Talking Paper on Fracking -- Colorado

Total Amount of Water Used in Fracking (as a percentage) Represents a "Rounding Error"

Don sent me the link to this talking paper on water and fracking.

Lots of great data points.

Perhaps the data point I like best is found on page 4 of the 9-page paper:

Water Demands in Colorada

Total: 17.4 million acre-feet/year
Agricultural: 13.9 million acre-feet/year (85.5%)
Municipal and industrial: 1.2 million acre-feet/year (7.4%)
Total All Others: 1.2 million acre-feet/year (7.1%)

Breakdown of "All Others" (selected):
Recreation: 923K (5.6%)
Hydraulic fracturing: 14K (0.08%)
Snowmaking: 5K (0.03%)

One of the things that I find frustrating in mainstream media is that they deal in numerators and not denominators. We always hear how much water is necessary for fracking, but mainstream media never provides the percent that water represents compared to other industries and other needs.

I assume these percents are about the same in North Dakota. If so, the amount of water used in fracking represents a "rounding error."

For those folks who want to play around with the calculator app on their iPad: one acre-foot is approximately equal to 326,000 gallons.