Yes. As I understand it (chemical engineer, not a petroleum engineer), fracking for oil and gas (in addition to normal oil drilling) is USUALLY done thousands o

Yes. As I understand it (chemical engineer, not a petroleum engineer), fracking for oil and gas (in addition to normal oil drilling) is USUALLY done thousands of feet below the water table. For some reason here they were fracking at a much shallower depth, in addition to doing things like "dumping of drilling and production fluids containing diesel fuel, high chemical concentrations in unlined pits" (from TFA). Fracking is like setting a bomb off underground, but you can imagine there being something a city block or two of solid rock between where the bomb's going off and the water table.