Hinchey Calls for Air Quality Standards to Protect People in Gas Drilling Areas

A fracking operation near a home in PA

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (NY) is calling on President Barack Obama to enforce stronger protections from air pollution caused by shale gas drilling. In a letter signed by 20 of his House colleagues, Hinchey asks for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) New Source Performance Standards to be finalized. These standards will address growing air pollution and public health impacts related to the rapid expansion of drilling in the United States, Hinchey says.

“We need the President to act immediately to sign off on the proposed air quality standards so that drillers cannot pollute our air without consequence,” Hinchey told the press. “We cannot let the rush to drill blind us from the need to ensure the safety of our environment and public health.”

Hinchey pointed to the pollutants that shale gas drilling emits: smog-forming chemicals, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s), hazardous air pollutants such as benzene, and methane. These pollutants contribute to serious health problems. He highlighted a recent report published by the Colorado School of Public Health. The report, based on three years of air quality monitoring, found higher cancer, respiratory and neurological health risks (including headaches, chronic dizziness, eye irritation and difficulty breathing) among people living closest to drilling sites.

People living near wells breathed in volatile organic chemicals at five times the level at which the emissions are considered potentially harmful to public health, Hinchey noted. He also pointed to the Medical Society of New York which recently urged caution with expanded drilling and called for more study on those impacts before more drilling moves forward. 

The EPA’s proposed New Source Performance Standards, when fully implemented, would cause significant air pollution reductions, including: 540,000 tons of smog-forming chemicals, an industry-wide reduction of 25 percent; 38,000 tons of toxic air pollutants, an industry-wide reduction of almost 30 percent, and; 3.4 million tons of methane, an industry-wide reduction of about 26 percent.  The lion’s share of these reductions come from ending the wasteful practice of venting or flaring pollution from new hydraulically fractured gas wells directly into the atmosphere, said Hinchey. The new rules would require companies to capture these emissions, a time-tested technique that can be readily implemented.

You can read his letter to the President here.

EWG Investigation shows that Hydro-fracking Threatens Drinking Water

Last week Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel for Washington DC-based Environmental Working Group, spoke to citizens, scientists and elected representatives in communities across Upstate NY. His message: hydraulic fracturing shouldn't be done in places where people get their drinking water.

The practice, Horwitt said, is threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania and New York to Wyoming. One of the problems is the use of petroleum distillates in the fracking fluid.

Gas drillers have switched from injecting diesel (used as a friction reducer in drilling) to other petroleum distillates. That's largely due to the regulation of diesel. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA requires a permit for injecting diesel because of its high benzene content. Ironically, EPA does not regulate other benzene-containing petroleum distillates.

In late January Horwitt released “Drilling Around the Law”, an investigation into the petroleum-based fracking chemicals used by companies drilling for natural gas. Because of exemptions allowed for fracking, drilling companies are allowed to inject kerosene, mineral spirits and a number of other petroleum distillates into wells. 

The problem, Horwitt said, is that these distillates often contain levels of benzene much higher than the EPA "safe" level of 5 parts per billion (ppb). That’s equivalent to five drops of benzene in 500 barrels of water.

“Ironically, these other petroleum distillates – chemicals that drillers are allowed inject without permits – can contain up to 93 times more benzene than diesel,” Horwitt said. For exanple, Kerosene contains 5,000 parts per million (ppm) benzene - five times as much as diesel. Petroleum naphtha wins the prize with 93,000 ppm benzene - a level that exceeds EPA standards by 18.6 million.

Citing the DEC’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), Horwitt noted that horizontal wells in Marcellus and other shales will require from one to 8 million gallons of water and fracking chemicals. “These are massive operations,” Horwitt said, “pumping fluids into wells at pressures of 12,000 pounds per square inch (psi).” Even before fracking occurs, there are opportunities for spills.

Now the companies will tell you there is no problem, Horwitt said. These are the same petroleum distillates used in cosmetics. “But these very same chemicals are banned from cosmetics in the European Union,” he clarified.

Drilling companies also insist that they only add small amounts into the frack fluid, Horwitt said. “Point zero eight (.08) percent. It sounds like a miniscule amount, but do the math.” Horwitt’s calculations show that even at that very low level, anywhere from 800 – 6400 gallons of petroleum distillates could be injected for a single frack job.

"That's enough to contaminate more than 100 billion gallons of water," Horwitt exclaimed. "More than ten times the amount the state of New York uses in a single day!" Horwitt recommends eliminating the federal exemptions for oil and gas drilling; drilling companies should obtain a permit for any chemical they inject. "Why require a permit for only one type of petroleum chemical?" 

Furthermore, when Horwitt asked NY Department of Environmental Conservation officials - and officials from agencies in other states - whether they checked to see what chemicals companies are injecting, the response was an overwhelming "No".

They [drillers] could easily be injecting diesel,” Horwitt said. Indeed, Halliburton, Schlumberger and other companies admitted, during a Congressional inquiry, that they have continued to inject diesel in some states.