Scientists Agree EPA’s Assessment on Fracking and Drinking Water Needs Revision
EPA’s multi-year multi-million-dollar study of the impacts of fracking on drinking water resources is important and will inform the debate around expanded oil and gas development for years to come. However, for it to be truly useful, some critical revisions need to be made to the top-line conclusions.
Clean Water Action and our allies have long been calling for a retraction of the statements that discount the multitude of vulnerabilities, documented impacts and widespread uncertainty described in the body of the report. Specifically this sweeping statement:
“We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States…….The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells.
The good news is the Science Advisory Board Panel tasked with reviewing the draft Assessment agrees, as highlighted in their individual comments. This confirms it is not just NGOs and impacted communities who are confused and concerned with draft Assessment. Many people impacted by fracking rightly feel betrayed by EPA’s unsupported yet widely reported comment, which will no doubt continued to be taken out of context by policymakers as a way to negate the real impacts of oil and gas development.
As our analysis shows, there are many vulnerabilities and direct impacts described inside the draft Assessment, along with rampant uncertainties about past and future impacts. These uncertainties are the result of the lack of available data; manifested either through industry control over access to the data necessary for EPA to make robust conclusions or the fact that data required to accurately assess the impacts from fracking are not collected in the first place.
These uncertainties are outlined dozens of times throughout the draft Assessment, some of which are highlighted here. The frankness in EPA’s reporting of uncertainty in the report made it even more puzzling when the Executive Summary says so definitely that the impacts are not “widespread, systemic” even given the incredible number of unknowns and proven cases of contamination.
We have concerns that these conclusions may have been inserted in the final stages of preparing the draft Assessment for public release at the behest of the oil and gas industry or other stakeholders looking to obfuscate the real impacts of fracking and confuse the public.
See here, here, here, and here for a quick summary of the report and impacts of the political spin in an otherwise largely sound scientific effort. Read more in the Clean Water Action and NRDC joint comments.
