What Media Left Out Of EPA Fracking Stories: "Insufficient" Data, Lack Of "Any Certainty"

[Bill USA]

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/06/05/what-media-left-out-of-epa-fracking-stories-ins/203907

EPA Releases Report On Fracking Risks To Drinking Water, Emphasizes Uncertainty

EPA Report Addresses Risks Fracking Poses To Drinking Water. On June 4, the EPA released its assessment of the risks the fracking process poses to the nation's drinking water supply. The agency determined that "there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources," and identified "specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells." However, the EPA also said it "did not find evidence" of "widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States." [EPA, Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources, June 2015]

EPA Emphasized That Data Is "Insufficient" To Evaluate Drinking Water Impacts "With Any Certainty." The EPA emphasized that the lack of evidence of "widespread" drinking water impacts could be due to "limiting factors," and that "data limitations" prevent the agency from having "any certainty" of how often fracking actually impacts drinking water:


[div class="excerpt" style="border:1px solid #000000;"]This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors. These factors include: insufficient pre- and post-fracturing data on the quality of drinking water resources; the paucity of long-term systematic studies; the presence of other sources of contamination precluding a definitive link between hydraulic fracturing activities and an impact; and the inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts.

(...)

This assessment used available data and literature to examine the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing from oil and gas on drinking water resources nationally. As part of this effort, we identified data limitations and uncertainties associated with current information on hydraulic fracturing and its potential to affect drinking water resources. In particular, data limitations preclude a determination of the frequency of impacts with any certainty. (EPA, Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources, June 2015)

InsideClimateNews Previously Reported How Oil And Gas Industry Blocked EPA Access To Fracking Data. In March, InsideClimateNews published a lengthy investigation about the many factors preventing the EPA from conducting a comprehensive study of fracking's impact on drinking water. The investigation which was based on a review of internal EPA documents and interviews with people who had knowledge of the study, noted that geochemist Geoffrey Thyne said the EPA study was "not going to produce a meaningful result," and that "[m]ore than a half-dozen former high-ranking EPA, administration and congressional staff members echoed Thyne's opinion, as did scientists and environmentalists." InsideClimateNews further detailed how the oil and gas industry had prevented the EPA from conducting the prospective studies necessary to determine fracking impacts:


[div class="excerpt" style="border:1px solid #000000;"]The EPA's failure to answer the study's central question partly reflects the agency's weakness relative to the politically potent fossil fuel industry. The industry balked at the scope of the study and sowed doubts about the EPA's ability to deliver definitive findings. In addition, concerns about the safety of drinking water conflicted with the Obama administration's need to spur the economy out of recession while expanding domestic energy production.

For the study's findings to be definitive, the EPA needed prospective, or baseline, studies. Scientists consider prospective water studies essential because they provide chemical snapshots of water immediately before and after fracking and then for a year or two afterward. This would be the most reliable way to determine whether oil and gas development contaminates surface water and nearby aquifers, and the findings could highlight industry practices that protect water. In other studies that found toxic chemicals or hydrocarbons in water wells, the industry argued that the substances were present before oil and gas development began.

Prospective studies were included in the EPA project's final plan in 2010 and were still described as a possibility in a December 2012 progress report to Congress. But the EPA couldn't legally force cooperation by oil and gas companies, almost all of which refused when the agency tried to persuade them.

(...)

After three years looking for suitable locations for baseline research, the EPA determined it had to move on or risk further delays to the overall study. (InsideClimateNews, 3/2/15)

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[Nihil]

1. Besides, any sane person would already be concerned about the proven facts that they *did* state ...

> The agency determined that "there are above and below ground mechanisms by which
> hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources,"
> and identified "specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on
> drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells."

Read that second section again.
They identified "specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on
drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells."

i.e., not just proving that such mechanisms existed in potentia but that they had already
been proven to do precisely what was predicted: poison aquifers.

No such mechanisms (potential or proven) exist for removing the toxic pollution from
the previously freshwater aquifer but they are active today for adding it.

What sane person would allow such activity to continue?