The EPA Has Fired Shots at Its Own Optimistic Fracking Report

In June of 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft report on hydraulic fracturing, a method of removing oil and natural gas from hard to reach places in shale rock also known as "fracking," in the United States. Unprecedented in scope, this draft report on US fracking was congressionally mandated and nearly four years in the making. By tracking water usage cycles in fracking, from water acquisition to wastewater treatment, the EPA "did not find evidence that [fracking] mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States."

The EPA's fracking report was criticized by environmental scientists and locals living in fracking areas from the get-go, and now these criticisms have finally coalesced in a critical review of the study which was released by 30 members of the EPA's independent Science Advisory Board panel on Thursday.

According to this review, the EPA report was found to be "lacking in several critical areas," especially the report's general intelligibility to the layperson, its lack of quantitative support for its main observation that there is a lack of evidence that fracking has widespread and systemic impacts on drinking water, and its failure to clarify the scope of fracking's impacts (local, regional, or national) and its terms (such as "widespread" or "systemic").

Fracking has been around in the US since the 1940s, but in the last 15 years the industry has seen an explosion of growth due to technological advancements that allow for horizontal drilling (as opposed to traditional vertical oil wells) and drilling in shale rock formations.

To get an idea of the scope of the fracking revolution, in 2000, fracking only accounted for 2 percent of US oil production (about 100,000 barrels a day)—today, it accounts for 50 percent of US oil production, or about 4.3 million barrels daily.

The explosion in US fracking activity has also seen a corresponding pushback from locals who live around fracking locations. Both New York and Vermont have outright banned fracking in the state. Connecticut banned the storage and handling of fracking waste, and dozens of other municipalities have taken action to resist the intrusion of fracking projects into their communities.

The opposition to fracking generally revolves around two core issues: polluting water supplies, and the carbon emissions associated with the process. Others are also worried about how fracking is leading to more earthquakes, and this fear is not unfounded. A recent study found that fracking in Texas is now the number one driver for earthquakes in the region.

In order to frack, a company first must drill a vertical well, which it then pumps full of water mixed with dozens of different toxic chemicals that are known to be human carcinogens or regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, such as benzene or toluene. This water then fractures the shale and sand is injected into the well to keep the fractures open. Natural gas then comes through the fractures and is harvested from the well.

The alleged threats to drinking water from fracking are manifold. In the first place, fracking uses a lot of water, which may deplete local water resources for humans and wildlife. Moreover, fracking may occur in such a way that the wells are drilled in formations with drinking water resources, or the well may be constructed improperly so that the toxic chemicals in the water seep into the surrounding earth. There are also concerns that improperly treated wastewater resulting from fracking may contaminate drinking water, which was one of the main motivators behind New York's statewide ban on the process.

The recent review criticizing the EPA's optimism about fracking's impact on water supplies has been well received by environmental scientists and activists. As the director of the Sierra Club's Dirty Fuels Initiative Lena Moffitt put it, "the EPA's own analysis shows that dirty oil and gas fracking contaminates drinking water, confirming what millions of Americans already know."

The integrity of the EPA's reporting on the fracking industry has already been called into question once this year, when a whistleblower revealed a cover up of methane emissions from fracking by a senior EPA official. Indeed, the members of the Science Advisory Board review wrote that they were "concerned that the EPA had planned to but did not conduct various assessments, field studies, and other research," and as such did not accurately describe the local impacts of fracking in the report.

What the EPA does with the advisory board's recommendations during a revision of its study remains to be seen, and the advisory board was the first to note the labor intensive process in store for the agency as it revises its report. Others, like Moffitt, are impatient to spark the transition away from fracking and its by products in favor of a more clean energy regime.

"Instead of blindly allowing destructive fracking to continue in our communities, we should extend statewide fracking bans and moratoriums that will keep dirty, climate-polluting fossil fuels like fracked gas in the ground," she said. "[We should] invest in truly clean, renewable sources of energy that don't come with the threat of poisoned drinking water and climate disaster."