The process consists of millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals being blasted into wells to fracture tightly compacted shale and release trapped natural gas.

Though fracking has been around for decades, drilling companies are now using it in conjunction with a horizontal drilling technique.

Fracking a horizontal well costs more and uses more water (up to 5 million gallons per well), but it produces more natural gas from shale than a traditional vertical well.

However, once the rock is fractured, an estimated 15-40% of the water comes back up the well, bringing with it water that is five times saltier than seawater and contaminated with sulfates and chlorides.

Conventional sewage and drinking water treatment plants are not equipped to remove these solids.

Initially, drilling companies brought the wastewater to sewage treatment plants that processed the water and released it into rivers. These rivers are the same ones that water utilities then drew drinking water from.

Environmental regulators say that high levels of salts and other minerals can kill fish and wildlife.

Not to mention what they can do to human health.

In 2008, the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania, a source of drinking water for more than 700,000 people, saw levels of dissolved solids spike above government standards.

The results?

The area's tap water became tinted, smelly, and started to leave a white film on dishes.

One 11-year-old boy, allergic to sulfates, broke out into hives that lasted several weeks until his mother realized the cause of the rash and was forced to switch him to bottled water.

In states like West Virginia and New York, fracking is on hold while companies wait for a new set of state permitting guidelines.

The Marcellus Shale, a rock bed that lies roughly 6,000 feet below Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, and Ohio, is believed by geologists to host the most productive natural gas field in the United States, capable of supplying the entire country with energy for up to two decades.

But, until a solution is found to the pollution this process yields, one must wonder... is it worth it?