Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” has been linked to a variety of environmental and health concerns, including earthquakes, asthma and groundwater contamination. And now, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered another serious, albeit unexpected, risk—traffic fatalities.
During the fracking process, there is a high-pressure injection of water into a wellborn to create cracks in the deep-rock formations through which natural gas, petroleum and brine can flow more freely. The high-pressure injection utilizes large amounts of water, which in turn generates a high amount of wastewater. Trucks must transport all the water within a narrow window of time to a disposal site—and that’s when the problems occur, according to the researchers’ paper published in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
Between 2006 and 2014, Yilan Xu and her colleagues at Illinois recorded an additional 17 fatal crashes causally linked to fracking-related trucking—a 49 percent increase relative to annual crash counts in the region pre-fracking.
The study examined the effect of fracking-related trucking in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota, using the timing of fracking operations near certain road segments. According to the research, an additional post-fracking well within six miles of the road segments led to 8 percent more fatal crashes.
“That’s a significant number when you are talking about a sparsely populated area like North Dakota,” Xu said.
To make matters worse, when fracking hit its peak about a decade ago, it created a boon for rural cities, such as found in North Dakota, akin to the San Francisco gold rush. Infrastructure, including roadways, were hastily constructed and not necessarily built for heavy traffic or the long term.
“Besides the fatality and injury costs in fatal crashes quantified in our study, other costs may occur as well, including injury costs in non-fatal crashes and indirect expenditures on emergency services, insurance administrative costs and infrastructure maintenance and replacement,” Xu explained.
The paper cites two specific recommendations to reduce the negative impact of fracking on traffic fatalities and crashes. One is a tax that can be charged per well, similar to the impact fees implemented in energy-rich towns in Pennsylvania. Likewise, a toll fee by miles driven could be collected on highways. Xu predicts that both monetary-based recommendations would affect operators’ drilling and fracking decisions, indirectly alleviating the hazard of truck traffic.
The second recommendation suggests local governments adapt roadway safety measures as most of the fatal crashes take place in the daytime rush hours. A high occupancy vehicle lane for trucks and an active traffic alert and warning system could help drivers monitor real-time traffic conditions and avoid rush times and road hazards.
“In the long-run, since a well may need to be fracked multiple times over its productive life, operators may improve the water supply system by constructing water wells serving multiple well pads via a piping system,” Xu said. “They could also develop the onsite wastewater treatment and disposal facilities as opposed to trucking wastewater over long distances Such measure would reduce the long-term transport costs and the associated traffic effects.”
Although Xu’s study is isolated to a town and state with a low population and traffic volume, she says the research still has implications for other regions where shale development is active or planned, especially as it can help inform local and federal policymakers.