Both sides draw ammunition from EPA fracking report

by: Tom Wilber
June 4, 2015
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(Photo: AP FILE PHOTO)

Hydraulic fracturing can pollute groundwater numerous ways, federal environmental officials have concluded, but the controversial process to extract natural gas from shale is not causing "widespread systemic impacts on drinking water."

The conclusion came with the release Thursday of a five-year national study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The analysis involved a "robust literature review," in the words of the EPA's Tom Burke, of dozens of scientific studies, technical papers, and records from industry and activists submitted as part of the contentious and ongoing battle over the wisdom of tapping shale gas to meet the nation's energy needs.

Far from settling the controversy, the report left plenty of room for interpretation. Supporters and opponents of fracking wasted no time in claiming that the EPA supported their view that hydraulic fracturing was harmless, or a calamity.

Karen Moreau, executive director of the New York Petroleum Council, said the absence of "widespread systemic impacts on water" showed that fracking was safe. The agency's conclusion was also evidence that the Cuomo administration was wrong in issuing a ban on fracking due to concerns over health risks, she added.

"What more evidence does Governor Cuomo need?" Moreau said in an email. "What is systemic and widespread is the suffering of thousands of families in New York's Southern Tier who had their hopes dashed by the governor's decision."

John Armstrong, of Frack Action, was among those who drew a different conclusion from the same report.

"The EPA study confirms what the industry has long denied, that fracking poisons drinking water," Armstrong said in a statement.

In coming months, the federal agency will be submitting its assessment for public comment and peer review by scientific experts and scholars.

In a national conference call with reporters Thursday, Burke, an administrator with the EPA's Office of Research and Development, cautioned that the evaluation was limited, and it was not intended as an assessment of fracking's effect on public health or the status of particular sites.

"It's not a question of if (fracking) is safe or unsafe," he said. "It's a question of understanding (impacts on) water so we can reduce risks."

Fracking involves injecting millions of gallons of a pressurized chemical solution into a well to break rock and stimulate the flow of gas. The EPA found potential problems above and below ground with each step of the process, including spills when chemicals are handled and mixed before they are injected, and the disposal of waste — called flowback — that comes out of the well after the process.

Collecting the large volume of water to frack wells, which is becoming more widespread as operators ramp up to produce gas and oil in more than a dozen states, also can deplete water resources.

Perhaps the most relevant finding was that well casings sometimes fail under the pressure during the fracking process, creating a pathway for fracking fluids, and gas, brine, metals and other harmful substances to migrate from the ground into water supplies.

This is a departure from the agency's previous stand that fracking has not affected groundwater.

The analysis 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."

The number of identified problems, however, was "small relative to the number of hydraulically fractured wells." The scarcity could be an accurate reflection of the actual frequency of problems, or because of a lack of information in the field, including "inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts."

With more than 70 percent of wells analyzed by the EPA, well operators failed to list one or more chemicals used in the process. Lack of information, the report concluded, interfered with researchers' attempts to "establish baseline conditions" necessary to determine a suspected drinking water impact.

Walter Hang, an activist from Ithaca, said the lack of data has obscured fracking's impact on water for decades, and the EPA analysis is no different.

"There simply isn't sufficient data available to reveal what actually happened," Hang said.

Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, who represents the generally pro-fracking region in the Southern Tier, had a far different interpretation of the EPA study, which, he said, "found hydraulic fracturing poses no credible threat to public drinking water. … Hydraulic fracturing can be done safely, and the comprehensive science in this report once again validates this."

As with Moreau, Reed called on New York to allow fracking, based on the EPA's report.

In response, New York Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman Tom Mailey said the state's review covered more than water, including "impacts to air, water, public health, ecosystems, wildlife and community character." He added that the DEC report "identified many potential significant adverse impacts."

The EPA began its study in late 2010 with a directive from Maurice Hinchey, a former congressman from the Southern Tier who was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at the time. Thousands of activists attended public meetings that fall in Binghamton, Ithaca and New York City, which were intended to get public input on the scope of the national study, but which turned into pep rallies for and against fracking.

At the time, much of the focus was on shale gas operations in Dimock, Pennsylvania, just south of the New York border. After the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found drilling caused the contamination of more than a dozen water wells, the EPA intervened with its own study.

The EPA found elevated levels of arsenic, barium, manganese and methane in five of 64 homes. The agency ended its investigation without tracing the source of the pollution. It concluded that the state and residents were aware of the problem, which could be remedied by filters on the water.