EPA Reverses Stance On Fracking's Threat To Water

The U.S. EPA has reversed course in its view of the effects of fracking on drinking water after initially indicating that the controversial energy industry practice does not pose a threat.

The EPA “has concluded that hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas extraction technique also known as fracking, has contaminated drinking water in some circumstances, according to the final version of a comprehensive study first issued in 2015,” The New York Times reported.

Fracking supporters had celebrated the EPA’s announcement last year that it “did not find evidence that [fracking has] led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.” But it was revealed in a new announcement that this conclusion was deleted from the final version of the study.

“The final report doesn’t include that phrase because EPA scientists determined they couldn’t back it up without comprehensive data on hydraulic fracturing across the U.S. and because it didn't ‘really communicate the findings in the report,’ said Thomas Burke, deputy assistant administrator at EPA,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“EPA scientists chose not to include that sentence. The scientists concluded it could not be quantitatively supported,” Burke said, per The New York Times.

An investigative report by Marketplace and APM Reports had revealed that the sentence that has now been omitted was added at the last minute to a previous draft of the government report. “Earlier draft versions emphasized more directly that fracking has contaminated drinking water in some places,” the investigative piece said.

New York magazine reported that the final version of the EPA report shows that fracking poses a threat to water. The EPA findings say that fracking has, in some instances, contaminated drinking water at various stages of its process:

(1) acquiring water to be used for hydraulic fracturing (Water Acquisition), (2) mixing the water with chemical additives to make hydraulic fracturing fluids (Chemical Mixing), (3) injecting hydraulic fracturing fluids into the production well to create and grow fractures in the targeted production zone (Well Injection), (4) collecting the wastewater that returns through the well after injection (Produced Water Handling), and (5) managing the wastewater through disposal or reuse methods (Wastewater Disposal and Reuse).

The final version of the EPA report said there are still uncertainties about the extent of the threat that fracking poses to drinking water:

Data gaps and uncertainties limited EPA’s ability to fully assess the potential impacts on drinking water resources both locally and nationally. Generally, comprehensive information on the location of activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle is lacking, either because it is not collected, not publicly available, or prohibitively difficult to aggregate. In places where we know activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle have occurred, data that could be used to characterize hydraulic fracturing-related chemicals in the environment before, during, and after hydraulic fracturing were scarce. Because of these data gaps and uncertainties, as well as others described in the assessment, it was not possible to fully characterize the severity of impacts, nor was it possible to calculate or estimate the national frequency of impacts on drinking water resources from activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle.

Fracking industry stakeholders criticized the EPA for changing its report. “It is beyond absurd for the administration to reverse course on its way out the door,” said Erik Milito, a director at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil and natural gas trade group in the country, per The Wall Street Journal.

Environmentalists, however, supported the EPA’s decision to change its findings. “EPA’s initial draft misled the public about the pollution risks of unconventional oil and gas development,” said Mark Brownstein, a vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, per The Wall Street Journal. “The revised assessment puts an end to the false narrative of risk-free fracking that has been widely promoted by industry.”

The study’s findings are being released at a pivotal moment for the future of the fracking industry in the U.S.

“The report, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind to date on the effects of fracking on water supply, comes as President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to expand fracking and roll back existing regulations on the process. His choice to run the EPA, Scott Pruitt, the attorney general from Oklahoma, has built his career on fighting EPA regulations on energy exploration,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

To read more about fracking visit Water Online’s Produced Water Solutions Center.