Butterfield: Colorado's elegant solution for fracking

Eventually those local moratoriums against fracking will expire in Boulder, Longmont and Erie. And residents will worry anew about fracking operations inching up on schools and neighborhoods chasing a product of costly sourcing that will go "poof" the instant it's used.
It has also just come out that fracking is inching up on agriculture to compete for Colorado's water. Taking only 0.08 of a percent per year, it's a smidge for sure, but that water gets so polluted it must be disposed in a way that removes it from the hydrologic cycle. And that's not pretty when we're looking down the craw of a new drought kicked off with a historic climate-change-induced heat wave plus a horrifying wildfire this season.
Permanently voiding precious Colorado water out of the hydrologic cycle feels even worse in view the fact that water can be lost for naught when the depletion rate on fracking wells is 63-85 percent in the first year according to Dave Hughes of the Geological Survey of Canada. This can mean fruitless drilling down the slippery slope of diminishing marginal returns.Read more..http://www.dailycamera.com/opinion-columnists/ci_20342247/butterfield-colorados-elegant-solution-fracking