Hydraulic fracturing removed over five billion litres of freshwater from British Columbia's natural water cycle, enough to fill Vancouver's B.C. Place twice, a new report says.
"After the fracking process is complete, the wastewater that returns to the surface is so toxic it cannot be returned to the water cycle without treatment, a process which is currently not used in B.C.," the report says. At a rate of $2.25 per million litres of water, the fracking industry paid less than $8,000 in water rent, according to the analysis carried out by the group's oil and gas program director Sven Biggs. That doesn't include application fees, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.
The environmental group says the government could better protect groundwater aquifers from leaking disposal wells if it carried out more regular testing and monitoring and aligned its regulations with the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S.