EPA Releases Water Studies for NEPA & SWPA: Fracking is Safe in PA

| | |

Last Friday MDN reported the good news that the EPA is finally winding down a years-long study of the potential impacts of fracking on groundwater supplies. The upshot? Fracking doesn’t pollute water supplies (see EPA Draft Report Says Fracking Doesn’t Pollute Groundwater Supplies). This is the result of a process that began in 2009 when Congress asked the EPA to study fracking and water, with an eye toward regulating fracking using the federal Clean Water Act. The EPA eventually designed a study and began their research in 2011. The final report was due in 2014 but was later moved to 2016. This draft report is the prelude to the final report. Weighing in at 998 pages long, the report says there’s lots you can be scared about–but in fact none of the nightmare scenarios about fracking and water have come true. This was a hard report to file for the Obama EPA–we’re sure of that. Tucked in the bowels of the report are details that the EPA themselves conducted 17 research projects and published 20 scientific papers as a result. Two of those projects looked at shale drilling in the Pennsylvania Marcellus region–one study in the northeast (full study embedded below), and one in the southwest (full study embedded below). What did they find?…

Please Login to view this content. (Not a member? Join Today!)
You do not have permission to view the comments.