This would be the most reliable way to determine whether oil and gas development contaminates surface water and nearby aquifers, and the findings could highlight industry practices that protect water. Scientists consider prospective water studies essential because they provide chemical snapshots of water immediately before and after fracking and then for a year or two afterward. In addition, concerns about the safety of drinking water conflicted with the Obama administration’s need to spur the economy out of recession while expanding domestic energy production.įor the study’s findings to be definitive, the EPA needed prospective, or baseline, studies. The industry balked at the scope of the study and sowed doubts about the EPA’s ability to deliver definitive findings.
The EPA’s failure to answer the study’s central question partly reflects the agency’s weakness relative to the politically potent fossil fuel industry. (To view the emails and other documents, click HERE, HERE and HERE.) The documents were acquired by Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with InsideClimate News. Two hundred pages of EPA emails and other documents about the study point to the same conclusions. Nearly all the former government employees asked not to be identified because of ongoing dealings with government and industry. More than a half-dozen former high-ranking EPA, administration and congressional staff members echoed Thyne’s opinion, as did scientists and environmentalists. But they went through a long bureaucratic process of trying to develop a study that is not going to produce a meaningful result.” “This was supposed to be the gold standard. “We won’t know anything more in terms of real data than we did five years ago,” said Geoffrey Thyne, a geochemist and a member of the EPA’s 2011 Science Advisory Board, a group of independent scientists who reviewed the draft plan of the study. regulation of the multibillion-dollar fossil fuel sector and to ensuring water safety for millions of Americans.īut after five years of fighting with the oil and gas industry, the agency may still be unable to provide a clear answer when a draft of the study is published this spring, based on internal EPA documents and interviews with people who have knowledge of the study. The answer could prove critical to future U.S. commerce, and this line of defense is struggling to maintain its integrity,” the whistle-blowers said in their disclosure, which was released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Maryland-based nonprofit group.The Environmental Protection Agency embarked in 2010 on what was intended to be a definitive study to find out. scientists evaluating new chemicals “are the last line of defense between harmful - even deadly - chemicals and their introduction into U.S.
office in charge of reviewing toxic chemicals tampered with the assessments of dozens of chemicals to make them appear safer. In recent days, whistle-blowers have alleged in the Intercept that the E.P.A.
in 2011 approved the use of these chemicals, used to ease the flow of oil from the ground, despite the agency’s own grave concerns about their toxicity, according to the documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times. “For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS - a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife - according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency.
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