Study: EPA’s Probe Into Fracking’s Effect on Drinking Water Isn’t So Clean
An industry-funded independent investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s long-running probe into the effects of hydraulic fracturing found numerous flaws in everything from the EPA’s scope to its lack of consultation with oil and gas companies.
“The study released today by Battelle—a highly respected independent science and technology organization—identifies numerous concerns with EPA’s ongoing hydraulic fracturing study,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
The 166-page Battelle study, submitted to the American Petroleum Institute and America’s National Gas Alliance, focused on the 2010 urging of a House conference committee that the EPA “carry out a study on the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water using a credible approach that relies on the best available science, as well as independent sources of information.”
According to Congress, the study was to be conducted through “a transparent, peer-reviewed process that will ensure the validity and accuracy of the data. The Agency shall consult with other federal agencies as well as appropriate state and interstate regulatory agencies in carrying out the study, which should be prepared in accordance with the Agency’s quality assurance principles.”
The industry groups commissioned the nonprofit research organization to review the EPA’s “Plan to Study the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on Drinking Water Resources.”
“Battelle’s comprehensive technical review found widespread problems with EPA’s study design, implementation, and quality control processes,” Harris said. “The Battelle report provides many constructive recommendations that EPA can undertake to improve the transparency, quality and ultimate value of its study.”
The report found that the EPA broadened its scope of the investigation beyond the congressional intent “to require study of more peripheral elements related to generic oil and gas exploration and production, such as various upstream and downstream stages of the water lifecycle as well as standard site development and production activities.”
The researchers also found that standards of a “highly influential scientific assessment,” which would have “raised the level of rigor, funding, timing and transparency of all stages of the study,” were not implemented by the EPA.
The broad scope into other oil and gas production activities, including environmental aspects already addressed by regulations and industry standards, Battelle wrote, risks “weakening and obscuring the significance of the research findings and their relevance with respect to the central question about the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and drinking water.”
“Additionally, ambitious schedules, driven by various 2012 reporting goals, may undermine the robustness of data collection and analysis as well as the soundness of scientific conclusions. Also, the site data collected from the companies are from 2006-2010, and the final report will be in 2014,” Battelle found. “The changes occurring at these sites in the intervening years will likely render the data obsolete for purposes of the study.”
The study also found problems with the quality control of the EPA’s probe and its collaborative efforts.
“EPA’s approach, in a number of areas, is not consistent with this congressional request,” Battelle wrote. “…Given industry’s extensive experience with production of oil and gas from unconventional reservoirs, its unique expertise in the process of hydraulic fracturing and associated technologies, and its wealth of relevant data and information available to inform this effort, it is a weakness of the study plan, and its implementation, that significant industry collaboration is not envisioned.”
The EPA protested that its investigation is designated as a “highly influential scientific assessment” and said it will include all stakeholders, including industry reps, at some point in the process.
The American Petroleum Institute’s senior policy adviser told reporters this morning that the study reinforced previous industry concerns about the EPA study and raised new ones.
“A robust, thorough, careful study is important because it has the potential to affect the future course of shale energy development, which has enormous potential for improving our energy security and economy for decades to come,” said API’s Stephanie Meadows. “We’re not calling on EPA to stop its study. We’re calling on them to do it right.”
Though opponents of fracking will dismiss the study for the fact that it was requisitioned by the industry, a Duke University study released today highlights just how its mixed findings can be spun either way.
The headline on Businessweek was “Pennsylvania Fracking Can Put Water at Risk, Duke Study Finds,” while the New York Times headline was “Fracking Did Not Sully Aquifers, Limited Study Finds.”
Researchers found that natural pathways in the rock bed can carry contaminants into the groundwater, but found no direct link between such contamination and shale-gas drilling operations in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Regardless, fracking opponents are getting ready to descend on Washington later this month to protest the drilling technique that they say causes all manner of calamities from health risks to earthquakes.
The “Stop the Frack Attack” rally on July 28 will call on Congress to stamp out fracking while pursuing clean-energy alternatives.
The event in the nation’s capital sprang from protests by environmental activists and celebrities upset with fracking proposals in New York.
In Washington will be actor Mark Ruffalo, who got upset over his upstate N.Y. neighbors leasing their land to gas companies. “I realized if I didn’t do something, it would destroy the place I live. I’d rather be doing other things with my free time, but when I learned about what is going on with fracking, it really challenged me – like, am I a phony or not?” Ruffalo told Rolling Stone.
