Fracking Fraud

The Environmental Protection Agency, better known as the EPA was supposed to set the story straight once and for all on whether fracking played a role in contaminating nearby water sources, leading to the sickness of the residents in affected areas. They were going to use scientific methods to make a definitive statement and eliminate all of the political talk that gets thrown around the minute fracking is mentioned. No BS, just facts… or so we thought. Back in 2012 private counties in Pennsylvania and New York located near a fracking well experienced unusually high levels of methane in their drinking water. This sparked a national outrage over the fracking trend and allowed for a light to be cast on the dangers to human health that fracking can have. This report to be made by the EPA was long overdue and many of people awaited their verdict on the situation. It was not until June of 2015 that they finally came out with the official statement that after investigation they had determined that fracking did NOT have/cause “widespread systemic impacts” to drinking water in nearby sources. You would think that this would cause for a celebration from everyone that received the news but while some did rejoice in the discovery many were skeptical. Hardcore environmentalists felt as if there were no way this was true and that the EPA had to be covering something up, they would not let go of their strong position on the topic. Lucky for them it quickly became apparent that the science behind it and the report given by the EPA didn’t exactly align 100% so the Science Advisory Board, which is actually a department of the EPA itself decided to review the report. They actually found that some of the verbiages in the report were used to purposely confuse the public. Michael Halperin, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, learned that somebody made last minute changes to the executive summary and instead of highlighting the risks, they were downplayed. To summarize… they lied.

This is extremely concerning to the public because this was supposed to be the one trusted report, that was being long awaited. Finding out that you can’t even trust the EPA to carry this out with integrity is just a huge hit to the confidence in the general public. One of the other main concerns brought up in the article going forward is the scientific integrity of the EPA with the new President-elect Donald Trump waiting to take office. If we can’t trust them now, I’m not too sure how we as a nation are supposed to trust them with one of the biggest flip-floppers and liars to ever win the presidency spot getting ready to take over. I mean we are talking about a man who still thinks in the year 2016 that climate change is a made-up concept by the Chinese in order to somehow gain power and money. So good luck to us I guess….