Five days ago, that would be Thursday, June 4, the EPA released its "Draft Assessment on the Potential Impacts to
Drinking Water Resources from Hydraulic Fracturing Activities". [You can download the complete study - nearly 1,000 pages of it - here.]
This is what some pro-drilling interests picked up from the press release: "Assessment shows hydraulic fracturing activities have not
led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources and identifies
important vulnerabilities to drinking water resources." They would like to believe that the EPA study shows that fracking is "safe". In fact, "no proven contamination" has been their motto for years.
Unfortunately, early media reports simply parroted what they saw at the top of the EPA press release without reading the details or delving into the executive summary.
Dive in a bit deeper and you learn what the EPA study really says: there are cases in which fracking has impacted drinking water resources, but it is not "widespread and systematic" yet.
The EPA study found that fracking activities have the potential to impact our drinking water in these ways:
- fracking directly into underground water resources
- withdrawing water in areas affected by droughts or periods of low water availability
- spills
- below-ground migration of liquids and gases
- inadequate treatment and discharge of waste fluids
The EPA study found “specific instances” where fracking-related activities contaminated drinking water, including water wells. They didn't find it everywhere, but they only studied a handful of communities. EPA admits that their study is limited by the lack of pre- and post-drilling water quality data. They say their study is limited by the lack of long-term systematic studies. They also say that certain information on fracking was not made accessible to them.
If you need a visual image to help you, check out this map that William Huston pulled together from data in Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale region.
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| Map: (C) 2015 WilliamAHuston@gmail.com Share: CC-BY-NC -- All other rights reserved. |
This map shows 313 cases where families in the north eastern part of the state reported water contamination. Just six counties. The red areas indicate where the most reports came from.
Three hundred thirteen might not seem "widespread and systematic", but it demonstrates part of the problem with how the EPA study is interpreted. The impacts are localized. But they are systematic, when you compare where the pollution is with where the drilling occurs.
Further reading:
EPA
investigators said that they did find “above and below ground
mechanisms” through which various stages of what they called “fracking
activities” can “have the potential to impact drinking water resources.”
Among those mechanisms: Fracking directly into underground water resources, water withdrawals in areas with or in times of low water availability, spills of various fluids used in or produced by fracking processes, below-ground migration of liquids and gases, and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.
EPA said its investigators found “specific instances” where one or more mechanisms affected drinking water, including contamination of wells. The agency report said the number of identified cases “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells,” but conceded it wasn’t sure why.
“This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors,” the EPA said. “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.”
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150607/GZ01/150609432#sthash.kYK3RUTA.dpuf
Among those mechanisms: Fracking directly into underground water resources, water withdrawals in areas with or in times of low water availability, spills of various fluids used in or produced by fracking processes, below-ground migration of liquids and gases, and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.
EPA said its investigators found “specific instances” where one or more mechanisms affected drinking water, including contamination of wells. The agency report said the number of identified cases “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells,” but conceded it wasn’t sure why.
“This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors,” the EPA said. “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.”
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150607/GZ01/150609432#sthash.kYK3RUTA.dpuf
EPA
investigators said that they did find “above and below ground
mechanisms” through which various stages of what they called “fracking
activities” can “have the potential to impact drinking water resources.”
Among those mechanisms: Fracking directly into underground water resources, water withdrawals in areas with or in times of low water availability, spills of various fluids used in or produced by fracking processes, below-ground migration of liquids and gases, and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.
EPA said its investigators found “specific instances” where one or more mechanisms affected drinking water, including contamination of wells. The agency report said the number of identified cases “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells,” but conceded it wasn’t sure why.
“This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors,” the EPA said. “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.”
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150607/GZ01/150609432#sthash.kYK3RUTA.dpuf
Among those mechanisms: Fracking directly into underground water resources, water withdrawals in areas with or in times of low water availability, spills of various fluids used in or produced by fracking processes, below-ground migration of liquids and gases, and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.
EPA said its investigators found “specific instances” where one or more mechanisms affected drinking water, including contamination of wells. The agency report said the number of identified cases “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells,” but conceded it wasn’t sure why.
“This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors,” the EPA said. “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.”
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150607/GZ01/150609432#sthash.kYK3RUTA.dpuf
EPA
investigators said that they did find “above and below ground
mechanisms” through which various stages of what they called “fracking
activities” can “have the potential to impact drinking water resources.”
Among those mechanisms: Fracking directly into underground water resources, water withdrawals in areas with or in times of low water availability, spills of various fluids used in or produced by fracking processes, below-ground migration of liquids and gases, and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.
EPA said its investigators found “specific instances” where one or more mechanisms affected drinking water, including contamination of wells. The agency report said the number of identified cases “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells,” but conceded it wasn’t sure why.
“This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors,” the EPA said. “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.”
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150607/GZ01/150609432#sthash.kYK3RUTA.dpuf
Among those mechanisms: Fracking directly into underground water resources, water withdrawals in areas with or in times of low water availability, spills of various fluids used in or produced by fracking processes, below-ground migration of liquids and gases, and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.
EPA said its investigators found “specific instances” where one or more mechanisms affected drinking water, including contamination of wells. The agency report said the number of identified cases “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells,” but conceded it wasn’t sure why.
“This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors,” the EPA said. “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.”
- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150607/GZ01/150609432#sthash.kYK3RUTA.dpuf
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