“Then I went to Dimock, Pa., which is the epicenter of the fracking disaster,” Ruffalo continued. “I saw people who were suffering, whose lives have been ruined by this. I also saw the total failure of our political system, our social system. The fact that something like this can happen in America is unbelievable.”
Others expected at the Washington rally include Ed Asner, Ed Begley Jr., and Margot Kidder. Eighty groups are said to be banding together for four “days of action” including lobbying, which will culminate in the march on the Capitol.
“We need to share our concerns about fracking with President Obama, Congress, and the Environmental Protection Agency to stop the frack attack,” wrote Sarah Hodgdon at Treehugger. “If drillers can’t extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas.”
Rep. Harris, however, sees the Battelle study as the next step forward in proving that fracking is a safe and reliable extraction method.
“I hope and expect that EPA will work hard to address Battelle’s recommendations, and I look forward to following up with EPA on the status of this effort in the coming weeks,” he said.
Ed Asner, Ed Begley Jr., and Margot Kidder. Three over-the-hill Hollywood
leftistsprogressives who are suddenly experts on the petroleum industry.Or at least experts on trying to turn the lights out on the nation as a whole.
Add in EPA, which once more has shown that the only science it is interested in practicing is the political kind, and I can almost hear Captain Renault (Claude Rains) in Casablanca saying;
clear ether
eon
Proof that actors have a lot of time on their hands, and even more empty space in their heads.
Remember that Alar apple scare some 30 years ago?
“Others expected at the Washington rally include Ed Asner, Ed Begley Jr., and Margot Kidder.”
Just the people I go to for my scientific and engineering information — ill-educated has-beens with histories of mental problems.
BTW — anyone know if Begley is walking to the hearing? Surely he’s not flying!
“Ruffalo continued. “I saw people who were suffering, whose lives have been ruined by this.”
Ruffalo’s picture is in the dictionary next to “gullible”, isn’t it?
Reminds me of the Inuit girl who came to Capital Hill to testify to global warming in her lifetime – but readily admitted that she had never been to the place she described as desolate wasteland because of the warming. She even made the argument that it didn’t matter if she’d never seen it. She KNEW it was happening and they (mankind) just HAD to do something about it.
It literally never entered this empty headed little twits mind that she was lying to congress. It didn’t matter because it was for a good cause.
These idiots do not understand the industry, the process or geology. People who drill wells do not want water in their wells because it destroys the well and wastes millions of dollars. The water table is a considerable distance from the wells and is protected by layers of concrete and steel. This all has to be approved by the state regulatory agency. These are just more liberal radical lies. We will be freezing in the dark one of these days and the wacko environmentalists will be at fault.
This is the first post I have made to this site all day, and get a WordPress warning that I’m posting too fast????? What?
We know, from her own comments and admissions, that Lisa Jackson has a mission with regard to the production of any carbon fuel – stop it at all cost. So, one can reasonably assume that the “conclusion” to the Congressionally mandated report has already been written. Now EPA needs to scramble around and find some supporting evidence and data.
Bingo. There’s the real agenda. There’s a convergence of interest between the rich moonbat left and OPEC to stop fracking. It’s got nothing to do with fracking itself. Fracking is not the issue, and never was.
According to Congress, the study was to be conducted through “a TRANSPARENT, peer-reviewed process that will ensure the validity and accuracy of the data
The EPA protested that its investigation is designated as a “highly influential scientific assessment” and said it will include all stakeholders, including industry reps,(I like this part) at some point in the process.
You gotta love those government workers at the EPA. OOPs, we got caught now all the stakeholders will be involved and oh yea, will show transparency now. Wake up America!
I pay a little more attention to fracking than I do most environmental issues because I like to fish for trout and they’re a very ecologically sensitive fish, but if anything my heightened awareness just underscores what a bunch of lying scum environmentalists are.
The USA is now just an overgrown federalist/socialist state. Y’all lost your republic decades ago. Electing Romney is like putting a band-aide on an amputated leg. You clowns have cities that outlaw large pop drinks, feds that tax citizens working overseas, to the point that 1700+ have renounced american citizenship in the last few years, over-regulate any and all forms of free enterprise. Face it, your republic is dead, and has been for a long time, and if you want it back, well, seems you’ve already ceded too much power to the feds, and the states don’t have the balls for a real fight. Maybe if you elected Ted Nugent for president, but that ain’t gonna happen. RIP and enjoy your serfdom.
