott to fix a broad range of water problems in Florida.  By land and by sea, participants will march on the beach and paddle from the Naples Pier to the Governor's beachfront home.  Banners, signs, and flags will spell out concerns.  Solidarity Fish from the east coast will make visible the need to send clean water south from Lake Okeechobee.

Participants will bring their own "troubled waters" samples in containers marked with location and date to vividly show the variety of water problems Florida faces from drilling, fracking, the BP oil spill, Lake Okeechobee water releases, and more.  In the Governor's beachfront backyard participants will deliver their troubled waters, enjoy music, participate in a water blessing from the Miccosukee Otter Clan, and listen to speakers.  Speakers will map out solutions for water problems such as banning new drilling and fracking, cleaning toxic Lake Okeechobee discharges, sending clean water south to restore the Everglades, curbing agricultural and industrial run-off, denying permits for gas-fired power plants and pipelines, investing in clean, renewable energy to curb sea-level rise and climate change.  Closing with a candlelight vigil and wish lanterns, they'll invite everyone, from legislators to land barons, to partner with them in saving Florida's waters and Everglades.

The march follows fast on a milestone victory for citizens — after unauthorized fracking threatened water supplies and wetlands.  Faced with fines, penalties, protests, and lawsuits, Dan A. Hughes has abandoned all plans to explore for oil in Florida.  The Texas oil company terminated its 115,000 acre lease while the state revoked all its permits and filed a lawsuit for clean up.  This means 115,000 acres in the heart of the Everglades, some, only 1000 feet from homes, has been saved from drilling and fracking.  Most significantly, the proposed drill site that had placed 30 families in an Emergency Evacuation Zone has been turned into a watermelon field.  Although citizens are still celebrating the shutdown of Hughes, the company has countersued the state and other oil companies have leased an additional 330,000 acres so the struggle for the Everglades and clean water escalates.

Governor Scott's support of the oil industry has fueled the expansion of new drilling in Florida.  Residents and environmentalists say they don't want another Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill—with its long chain of documented misjudgments, operational failings, and oversight mistakes.  They want to protect the aquifers that supply Florida with its drinking water and save the watersheds that sustain wetlands.  "It's about our water," they say.  Accidents happen.   Over time pipes leak.  Injected chemicals surface.  And even cement casings fail.  One accident could ruin a community's aquifer.  The risks are too great and benefits, too small.  Drilling is not in the public interest—especially not in Florida since its limestone geology sources the state's drinking water and is extremely porous and highly susceptible to groundwater contamination.  A sign sums up the problem: "Can't Clean up an Aquifer:  Don't Drill."

Read more..

Fracking disaster: California aquifers polluted with billions of gallons of wastewater

© Sinisha Karich

SOTT | Oct 7, 2014 | Mike G

After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.

It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, reveals that nearly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into central California aquifers and that half of the water samples collected at the 8 water supply wells tested near the injection sites have high levels of dangerous chemicals such as arsenic, a known carcinogen that can also weaken the human immune system, and thallium, a toxin used in rat poison.

Timothy Krantz, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, says these chemicals could pose a serious risk to public health: "The fact that high concentrations are showing up in multiple water wells close to wastewater injection sites raises major concerns about the health and safety of nearby residents."

The full extent of the contamination is not yet known. Regulators at the State Water Resources Board said that as many as 19 other injection wells could have been contaminating protected aquifers, and the Central Valley Water Board has so far only tested 8 of the nearly 100 nearby water wells.

Fracking has been accused of exacerbating California's epic state-wide drought, but the Central Valley region, which has some of the worst air and water pollution in the state, has borne a disproportionate amount of the impacts from oil companies' increasing use of the controversial oil extraction technique.

News of billions of gallons of fracking wastewater contaminating protected aquifers relied on by residents of the Central Valley for drinking water could not have come at a worse time.

Adding insult to injury, fracking is a water-intensive process, using as much as 140,000 to 150,000 gallons per frack job every day, permanently removing it from the water cycle.

Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, says these new revelations prove state regulators have failed to protect Californians and the environment from fracking and called on Governor Jerry Brown to take action now to prevent an even bigger water emergency in drought-stricken California.

"Much more testing is needed to gauge the full extent of water pollution and the threat to public health," Krezmann says. "But Governor Brown should move quickly to halt fracking to ward off a surge in oil industry wastewater that California simply isn't prepared to dispose of safely."

Source: Desmogblog

California drought may leave entire communities with no water in 2 months

Mud covers Pilgrim Peak Road near Mount Shasta,
California (Reuters / Inciweb / Handout via Reuters)

RT | Sep 30, 2014

A growing number of communities in central and northern California could end up without water in 60 days due to the Golden state’s prolonged drought.

There are now a dozen of small communities in Central and Northern California relying on a single source of water – which has the water resources board concerned they will not have any at all in two months’ time.

At a mobile home park north of Oroville, more than 30 families are severely cutting back. The water supply is so tight it is shut off entirely between 10 pm and 5 am, according to CBS Sacramento. The families are relying on one well – all the others have dried up – and have to drive five miles to buy drinking water for themselves and their animals.

In January, Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) declared a drought state of emergency in preparation for water shortages, in particular during the summer months. The drought has entered its third year, and water restrictions have increased in the state.

Nearly all urban areas in California have made considerable water conservation efforts, including mandatory limitations on water consumption, rationing, re-allocations of water to most essential crops and distribution guidelines for everyday use.

Now it is harvest time in California, but because of the drought many crops are anticipated to be smaller this year. About five percent of land went unplanted, and there are shrinking orange and pistachio crops, reported the Sacramento Bee.

One fourth – or 140,000 acres – of California’s rice field went fallow, which is expected to have an effect felt both nationwide and internationally, as the Golden State both provides rice to restaurants across the US and exports it to Asia. Estimates are, smaller crops and increased water costs will cut $2.2 billion from the $44 billion a year agricultural business.

“Nobody has any idea how disastrous it’s going to be,” Mike Wade of California Farm Water Coalition told the Associated Press. “Is it going to create more fallowed land? Absolutely. Is it going to create more groundwater problems? Absolutely.”

Stanford University scientists say they might have an answer about California’s drought – and it is greenhouse gases.

Using climate model simulators, they found that high-pressure ridges like the one that remained over the Pacific Ocean for the past two winters, blocks storms from hitting California, and are much more likely to form in the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, according to a report they published Monday.

The phenomenon they claim also caused rain to bypass Oregon and Washington, and instead land in the Arctic Circle.

“You can visualize it as a fairly large boulder in a small stream,” said Daniel Swain, a lead author on the report.

However, not everyone agrees. Marty Hoerling, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was cited by Reuters saying that atmospheric pressure has increased everywhere due to global warming, so the systems need to be studied in that context.

Feds Set to Open Fracking Floodgates in California Based on One Flawed Study

Common Dreams | Aug 29, 2014 | Jon Queally

(Image: Global Exchange)

Report raises grave concerns about fracking pollution’s threat to state's air and water, say opponents, and also highlights fact that government officials have never collected the data needed to determine extent of danger and future destruction

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has put the ecosystems, water resources, and residents of California at urgent risk, expert critics are warning, by accepting a failed scientific review of the dangers of fracking in the state as a basis to begin issuing permits for the controversial gas drilling technique as soon as next year.

The BLM-commissioned study was conducted by the California Council on Science and Technology and came in response to a lawsuit brought by two environmental groups—the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club—who objected to the leasing of public land in California to oil and gas companies for the drilling process also known as hydraulic fracturing—which injects water, sand, and chemicals deep into the earth to release fossil fuel deposits trapped in shale formations. A federal judge ordered the study in 2013 after ruling that the BLM had violated state law by issuing oil leases in Monterey County, Calif., without considering fracking’s environmental risks.

