Hydraulic fracturing facility in Rifle, Colo.
Posted on 06/24/2013 2:24:24 PM PDT by neverdem
Hydraulic fracturing facility in Rifle, Colo.
Far be it from the Environmental Protection Agency to admit it was wrong — but late last week, it subtly withdrew from a once-flashy investigation regarding whether hydraulic fracturing contaminated groundwater in the tiny town of Pavillion, Wyo. Never has backpedaling been such an effective form of transportation.
In December 2011, the EPA released a draft report of a study it conducted in Wyoming, eliciting a furor of media attention. The New York Times reported that “chemicals used to hydraulically fracture rocks in drilling for natural gas in a remote valley in central Wyoming are the likely cause of contaminated local water supplies, federal regulators said.” The Financial Times ran a story headlined “EPA blames fracking for Wyoming pollution.” National Public Radio announced that “for the first time, federal environmental regulators have made a direct link between the controversial drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing and groundwater contamination.” And the Salt Lake Tribune ran an editorial subtitled “EPA report shows water poisoned.”
For starters, the EPA’s study was released in preliminary form, and it was never peer-reviewed. In fact, the EPA went out of its way to ensure that Wyoming’s governor and state agencies didn’t have a chance to look it over before it became publicly available. And when the study was released, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and the Wyoming Bureau of Land Management both expressed significant concerns about the EPA’s conclusions.
Had professional scientists had a chance to review the EPA’s preliminary study before it hit the headlines, they doubtless would have complained that only four samples were examined — not nearly enough to be scientifically definitive.
Also, the EPA had failed to find contamination in the existing water sources in Pavillion, so it drilled its own wells — but went far deeper into the earth, into natural hydrocarbon-bearing foundations. As Encana, the developer, wrote at the time, “Natural gas developers didn’t put the natural gas at the bottom of the EPA’s deep monitoring wells, nature did.” So when the test results showed hydrocarbons, that said nothing about fracking and much about the EPA’s scientific sloppiness.
Furthermore, the methods and materials used to drill the EPA’s sample wells may well have introduced chemical contaminates.
And different labs reached contradictory conclusions about the small samples the EPA collected. One lab even reported that the “blank” sample used solely for comparison purposes was tainted.
But the details of how recklessly the EPA conducted its study were omitted in many of the sensational reports that followed the draft report’s release.
And the few journalistic accounts that acknowledged the study’s problems were dismayed about the implications of its very public debut. Wyoming’s Casper Tribune wrote in an editorial: “You think Pavillion water is a mess? Try setting the record straight if the EPA’s report is eventually changed or discredited after scientific review. . . . The EPA may have poisoned the public debate by releasing its [preliminary] report.”
That assessment is proving prophetic. EPA reps said this week that although the agency “stands behind its work and data,” the study won’t be finalized, and the Obama administration won’t rest on the report’s conclusions. That’s a nice talking point, but if the Pavillion study could actually stand up to scrutiny, you can bet the EPA would be using it to act — and to act boldly.
But in the end, it didn’t matter much whether fracking had actually contaminated Wyoming’s water; having the public think it did sufficed for the EPA. So go the cynical politics of an agency with an agenda.
— Jillian Kay Melchior is a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
Queen Bozo No Oil will ban Fracking tomorrow...stock market goes down 890 points...
Does envrionmental tobacco smoke ring a bell?
Would this had happened if the Forgotten Separation of Power, that between the individual states and the federal, government were restored?
17th Amendment ping!
Any comments or insights?
I’d love to see the 17th repealed, but I think determined states could assert their constitutional rights with or without the 17th.
The EPA leadership lies like a two-bit whore at work.
Don’t mean to demean the decent people there (the few that are left), but dishonesty and Soviet-style “disinformation” have been the hallmark of the EPA leaders under both Clinton (Carol Browner, a marxist in the International Socialists) and Obama (Lisa Jackson, Browner’s protege’, carrying on marxist, anti-free enterprise attacks on the economic structures/institutions of America).
Remember, Comrade Maoist “Van Jones” was Obama’s “Green Czar” (they must have been color blind. He was the “Red Czar”).
My science background cries at the lies, distortions, and disinformation that the EPA leadership has put out to justify their far-left policies. Facts are facts despite the Obama regime’s Orwellian use of words to obfuscate the truth.
Now the key question is whether Congress is going to hold serious hearings into this DELIBERATE EPA misuse of sciences and the lies that they promote to cover up their malfeasance of office.
Time for some perjury findings, firings and jail, and not necessarily in that order.
However, a total house-cleaning of the EPA leadership is long overdue and badly needed.
Who has the guts to start the ball rolling?
Not surprised. It is typical of this administration to make false accusations and then quietly let the retraction be ignored by the main stream media.
Well, the Framing generation disagree. Absent a Senate of the States, eventual consolidation of all power in the national government was an eventual certainty.
At the Virginia ratification convention on June 6th 1788, James Madison responded to Patrick Henry’s charge that the Constitution’s enumerated powers would be usurped and our freedoms destroyed by a national government that would quickly seize all power.
Madison: “If the general government were wholly independent of the governments of the particular states, then, indeed, usurpation might be expected to the fullest extent. But, sir, on whom does this general government depend? It derives its authority from these governments, and from the same sources from which their authority is derived.”
Indeed. The 17th removed state agency from the federal republic. As predicted by Montesquieu, Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike, we slipped into an overwhelming, consolidated national government that oppresses both the states and the people with raw force.
The 17th must go.
I really, really despise the EPA. I resent to my marrow the idea that the public thinks they are to be trusted. I know unequivocally first-hand that they suppress perfectly good research if it doesn’t conform to their political agenda. That is beyond immoral from a science standpoint.
Could it possibly be that the enviro-wackos are dead wrong?
Could it be that most of their funding comes from Saudi Arabia?
The 17th must go. Been saying that for years. And I’m in 100% agreement with the founders. They never intended an all powerful central government. They would’ve been shooting waaaay before now. But all the same, there’s no constitutional reason for determined states not at least trying to reassert their constitutional rights.
The key is to show state legislatures, both Dem and Repub, that they’d gain power by doing so. That’s the only way to undo this stuff. We need the elites to help us. It’s never been done successfully in history without the political/economic elites or at least a powerful majority of them.
Fracking's pretty tame compared to how they tried to get gas out near Rifle once before. See Project Rulison.
I wonder if the EPA was in compliance?
And then they buried some of that rubble from up on the mesa on the banks of the Colorado River (on the cutbank side) and put up a fence to keep people “safe”.
This is the producers versus the parasites. Useless Gov’t employed parasites who only care about their taxpayers funded paychecks. Eco-wacko-ideology is secondary. It’s all about getting paid for doing nothing useful to humanity
Thanks neverdem.
You also forget:
1) New rules/regs that were put into place, but never rescinded (no proof, but nothing in gov’t DIES)
2) The inability of Congress, who usurped then delegated powers to an unelected bureaucracy
3) We the People’s inability, IMHO: empathy, to hold #2’s feet to the fire re: #1 (IE: the Constitution)
The EPA can go frack themselves.
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