There is no denying that fracking contaminates drinking water. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent drinking water study downplays the severity of fracking’s impacts and could be used to allow the spread of fracking across the country.
The EPA has a responsibility to protect the health and well-being of the American people, but their draft study is a failure.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the destructive process of extracting oil and gas from deep underground by injecting millions of gallons of fracking fluids — a mixture of water, sand and chemicals, including known carcinogens — into a well to create pressure to crack open rocks underground to release the oil and gas. The EPA has been studying the impacts of fracking on drinking water for the last five years.
The EPA’s top-line finding was very different than what the assessment actually found.
The headlines stated that fracking doesn’t cause “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources.”
In reality, the EPA was unable to convince any fracking companies to cooperate in the study, yielding very incomplete results.
Without being able to test water before, during and after fracking near fracking sites, the EPA is in no position to claim that water contamination from fracking is not “systemic.” They simply don’t know.
In addition, the EPA study did indeed identify numerous harms to drinking water resources from fracking. But the EPA discounted these everyday harms as not “widespread and systemic,” allowing the industry to have a field day claiming that fracking is finally proven safe.
We already are encountering lawmakers who are saying “even the EPA says fracking doesn’t threaten water supplies” thanks to the industry-led media spin on this report.
Now the EPA is asking for public comments on their draft fracking assessment. We need to make sure the public weighs in to counter the industry spin. Submit your comment to the EPA.
This isn’t the first time the EPA has caved on fracking.
They have dropped investigations into drinking water contamination from fracking in Dimock, PA, Parker County, TX and Pavillion, WY. They have refused to meet with families directly impacted by fracking.
It is appalling to see the EPA chalk up the experiences of those who have been living with contamination as nothing more than collateral damage. Everyone deserves clean drinking water.
Putting a resource as precious and universally important as drinking water at risk is simply unacceptable.
The EPA, which is charged with protecting Americans from environmental risk, should be working to do everything it can to safeguard these vital water resources.
This study on fracking’s impacts on drinking water is far too important to leave up to voluntarily provided data from the very corporations that profit from fracking.
Ms. Carter, National Online Campaign Manager for Food & Water Watch, may be contacted at
act@fwwatch.org