The findings of the report, according to the BLM, conclude that no serious dangers were found and signaled that fracking licenses could be issued on federal lands for drilling in 2015. Jim Kenna, the BLM's California state director, told reporters on a media call that the report would allow state regulators to authorized fracking while also monitoring for safety, environmental impacts, and health concerns.

But as the Los Angeles Times points out, even the independent research organization that conducted the survey on which the decision was based says the study had severe shortcomings and lacked key metrics.

[The report] authors noted that they had little time and scant information on which to base conclusions, citing widespread "data gaps" and inadequate scientific resources for a more thorough study.

For example, the report found no evidence of water contamination from fracking in California, but the scientist directing the research, Jane Long, said researchers also had no data on the quality of water near fracking sites.

"We can only tell you what the data we could get says," said Long, a former director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "We can't tell you what we don't know."

Environmental groups say the flaws of report are glaring—demonstrating a rushed process and an inadequate survey of data—and slammed the BLM for indicating that fracking leases would be approved based on such flimsy and inconclusive evidence.

“This report raises grave concerns about fracking pollution’s threat to California’s air and water, but it also highlights the fact that government officials have never collected the data needed to determine the extent of the damage in our state,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “A few months of incomplete data simply can’t support a federal decision to resume selling off our public lands in California to oil companies. Using this report as a basis for continued fracking in California is illogical and illegal.”

The poverty of the report would not be so bad, according to Siegel, if the coming decisions based on its findings were not so profound.

“How can we count on a fair and unbiased process for evaluating the decision to resume leasing when the head of California BLM has predetermined the outcome?” she asked. “First we get the verdict, and then we get the trial.”

According to a review of the study by the San Francisco Chronicle, fracking in California may well, in fact, "endanger groundwater" in the state. The newspaper reports:

The report found that half of the oil wells fracked in the state lie within 2,000 feet of the surface, close to aquifers. Hydraulic fracturing uses a high-pressure blend of water, sand and chemicals to crack rocks containing oil or natural gas. Those cracks can sometimes extend as far up as 1,969 feet - not far from the surface.

Fracking chemicals, some of them toxic, could migrate along the cracks and leach into drinking water, according to the report. There are no recorded cases of that happening in California, the authors note, but it remains a possibility needing further study.

"In California, hydraulic fracturing is occurring at relatively shallow depths and presents an inherent risk for fractures to intersect nearby aquifers," reads the report, from the California Council on Science and Technology.

Water wells in Kern County, where most of California's fracking takes place, lie 600 feet to 800 feet below the surface, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

In its analysis, the Center for Biological Diversity listed the federal review's most disturbing conclusions:

• Fracking in California happens at much shallower levels than elsewhere, and the report notes that, “Hydraulic fracturing at shallow depths poses a greater potential risk to water resources because of its proximity to groundwater and the potential for fractures to intersect nearby aquifers.”

• The study notes that investigators “could not determine the groundwater quality near many hydraulic fracturing operations and found that existing data was insufficient to evaluate the extent to which contamination may have occurred.”

• Some fracking chemicals used in California are “acutely toxic to mammals,” the report says, while also noting that “No information could be found about the toxicity of about a third of the chemicals and few of the chemicals have been evaluated to see if animals or plants would be harmed by chronic exposure.”

• The report says that “Current practice and testing requirements do not necessarily protect against adding produced water contaminated with hydraulic fracturing fluid to water used in agriculture.”

California’s Drought Has Reached a Grave New Milestone

Activist Post | Aug 26, 2014 | Joshua Krause

The residents of the San Joaquin Valley are facing an ominous crises due to California’s drought. Unlike most communities in the drought stricken state, the unincorporated town of East Porterville isn’t just running low on water. For some residents, they’ve completely run out.

At least 182 of the 1400 households in the town have run out of well water, prompting the county to provide 12 gallons of water for each resident that is facing water scarcity. With the help of the Red Cross, the bottled water was supplied at the cost of 30,000 dollars, and is expected to last 3 weeks.

For some residents, the shortage is just too much.

East Porterville resident Angelica Gallegos fought back tears as she described being without water for four months in the home she shares with her husband, three children and two other adults.

“It’s hard,” she told The Bee. “I can’t shower the children like I used to.”

Farmworker Oliva Sanchez said she still gets a trickle from her tap, but dirt started coming out with the water about a week ago.

“I try to use the least possible. I’ll move if I have to,” she said.

If you can believe it, the number of properties with dry wells may in fact be higher. Some residents are afraid to report these issues for fear of being evicted by their landlords, or possibly having their kids taken away by CPS.

As insane as that sounds, it may be the least asinine part of this whole situation. Perhaps it’s fitting that these folks are receiving their aid in the form of bottled water, because nearly every water bottle company is situated in some of the most drought stricken places in California. Apparently, California is one of the few states that doesn’t protect groundwater usage, so corporations are free to bottle it up from the local springs or the municipal water supply.

 It’s total madness when you really think about it. These companies are still bottling up precious water so it can be sold across the country. And there isn’t even anything special about it, since nearly half of all bottled water is nothing more than tap water. In parts of the country where people do have plenty of water, they can buy California’s dwindling supplies at a significantly higher price than their tap water, even though it is essentially the same thing. As reported by Mother Jones:

Despite the fact that almost all US tap water is better regulated and monitored than bottled, and despite the hefty environmental footprint of the bottled water industry, perhaps the biggest reason that bottling companies are using water in drought zones is simply because we’re still providing a demand for it: In 2012 in the United States alone, the industry produced about 10 billion gallons of bottled water, with sales revenues at $12 billion.

Perhaps running out of drinking water isn’t the only major milestone of this drought. We have now reached the same situation that countries like India have been dealing with for decades, where the Coca Cola Corporation can build a bottling plant that soaks up all the groundwater from the region, leaving the locals high and dry. The drought is showing Californians what it’s like to live in a third world country for the very first time.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple, where this article first appeared. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger.

Water crisis can't get any worse? Wait until the aquifers are drained!

© Peter Essick, National Geographic
In ten years, the Colorado River Basin has lost the equivalent
of two Lake Meads, the largest reservoir in the U.S., pictured
here at dusk with Las Vegas in the background.

Sott.net | Aug 19, 2014 | Dennis Dimick

We're pumping irreplaceable groundwater to counter the drought. When it's gone, the real crisis begins.

Aquifers provide us freshwater that makes up for surface water lost from drought-depleted lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. We are drawing down these hidden, mostly nonrenewable groundwater supplies at unsustainable rates in the western United States and in several dry regions globally, threatening our future.

We are at our best when we can see a threat or challenge ahead. If flood waters are rising, an enemy is rushing at us, or a highway exit appears just ahead of a traffic jam, we see the looming crisis and respond.

We are not as adept when threats - or threatened resources - are invisible. Some of us have trouble realizing why invisible carbon emissions are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and warming the planet. Because the surface of the sea is all we see, it's difficult to understand that we already have taken most of the large fish from the ocean, diminishing a major source of food. Neither of these crises are visible - they are largely out of sight, out of mind - so it's difficult to get excited and respond. Disappearing groundwater is another out-of-sight crisis.

Groundwater comes from aquifers - spongelike gravel and sand-filled underground reservoirs - and we see this water only when it flows from springs and wells. In the United States we rely on this hidden - and shrinking - water supply to meet half our needs, and as drought shrinks surface water in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, we rely on groundwater from aquifers even more. Some shallow aquifers recharge from surface water, but deeper aquifers contain ancient water locked in the earth by changes in geology thousands or millions of years ago. These aquifers typically cannot recharge, and once this "fossil" water is gone, it is gone forever - potentially changing how and where we can live and grow food, among other things.

