Tell EPA to Demand Industry's Full Cooperation in Fracking Study
- by: Susan V
- recipient: EPA
And although the group welcomes last month’s progress report from EPA, what’s most significant about it, says Earthworks' Bruce Baizel, is “the lack of progress it reports.”
Baizel, the group's Oil and Gas Accountability Project Director, said in a press release that the main purpose of the EPA study is being thwarted by the “inability to find a single company willing to test water quality before and after drilling and fracking….”
But he’s not surprised by this conduct of oil and gas companies, whom he says have a habit of claiming fracking is safe, but aren’t willing to prove it.
Tell EPA to demand industry’s full cooperation with the study.
We, the undersigned, are outraged by what Baizel and others see as “Oil and gas companies’ unwillingness to cooperate” and their “pattern of obstruction of actual science on the impacts of drilling and hydraulic fracturing.”
It is further disturbing that the EPA doesn’t intend to complete this report until 2014, when NC, for one, plans to go ahead with fracking, based on industry biased claims of safety. This work should have been required by EPA long before fracking became established anywhere in the US, and all new plans for fracking should be put on hold at least until a study with full cooperation and disclosure by the industry is completed.
Furthermore, the Halliburton loophole and failure of industry to fully disclosure of all fracking chemicals used in the process, claiming “proprietary formula protections," should also never have been allowed.
To make matters worse, Halliburton broke its agreement, says Independent Water Testing and many other groups, not to use diesel in fracking and used 807,000 gallons between 2005 and 2007.
The industry has been shown far too much leniency in the first place, and there is no excuse for its failure to cooperate with this current study.
We request that EPA get serious about doing its job of protecting our environment and demand industry now fully cooperate with this study on fracking’s affect on drinking water resources.
Thanks for your time.
http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/environment/epa-fracking-study-may-dodge-some-tough-questions/article_862b7831-f2ea-5c1b-a656-50d18104e32f.html
http://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/statement_of_bruce_baizel#.UWUvpKxauSo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/06/epa-fracking-study-water-contamination_n_2420786.html
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