It Isn't Over Until It's Over . . .
On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency issued the draft of a report that found hydraulic fracturing has not caused "widespread harm" to drinking water but warned of "potential contamination of water supplies if safeguards are not maintained." A brief article about the study appeared in the New York Times on Friday: "EPA: No Widespread Harm to Drinking Water from Fracking." This morning, NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday did a story about the EPA study: "Both Sides Claim Victory Over EPA Fracking Study." The story, which touches on the implications of the study for New York, where fracking has been banned, will be available for listening online at around noon today.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK
Personally, I never believed that fracking was a subterranean threat to our drinking water supply.
ReplyDeleteThe real threat as I've always seen it is from the improper disposal of the reclaimed chemical waste.
Because fracking opponents focused on the wrong issue (some supposed they could generate more outrage with drinking water), the chemical waste concern will now disappear along with the incorrect drinking water argument.
In the court of public opinion, the true environmental worry may also vanish for good.
I believe there were environmentalists who had doubts about the drinking-water claims, but continued to make the claims anyway. Those individuals must learn that honesty is ALWAYS the best policy. If the waste disposal issue disappears, then their dissembling has backfired.
Others shouldn't have listened to them in the first place.
The EPA is no longer respected for clear thinking .
ReplyDeleteThe best gov't money can buy.
Yes, considering that every mud puddle which may harbor a life form will now be protected by the EPA, while the same agency is nearly deregulating the North Bay - a sizable Class I freshwater tidal wetlands inside the Coastal Zone.
DeleteCall me cynical, but isn't it all just politics?
What EPA.?$$ Fracking Waste is an enormous threat .
ReplyDeleteObviously if there is no Fracking ,then of course there is no waste, but Fracking is not going to go away anytime soon.$$ Fracking Waste is legally not Hazmat and exempt from the Clean Air and Water Act.( Thank you again Dick Cheney) and completely legal in NYS to be disposed of in any form anywhere it has not been banned.Home Rule Bans in NYS do not protect interstate highways,RR's or waterways,even if Fracking itself is banned.Disposing of Fracking Waste is that industry's biggest problem.Why is that?
Used on roads everywhere as a de-icing agent, the most meaningful thing that Hudson's pompous anti-fracking legislation could have accomplished was a specific ban on the use of fracking brine.
DeleteThe drafters of the law believed they'd covered such things in their generalized language, but the law leave a loophole.
Hudson's statutes should be written clearly, in a way that anyone can understand. Our anti-fracking law was specific about things which are in reality of no concern here (our bedrock is Ordovician). So why so vague on the subject of re-using fracking brine in Hudson?
A possible reason for the lack of specificity is that the public requested it at the time.
http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/05/epa-fracking-contaminates-drinking-water/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsweek.com/oil-and-gas-wastewater-used-de-ice-roads-new-york-and-pennsylvania-little-310684