As a result of fracking, the price of natural gas has declined substantially over the past decade. This means that, among other savings, it is cheaper to heat our homes in the winter, and to cook our food throughout the year.
Leftist/environmentalists cannot fathom cheaper fuel costs because it will lead to greater fuel usage, and the cheaper price undercuts such pipedreams as solar and wind power. They want fracking to stop so that the cost of traditional carbon fuel sources become expensive. The more expensive they become, the more “competitive” solar and wind power becomes. But cheap natural gas through fracking pushes further into the future that utopian salvation of solar and wind power.
What the leftist/environmentalists fail to comprehend is that cheap, comparatively clean, natural gas is, more and more, undermining coal production and coal usage here in the USA, which, presumably, would be a good thing for the environment. Big Coal now seeks to market its production overseas. The leftist/environmentalists in response also seek to prevent the building of railroads and port facilities to enable coal exports.
Ultimately, these utopian dreams pursued in order to “save mankind” from an apocalyptic end because of “climate change” will bring an end to our society through the destruction of jobs in the energy sector. Destruction of jobs in the energy sector, in turn, destroys jobs all throughout our economy. Our great wealth of the past century was built upon cheap, abundant carbon based fuels, first coal, then oil, now natural gas.
But we are now supposed to halt its production and thereby destroy our society. They are wrong. But, at least we know they have good intentions coming from their good hearts.
The utopians don’t dream of saving mankind from squat. The dream only of controlling mankind. Did they save mankind from the scourge of malaria when they saved mankind from the “dreadful environmental impact” of DDT? If you die as a result of the utopian’s stupidity, as millions have in the DDT versus malaria situation, then tough luck. Meanwhile they have received accolades from their fellow liberal halfwits and that is all that really matters to them.
“Leftist/environmentalists cannot fathom cheaper fuel costs…”
plus what those lower fuel costs do to stimulate the broader economy. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that high gasoline prices kick-started the financial decline. Many, if not most, of the sub-prime borrowers bought houses that they couldn’t really afford. Every dollar went toward living expenses and they had no cushion for emergencies. Then, as fuel prices rose, more and more of their paycheck went into the gas tank and other bills started to pile up.
Or, maybe the environmentalists do understand the stimulative effect of low fuel costs and they just want the citizens to silently starve as they freeze to death in the dark.
So the protesters are well off and really don’t care about the peasants. Except to talk down to. How quaint.
I am a licensed geologist so I will do a fracking study right here, right now, and free of change.
There are three groundwater contamination issues associated with fracking, just as in any oil or gas well that has been drilled for the 150 years:
1)oil/gas/contamination of some sort will travel up the borehole between the walls of the annulus and the casing and into an aquifer,
2)the waste ponds will leak,
3)the freshwater needed will deplete local freshwater supplies.
The first problem is prevented by proper cementing of the well annulus.
The second problem is prevented by proper lining of the ponds.
The third is prevented by proper planning and coordination with local stakeholders.
There is a possible fourth problem which is speculative and not very significant. That is that fracking may cause enough ground movement so that groundwater is muddied up. Home filtering can clean this up if it occurs.
As you can see this is not rocket science. How anyone can make a cause out of this should/could be the subject of term paper for an undergraduate psychology course. I guess this is what happens when people don’t have any real challenges in their lives, they make one up.
Actors.
“…this is what happens when people don’t have any real challenges in their lives, they make one up.”
Ed Asner: Mot generally considered stupid but, an actor. “Excuse me, I have to go to work and pretend to be someone else for a living.”
Ed Begley, Jr.: Useless. Saw him for the first time in “Room 222″. He was horrible and any time I saw him on the screen, I made it a point to change the channel. That included by beloved Star Trek watching in the 80′s and 90′s.
Never heard of the third actor listed. Margot…oh… Maybe I’ve heard of her but never watched any of her movies.
Point is, they are ACTORS. They have intentionally chosen a life that the main part of their craft is deception. Remember “Galaxy Quest” with the aliens who did not understand the concept of lying? Tim Allen had to convince them that they weren’t the real space-farers that the aliens thought they were by saying, “We lied”. That’s what acting is.
Yes, it’s an interesting craft. An art. But, it is lying just the same. Obama is also a liar and therefore, an actor. His devotion to his craft is every bit as strong as any actor wanting to win an Oscar nomination. Actors on the screen and Obama have much in common.
