According to a 2012 study, modern fracking “events” (as they are called) use an average of five million gallons of water—“70 to 300 times the amount of fluid used in traditional fracking.” Once used, much of this water is radioactive and toxic. In 2012, the industry created 280 billion gallons of such wastewater in the U.S. alone—“enough to flood all of Washington DC beneath a 22ft deep toxic lagoon,” as The Guardian noted.
