Fracking Fluid - What happens to it?
While there are technologies to try to reuse fracking fluid (but only for additional fracking, economically), much used fracking fluid has been stored in often leaking, above-ground ponds/pits, injected under high pressure back underground into storage wells, or partially “treated” and released. Most of the toxic fluid, however, sometimes as much as 85% of the original fracking fluid, remains underground with unknown longterm consequences. Almost a billion gallons of toxic fracking fluid may remain underneath Colorado.*
Frackers in Colorado have had difficulty finding enough land and injection wells to store produced/recovered fluid. There have been reports of frackers illegally storing this flowback on their own properties without permits. The need to dispose of the fluid has led to such schemes as spraying it on public roads and highways as "ice-melt", spreading it over farm fields, or “solidifying” it and burying it on landfills after first quietly getting it classified as "non-hazardous". All these schemes require the complicity of local officials and the non-attention of media and regulators. (All variously done, approved, or being considered as of this date by municipalities in Weld County, CO)
(Sources: US Department of Energy / EPA / FrackingofAmerica.com)
* .005 X 5,000,000 gallons X 50,000 total fracked wells X .75 percent not recovered = 937,500,000 gallons