E.p.a. approved fracking ago new files1/30/2024 This measure is known as the “ Halliburton loophole,” a reference to the oilfield services giant once led by Cheney.Įventually, two companies agreed to participate in the prospective studies, though ultimately the collaborations fell through. In 2005, upon the recommendation of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, Congress exempted fracking fluids, except for the underground injection of diesel, from the Safe Drinking Water Act. ![]() Over the past 35 years, Congress has passed laws exempting the oil and gas industry from many environmental rules, including parts of the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs hazardous waste. The abortive attempt to conduct prospective studies serves as “a microcosm of the relationship between industry and EPA,” said a former senior EPA official involved in fracking issues. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.įor the study’s findings to be definitive, the EPA needed prospective, or baseline, studies. ![]() The industry balked at the scope of the study and sowed doubts about the EPA’s ability to deliver definitive findings. 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. (To view the emails and other documents, click HERE, HERE and HERE.) The documents were acquired by Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with InsideClimate News. Two hundred pages of EPA emails and other documents about the study point to the same conclusions. Nearly all the former government employees asked not to be identified because of ongoing dealings with government and industry. More than a half-dozen former high-ranking EPA, administration and congressional staff members echoed Thyne’s opinion, as did scientists and environmentalists. ![]() ![]() But they went through a long bureaucratic process of trying to develop a study that is not going to produce a meaningful result.” “This was supposed to be the gold standard. “We won’t know anything more in terms of real data than we did five years ago,” said Geoffrey Thyne, a geochemist and a member of the EPA’s 2011 Science Advisory Board, a group of independent scientists who reviewed the draft plan of the study. regulation of the multibillion-dollar fossil fuel sector and to ensuring water safety for millions of Americans.īut after five years of fighting with the oil and gas industry, the agency may still be unable to provide a clear answer when a draft of the study is published this spring, based on internal EPA documents and interviews with people who have knowledge of the study. The answer could prove critical to future U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency embarked in 2010 on what was intended to be a definitive study to find out.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |