“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my Administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade. And I'm requiring all companies that drill for gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use. America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.”
Environmental groups have been trying to push the implementation of disclosure of the chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing “fracking” process to provide public information and to help determine whether the groundwater near the wells is being affected. In 2004 the EPA conducted a study, mentioned in our reading, that concluded by saying fluids used during fracking posed little threat to water sources, but there is still major concerns that the process is contaminating well sources. In 2011 the EPA found evidence to link fracking to well water pollution beneath the town of Pavillion, Wyoming. Encana, the company who owns the natural gas fields where the pollution was found, claims that the low levels of hydrocarbons could have originated from something else, in large part due to the inconsistency in the findings in the wells the EPA tested and the public wells that were not as deep and were not contaminated. With the present knowledge of what fracking does, what chemicals are involved and the environmental impact they have, there are many questions that remain to be answered as to whether the process is putting the health and safety of the public at risk. But, will full disclosure of the chemicals used benefit the public and reduce the risk of harm?
The Oil and Gas Industries are currently exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, meaning the EPA has no authority to require chemical disclosure. Several states have enacted legislation that requires the disclosure of fracking chemicals, and many energy companies have voluntarily reported what chemicals they use on fracfocus.org. On this public site you can look up individual wells and see the chemicals and in what percent they are used. One can hope that when Mr. Obama compels all companies fracking on federal lands to disclose the chemicals they are using it will set an industry wide standard of doing so.
The benefit of disclosure has yet to be seen, although it puts some transparency into the industry and educates the general public, for most of the public having access to the name of a chemical you have never heard of does nothing to actively do anything to combat the risks that “fracking” may be causing. States have also been implementing ways of properly encasing the cement walls used in the process, disposing of the waste water, and having procedures for cleaning up spills. These defenses towards environmental impact seem to be important preventative measures, but the technology is so new and untested that without the knowledge of the chemicals there is really no way to know whether these walls and methods of clean up can prevent contamination. The disclosure of the chemicals will also allow environmental groups to look into and learn more about the long term consequences this can be having on the water supply. It seems to be too early to say without a doubt that fracking is a risk free form of extraction, but full disclosure is a step in the right direction to prevent harm. With the water incident in Wyoming and the recent earthquake in Yougstown Ohio that is being attributed to an increase in hydraulic fracturing it is likely that even more state and federal legislation will be showing up to regulate the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment