Did WVDEP Ignore It’s Own Research on Shale Well Air Pollution?
The West Virginia Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act, passed and signed into law in December 2011, directed the WV Dept. of Environment Protection (WVDEP) to conduct three studies. The third and final study on air quality was released in June (see WVDEP Releases Study on Air Quality Impacts of Shale Drilling). The WVDEP said based on the data they received, no new regulations are required to control air pollution near drilling operations. However, a West Virginia University professor that oversaw the raw report given to the WVDEP disagrees with their assessment.
Dr. Michael McCawley, chairman of the Department of Occupational & Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at WVU, said he thinks a 625-foot “setback” is not far enough (in some cases) and that air emissions from Marcellus and Utica shale drilling need more regulation…
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In March, MDN told you about the Shale Gas Roundtable, a group of high level participants from industry, government and academe organized and run by the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute on Politics (see 
Anti-drillers are nervous that one of the big-money spigots for funding their so-called research into the dangers of fracking is about to be shut off. In a developing soap opera, the “longtime head” of environmental grant making for the Heinz Endowments, Caren Glotfelty, has been shown the door. A number of anti-drilling studies have been funded by Glotfelty during her tenure at Heinz. Bobby Vagt, president of Heinz Enowments, will fill in for Glotfelty until a replacement is found. Vagt, you may recall, is involved with the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (see 
Technically this is not a story about the Marcellus or Utica Shale, but it is a story about fracking in shale, and making a splash among anti-drillers, so it deserves our attention and consideration. Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) have just published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology titled, “An evaluation of water quality in private drinking water wells near natural gas extraction sites in the Barnett Shale Formation” (full copy embedded below for MDN subscribers). The study looks at 100 water wells in the Barnett Shale region of north Texas. UTA researchers used data from the 1990s–before horizontal drilling and fracking began in the region–and data from their own tests conducted in 2011.
This is truly rich. While anti-drillers prattle on about how a few gallons of chemicals a mile down in the earth will magically defy gravity and climb uphill through a mile of solid rock to contaminate water supplies (yeah, it NEVER happens), the scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have written a research paper that says shale is so secure, we ought to consider using it to dispose of spent nuclear waste–stuff that hangs around for millions of years!
Those who hate fossil fuels and want to stop all shale drilling because of their irrational beliefs are logic-challenged. Witness their claim/belief that fracking fluid (99.5% water and sand, 0.5% chemicals) pumped a mile or more below the surface will magically travel up to the surface and contaminate groundwater supplies. Never mind that 80% of the fluid disappears into small cracks a mile down. Never mind there’s a mile of solid rock between the fluid and the surface. Never mind there have been more than 50,000 horizontally fracked wells since the early 2000s with not a single case of water contamination from migrating frack fluid. And never mind there have been more than 2 million vertically fracked wells worldwide over the past 60+ years with not a single case of water contamination from migrating frack fluid. Anti-drillers cling to their irrational faith that fluid migration has and continues to happen and hucksters like Josh Fox of Gasland and Gasland 2 fame are all too willing to feed their delusion.