© Peter Essick, National Geographic
California's Central Valley has seen a dramatic rise
in well-drilling this year to compensate for
surface water lost from the drought.

A severe drought in California - now approaching four years long - has depleted snowpacks, rivers, and lakes, and groundwater use has soared to make up the shortfall. A new report from Stanford University says that nearly 60 percent of the state's water needs are now met by groundwater, up from 40 percent in years when normal amounts of rain and snow fall.

Relying on groundwater to make up for shrinking surface water supplies comes at a rising price, and this hidden water found in California's Central Valley aquifers is the focus of what amounts to a new gold rush. Well-drillers are working overtime, and as Brian Clark Howard reported here last week, farmers and homeowners short of water now must wait in line more than a year for their new wells.

In most years, aquifers recharge as rainfall and streamflow seep into unpaved ground. But during drought the water table - the depth at which water is found below the surface - drops as water is pumped from the ground faster than it can recharge. As Howard reported, Central Valley wells that used to strike water at 500 feet deep must now be drilled down 1,000 feet or more, at a cost of more than $300,000 for a single well. And as aquifers are depleted, the land also begins to subside, or sink.

Unlike those in other western states, Californians know little about their groundwater supply because well-drilling records are kept secret from public view, and there is no statewide policy limiting groundwater use. State legislators are contemplating a measure that would regulate and limit groundwater use, but even if it passes, compliance plans wouldn't be required until 2020, and full restrictions wouldn't kick in until 2040. California property owners now can pump as much water as they want from under the ground they own.

California's Central Valley isn't the only place in the U.S. where groundwater supplies are declining. Aquifers in the Colorado River Basin and the southern Great Plains also suffer severe depletion. Studies show that about half the groundwater depletion nationwide is from irrigation. Agriculture is the leading use of water in the U.S. and around the world, and globally irrigated farming takes more than 60 percent of the available freshwater.

The Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to 40 million people in seven states, is losing water at dramatic rates, and most of the losses are groundwater. A new satellite study from the University of California, Irvine and NASA indicates that the Colorado River Basin lost 65 cubic kilometers (15.6 cubic miles) of water from 2004 to 2013. That is twice the amount stored in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., which can hold two years' worth of Colorado River runoff. As Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist and study co-author wrote here, groundwater made up 75 percent of the water lost in the basin.

Farther east, the Ogallala Aquifer under the High Plains is also shrinking because of too much demand. When the Dust Bowl overtook the Great Plains in the 1930s, the Ogallala had been discovered only recently, and for the most part it wasn't tapped then to help ease the drought. But large-scale center-pivot irrigation transformed crop production on the plains after World War II, allowing water-thirsty crops like corn and alfalfa for feeding livestock.

But severe drought threatens the southern plains again, and water is being unsustainably drawn from the southern Ogallala Aquifer. The northern Ogallala, found near the surface in Nebraska, is replenished by surface runoff from rivers originating in the Rockies. But farther south in Texas and New Mexico, water lies hundreds of feet below the surface, and does not recharge. Sandra Postel wrote here last month that the Ogallala Aquifer water level in the Texas Panhandle has dropped by up to 15 feet in the past decade, with more than three-quarters of that loss having come during the drought of the past five years. A recent Kansas State University study said that if farmers in Kansas keep irrigating at present rates, 69 percent of the Ogallala Aquifer will be gone in 50 years.

© George Steinmetz, National Geographic Creative
The Ogallala Aquifer supplies the water for
center-pivot irrigation on farms in western Kansas.

This coincides with a nationwide trend of groundwater declines. A 2013 study of 40 aquifers across the United States by the U.S. Geological Survey reports that the rate of groundwater depletion has increased dramatically since 2000, with almost 25 cubic kilometers (six cubic miles) of water per year being pumped from the ground. This compares to about 9.2 cubic kilometers (1.48 cubic miles) average withdrawal per year from 1900 to 2008.

