While most of the environmental focus on oil/gas produced water disposal is on seismicity, the less talked about risk is the potential to contaminate freshwater drinking supplies. Although not as common or noticeable as earthquakes, the damage of contaminating an underground freshwater aquifer is much more long lasting, possibly permanent. The attached article addresses a plethora of instances where produced water, which is usually disposed of via underground well injection, has leaked through porous soils or underground streams to contaminate freshwater. By evaporating ~95% produced water with EcoVAP, only a small fraction of the wastewater remains, thus requiring much less volume and pressure for SWD injection wells to contaminate freshwater aquifers.
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