On Friday, June 5, we posted an article here in the Daily Post, sent to us from the environmental group Earthworks. The article concerned a recently released draft of an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) report titled, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas and Its Potential Impact on Drinking Water Resources.” In that Earthworks article, written by Alan Septoff, we were given a quote from Earthworks Policy Director Lauren Pagel:
Today EPA confirmed what communities living with fracking have known for years, fracking pollutes drinking water… Now the Obama administration, Congress, and state governments must act on that information to protect our drinking water, and stop perpetuating the oil and gas industry’s myth that fracking is safe.
This was not the first news article we’ve posted from Earthworks writer Alan Septoff. We recognize that Earthworks has a certain perspective on the subject of environmental protection, and that their view does not typically align well with the perspectives held by the oil and gas, and mining, industries. When we run Earthworks press releases, we typically close each article with the following credit line:
“Earthworks is dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the adverse impacts of mineral and energy development while seeking sustainable solutions.”
Within minutes of posting Mr. Septoff’s article, we began to receive emails (from people we didn’t recognize) claiming that Ms. Pagel and Mr. Septoff may have misstated the conclusions of the EPA report, and that, according to other news sources, the EPA had found no widespread harm to drinking water supplies from hydraulic fracturing processes (fracking.)
One of our new email friends wrote:
Hi I came across an article on your website this morning reporting the findings of an EPA report that you described as confirming that fracking pollutes drinking water. This news story was reported on heavily yesterday in the national press with the contrary conclusion, that the report indicates fracking poses no widespread threat to drinking water supplies.
I find your article to be misleading at best, do you have any reason for portraying the article in the way that you did? Here are some stories from the NYTimes, Politico and The Hill that contradict your article.
Here’s the link to a New York Times article kindly provided by this new email friend. The article begins like this:
WASHINGTON — A landmark Environmental Protection Agency report on the impact of hydraulic fracturing has found no evidence that the contentious technique of oil and gas extraction has had a widespread effect on the nation’s water supply, the agency said Thursday.
Nevertheless, the long-awaited draft report found that the techniques used in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, do have the potential to contaminate drinking water.
It notes several specific instances in which the chemicals used in fracking led to contamination of water, including drinking water wells, but it emphasized that the number of cases was small compared with the number of fracked wells.
You can click here to download the EPA’s Executive Summary of the draft report as a PDF.
You can download the entire draft EPA report (998 pages) at the EPA website.
I know Mr. Septoff and Ms. Pagel only by their writing… the conclusions of which must be qualified by their avowed membership in an organization dedicated to environmental protection.
Curiously, none of our new-found email friends — who clearly wanted to criticize Mr. Septoff’s article — stated their relationship (if any) with any mineral and energy development corporations or associations.
The truth is elusive — that much is certain. The veracity of various reporters, publishers, government officials and email-prone critics cover the entire gamut; their reports are colored by their respective agendas.
Here’s one sentence from the Executive Summary’s Conclusions section, which you might see quoted somewhere in the near future:
“We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”
Here’s another sentence from the same Conclusions section:
“Below ground movement of fluids, including gas, most likely via the production well, have contaminated drinking water resources.”
And here are the two full paragraphs from which the above quotes were extracted:
Through this national-level assessment, we have identified potential mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing could affect drinking water resources. Above ground mechanisms can affect surface and ground water resources and include water withdrawals at times or in locations of low water availability, spills of hydraulic fracturing fluid and chemicals or produced water, and inadequate treatment and discharge of hydraulic fracturing wastewater.
We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more of these mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells. The cases occurred during both routine activities and accidents and have resulted in impacts to surface or ground water. Spills of hydraulic fracturing fluid and produced water in certain cases have reached drinking water resources, both surface and ground water. Discharge of treated hydraulic fracturing wastewater has increased contaminant concentrations in receiving surface waters. Below ground movement of fluids, including gas, most likely via the production well, have contaminated drinking water resources. In some cases, hydraulic fracturing fluids have also been directly injected into drinking water resources, as defined in this assessment, to produce oil or gas that co-exists in those formations.
If you read the EPA draft Executive Summary, you may reach the same conclusion that I’ve come to. Fracking does not always poison drinking water supplies. Fracking does, in some cases, poison drinking water supplies.
The question for us, as true Americans. Is the safety of drinking water sources worth more than the value of oil and gas company profits and the value of cheaper oil and gas prices for consumers?
I suppose your answer will depend upon how poisonous your drinking water has become.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.