Scarce groundwater supplies also are being used for energy. A recent study from CERES, an organization that advocates sustainable business practices, indicated that competition for water by hydraulic fracturing - a water-intensive drilling process for oil and gas known as "fracking" - already occurs in dry regions of the United States. The February report said that more than half of all fracking wells in the U.S. are being drilled in regions experiencing drought, and that more than one-third of the wells are in regions suffering groundwater depletion.

Satellites have allowed us to more accurately understand groundwater supplies and depletion rates. Until these satellites, called GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), were launched by NASA, we couldn't see or measure this developing invisible crisis. GRACE has given us an improved picture of groundwater worldwide, revealing how supplies are shrinking in several regions vulnerable to drought: northern India, the North China Plain, and the Middle East among them.

As drought worsens groundwater depletion, water supplies for people and farming shrink, and this scarcity can set the table for social unrest. Saudi Arabia, which a few decades ago began pumping deep underground aquifers to grow wheat in the desert, has since abandoned the plan, in order to conserve what groundwater supplies remain, relying instead on imported wheat to feed the people of this arid land.

Managing and conserving groundwater supplies becomes an urgent challenge as drought depletes our surface supplies. Because groundwater is a common resource - available to anyone with well - drilling equipment-cooperation and collaboration will be crucial as we try to protect this shrinking line of defense against a future of water scarcity.   

Further information on the water crisis can be found here and here

Source: National Geographic

Water reserves in western US being drained underground – NASA study

Reuters / David Becker

RT | Jul 25, 2014

As droughts have ravaged the western US for over a decade, much of the water loss has come from underground resources in the Colorado River Basin, a new study has found. The water loss may pose a greater threat to the West than previously thought.

The study by NASA and the University of California, Irvine found that more than 75 percent of the water loss in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin since late 2004 came from underground resources. It is the first time researchers have quantified the amount that groundwater contributes to the water needs of western states, NASA said.

The research team measured the change in water mass monthly from December 2004 to November 2013, using data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission to track changes in the mass of the Colorado River Basin. Changes in water mass are related to changes in water amount on and below the surface.

Image by University of California
Center for Hydrologic Modeling

In the nine-year study, the basin – which covers Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California – lost nearly 53 million acre feet (65 cubic kilometers) of freshwater, almost double the volume of the nation's largest reservoir, Nevada's Lake Mead. More than three-quarters of the total – about 41 million acre feet (50 cubic kilometers) – was from groundwater, according to a statement by NASA on the project.
 
"We don't know exactly how much groundwater we have left, so we don't know when we're going to run out," Stephanie Castle, a water resources specialist at UC Irvine, and the study's lead author, said in the statement. "This is a lot of water to lose. We thought that the picture could be pretty bad, but this was shocking."

The Colorado River is the only major river in the southwestern United States, and the water source is relied upon by 40 million people. The surface water in the basin is regulated by the US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), but the groundwater is regulated by the individual states. Some states, like California, have no groundwater management rules. Others, like Arizona, have gone so far as to transfer surface water from the Colorado River into underground aquifers for later use, the Washington Post reported.

The USBR, part of the Department of the Interior, allocates water from the basin proportionally among the seven states. A study completed by the agency in 2012 “confirmed what most experts know: there are likely to be significant shortfalls between projected water supplies and demands in the Colorado River Basin in the coming decades,” the USBR said on its website. Since then, the federal government, state governments, local municipalities, and Native American reservations have worked together to augment water supplies, conserve and reuse existing water supplies, and plan for the future of the basin.
 
"We have made substantial progress addressing Colorado River water management over the past several years," Reclamation Commissioner Michael L. Connor said in a statement. "From the interim guidelines for shortage and surplus in 2007, the 2012 signing of Minute 319 to the treaty with Mexico and the latest WaterSMART funding announcements supporting new projects and studies, we remain focused on wise use and new technologies to address upcoming gaps in supply and demand."

