When the EPA sent a subpoena to Halliburton earlier this
month, demanding to know what’s in the fluid used to drive their hydraulic
fracturing process for natural gas and oil production, industry watchers braced
for a showdown. But, less than a week later, the company (which is one of the
largest oilfield services corporations in the world) responded by posting
information on its website, including a partial list of substances it’s
currently using and on the new, environmentally-friendly version the company
says it plans to put into play. The move, which is seen by cynics as an attempt
to satisfy the EPA without implementing new regulations, raises questions about
what mining companies should be required to reveal about their fracturing
practices.
The EPA demanded the information as part of a study Congress
ordered, amid citizen concerns that hydraulic fracturing may be contaminating
water supplies and causing air pollution, and ultimately impacting the health
of humans and the environment. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” is the
process of driving a cocktail of water, sand and chemicals into the ground in
order to create cracks in the rock through which natural gas and oil can be
more easily accessed. Anywhere from 20 to 90 percent of the wastewater that’s
left, which often amounts to millions of gallons, remains underground. The
fracking fluid that it recaptured is generally stored above-ground in open pits
until it can be treated.
While fracking fluids, which are also essential for reducing
friction, are generally considered proprietary concoctions by the industry,
some 944 chemicals were identified by scientists in a study released recently
in the journal Human and Ecological Risk Assessment.
The study focused on 73 of those substances that are found to have “10 or more
adverse health effects.” These are toxic, even carcinogenic, ingredients that
are considered potentially harmful to humans.
Whether or not the EPA has the authority to request fracking
formulas, as it did from the nine leading natural gas drilling companies in a
November letter, and whether or not it’s within its scope to regulate them, are
legitimate questions. When it studied fracking in 2004, the agency concluded
that (at least coal bed methane production wells) presented no danger of
contaminating underwater drinking water sources. A year later Congress, acting
on the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill, exempted the
industry from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It basically told
the EPA to take a hike and let fracking continue unsupervised. The act is
commonly called the “Halliburton Loophole.”
Why should the EPA be able to come back at natural gas
drillers just five years later? For good reason: since the exemption, there’s
been a natural gas boom; fracking is now done in 38 states. The industry also
has introduced new techniques like drilling horizontally, up to a mile, and
busting into new kinds of rock. It’s also now being proposed relatively close
to heavily-populated watersheds (specifically in the Marcellus Shale [PDF] region of New York [PDF] and Ohio). Hearings on fracking have drawn thousands of people
expressing their concerns about their water quality and a handful of
investigations [PDF], including one by the Colorado-based Oil and Gas Accountability
Project [PDF], insist that people have been sickened by water polluted by fracking
fluids.
In the West, where the natural gas boom has been focused in
Colorado and Wyoming, there has been a telling response by state regulators.
Last September, a range of tougher state rules went
into effect for oil and gas drilling in Wyoming. The new regs put the state at
the forefront of the push for disclosing what’s in fracking chemicals.
And Colorado is leading the charge
to close the Halliburton Loophole. Last June, two U.S. representatives, Diana
DeGette (from Denver) and Jared Polis (from Boulder), introduced the FRAC
(Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of
Chemicals) Act, which is currently being considered by Congress. If
passed, it would again subject fracking to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
While the Clean Water Act may not have been designed to look
at fracking, as critics contend, the air and water acts have been expanded and
amended many times over the past 40 years. Passing the FRAC Act would be a good
start toward regulating a component critical to a booming business, and a
meaningful move in defending our right to clean water.
Heather Hansen is an environmental journalist working with the Red Lodge
Clearinghouse /Natural Resources Law Center at CU Boulder, to help
raise awareness of natural resource issues.
Essays in the Just West blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are
solely responsible for the content.
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