They have only moderate skills at doing anything, except convincing others they are believable when engaged in their craft.
I therefore, don’t listen to anything they have to say.
After reading the comments on here, one thing becomes painfully obvious. Nobody has bothered to mention that “Frakking” also involves injecting millions of gallons of “mysterious chemicals” back into the ground at these sites. Now we have millions of gallons worth of an “alien substance” just looking for ways to get into the ground water supplies–and the rest is some form of carcinogenic existence! Its far from an exact science and to ignore the consequences is just another form of insanity!
As much as I respect the notion “Do not feed the troll”, I think a small amount of education (yours) is in order.
Actually 99.5% of the frac gel is water and special sand (spherical grains). The remaining 0.5% per volume is a combination of acids, bases, organic gum to create the gel, and salts most of which show up in foods, medicines, plastics, disenfectants, paints and soaps.
The industry has been fracing for over 3 generations with no ill effects. It is a very old technology newly applied to the shale formations.
Read more here: http://www.energyindustryphotos.com/what_is_hydraulic_fracturing.htm
Cheers -
Why do you people insist on displaying your ignorance? Talking points are not facts.
The Story of Your Enslavement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A&feature=related
Again, EPA decides it does not need to follow the law and rules under the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act including scientific review, comment periods,cost, available and immediately available scientific solutions, reasonable cost and impact to busienss and commerce, etc, etc.
And please, the Science Advisory Board review, the members selected by EPA in each review to strictly support the topic, the scrubbed list of EPA questions that are presented to the board without letting them ask questions back,and compeltely ignoring any conclusion from the Board or from the public does not count as a scientific review.
How is it possible to meet EPA regs that require that the water and soil around the site have less parts per million of certain materials when the soil and water naturally already have higher levels?How can equipment be isntalled to meet their guidelines whent he equipment has not even been invented yet?
They will get to it ‘eventually’…NOT.
That the EPA was asked to do an evaluation on a sound scientific basis, without prejudice, reflects the very core of the energy crisis we face in America; the EPA, all the environmental agencies and personages of note and their easy access to a complicit media to push their Green agenda with ghastly predictions of doom and gloom should the energy industry “be allowed” to get its “evil, capitalist, profit driven” way. It has long ago become obvious that the destruction of the latter is the primary goal of this movement. Energy drives industrial growth and the proliferation of all those ugly, black smoke belching chimneys that once polluted the air but now, given the unheralded advancements in pollution abatement technology, threaten earths very existence with global warming. And, according to this crowd, we’re all doomed unless of course we do exactly as they say, the intellectuals long sought goal of saving all us Neanderthals from ourselves; no nasty, repulsive campaigns or elections required.
These once revered, glorified, environmental clowns continue to exercise the will of an “intellectual” minority of malcontents and scaremongers whose only motivation is the power to exercise unchallenged control over a country they proclaim to love but deeply despise. That their overwhelming power remains intact is a testament to how well they’ve been indoctrinated and how powerful their message and especially, methods. That it remains largely unchallenged is infuriating.
There is no room for debate, give and take within this movement. It is, as they say, “my way or the highway” and to expect anything resembling an understanding of the extent and nature of the overall problem and a willingness to compromise, cooperate and participate from this crowd is an exercise in futility. The fact that their Green agenda is so obviously impractical as an achievable, economically feasible, fossil fuel replacement technology, within any reasonable time frame, goes purposefully ignored while those in authority continue to expect what? Objectivity? A broader perspective?
This dilemma is in desperate need of a new approach. There is no longer any room for idealistic zealotry. The EPA and all those organizations dedicated to “saving the environment” at the expense of all else, need to be given no more authority than their ability or inability to perceive and address all of the many issues involved, including the environment, technology development and evolution, the economy, national security, etc., determines is warranted. America has other, far more serious issues in need of solutions than just the environment. Is the latter important? Of course it is. Is it singularly more important than all the other problems America faces? Absolutely not and unless America wakes up to that reality this madness will continue, as now, unabated.
The oil industry has been fracking wells for more than twenty-five years. Where were these Hollywood experts back then. We are literally talking about tens of thousands of gas wells in our country. These jokers are up in arms because our nation’s energy solution unfolded in front of their disbelieving eyes, the government had nothing to do with it, the EPA had no rules against it, and the government supported wind and solar energy sectors are failing because of it. It doesn’t take a genius to know what goes on here. Follow the taxpayer’s money. ABO2012