But last week, USBR announced that Lake Mead – the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam – had reached its lowest water level since the lake’s initial filling in the 1930s. Since 2000, the lake has lost 4 trillion gallons of water, according to CBS News. It now sits 130 feet below the high-water mark last reached at the turn of the century, and at 39 percent of total capacity. Scientists have determined that the dry spell since 2000 in the Colorado River Basin is one of the most severe in more than 1,200 years.
 
"It's time for us to wake up. If this drought continues, we're going to be in a terrible situation within the next 12-24 months," Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the Desert Sun.

Famiglietti is currently on leave from UC Irvine, and is the senior author of NASA’s groundwater depletion study. He noted that the rapid depletion rate will compound the problem of short supply by leading to further declines in streamflow in the Colorado River, according to the statement.
 
"The Colorado River Basin is the water lifeline of the western United States," Famiglietti said. "With Lake Mead at its lowest level ever, we wanted to explore whether the basin, like most other regions around the world, was relying on groundwater to make up for the limited surface-water supply. We found a surprisingly high and long-term reliance on groundwater to bridge the gap between supply and demand."

At the current rate of water use by the seven states, the Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that by 2017, there will be a 50-50 chance of lower water levels prompting the declaration of a shortage. Starting in 2018, the estimated likelihood of reaching that threshold – and cutbacks in water deliveries – rises to 60 percent, according to the Desert Sun.

Colorado River Groundwater Disappearing at 'Shocking' Rate

A ring of light-colored rock shows how much the
water level has dropped at Nevada's Lake Mead.
Credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
(CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW)

Live Science | Jul 24, 2014 | Becky Oskin

than it's being replenished, a new study finds.
As the Southwest's drought has worsened in the last decade, making surface water scarce, millions of people are drawing more heavily on underground water supplies. The water is coming out faster

Between December 2004 and November 2013, more than 75 percent of the water lost in the Colorado River Basin was from groundwater, according to the study. The region has been in a drought since 2000, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The results show that groundwater is already being used to fill the gap between the demands of the region's millions of residents and farmers, and the available surface water supply, the researchers said. [Dry and Drying: See Images of Drought]

"We found a surprisingly high and long-term reliance on groundwater," study co-author Jay Famiglietti, senior water cycle scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

For example, the amount of land irrigated by groundwater increased since the study began in December 2004, the researchers reported July 24 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The study offers a bird's-eye view of groundwater in the Colorado River Basin, one of the most heavily used and closely watched water resources in the West. More than 40 million people rely on Colorado River water in the United States alone (water is also allocated to Mexico), the U.S. Geologic Survey estimates.

"We thought the picture could be pretty bad, but this is shocking," lead study author Stephanie Castle, a water resource specialist at the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement.

The Colorado River Basin stretches across seven states: from Wyoming across Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California. Its groundwater is stored in underground aquifers and is sucked from the ground by wells. If water is removed from an aquifer faster than it can be replaced, eventually the wells will go dry.

Castle and her co-authors tracked groundwater loss in the basin with NASA's twin GRACE satellites (for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment). The satellites circle the Earth, monitoring the slight changes in Earth's gravity from increases or decreases in water. More water means more mass, which strengthens the pull of gravity on the satellites. (The satellites also track ice — their original mission was to monitor the planet's polar ice sheets and melting glaciers.)

Since December 2004, the basin of the Colorado River lost nearly 53 million acre feet (65 cubic kilometers) of freshwater, almost double the volume of the region's largest reservoir, Nevada's Lake Mead, the researchers reported. About 75 percent of the total — about 41 million acre feet (50 cubic km) — came from groundwater, the study found.

"We don't know exactly how much groundwater we have left, so we don't know when we're going to run out," Castle said. "This is a lot of water to lose."

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.