newworldafro
DeeperThanRapBiggerThanHH
Let it be noted, cause I've been "a-political party" for a minute, most of this has happened under a Democratic Administration.....ALTHOUGH........it was initiated in 2005 under a Republican Administration. Wake up yall. 
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There are several threads in here on fracking, this is some wild stuff, check them out. You make a quick hefty buck for 2-3 years, but leave behind aquifers that will remain technically undrinkable...........until they use the water anyway for some type of human consumption.....
Review faults EPA oversight of oil and gas wastewater
Review faults EPA oversight of oil and gas wastewater
Ian James, The Desert Sun12:38 p.m. PDT April 12, 2016
A federal review has faulted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not taking sufficient steps to safeguard drinking water supplies from the wastewater generated by the oil and gas industries.
The Government Accountability Office said in its report to members of Congress that the EPA has failed to adequately collect information from state and regional regulators about inspections or their enforcement actions to protect underground sources of drinking water. Auditors also found the EPA has not consistently carried out oversight of programs that regulate injection wells where oil and natural gas companies send streams of wastewater into the ground.
“The most important thing is that finally the government investigators confirm that EPA does not have the adequate amount of information to safely oversee its programs and ensure that underground sources of drinking water are protected,” said John Noel, national oil and gas campaigns coordinator for the group Clean Water Action in Washington, D.C. “It confirms our suspicion that drinking water is not being protected at the highest levels.”
An increase in U.S. oil and gas production since the 2000s has led to growing amounts of wastewater, and much of that water ends up routed back into aquifers through a type of injection wells called “class II” wells. The GAO said that as of 2013, there were more than 176,000 of these wells across the country, in states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and California.
State agencies and EPA regional offices are supposed to report information to the EPA about their regulatory programs relating to the injection of oil and gas wastewater into aquifers. And the EPA is charged with assessing whether those programs are effectively preventing potential contamination of drinking water. But GAO auditors found the federal agency “has not consistently conducted oversight activities necessary to assess whether state and EPA-managed programs are protecting underground sources of drinking water.”
“Without well-specific data on inspections, EPA cannot assess whether state and EPA-managed programs are meeting annual inspection goals,” the GAO said in the report, which was released on March 28.
The EPA said it generally agrees with much of the GAO's analysis and findings, and has agreed to “take actions to best advance our data collection and oversight efforts.”
The office recommended the EPA take steps including:
• collect well-specific data on inspections;
• complete a database of aquifers that have been exempted from protections under the Safe Drinking Water Act;
• clarify the agency’s instructions to regulators on the data they report on forms;
• carry out an analysis to determine the staff and other resources needed to adequately carry out oversight.
Various oil and gas extraction processes generate wastewater, including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves injecting water, sand and chemicals under high pressure.
In order to have aquifers exempted from the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act, oil and gas companies can apply to the EPA — a process that in many states begins with a review by state regulators. When an aquifer is declared exempt, the lifting of protections allows companies to inject fluids or wastewater into aquifers.
The GAO report said the EPA annually collects data from state and regional EPA regulators on the types of inspections they conduct. But the report said the information collected is not “specific enough to determine the number of different types of inspections” those agencies are supposed to be conducting each year.
The federal agency’s procedures also include collecting information on “unresolved significant violations” to determine if enforcement actions are necessary. But when government auditors looked at a sample of 93 significant violations between the federal budget years 2008 and 2013, they found that “state and EPA-managed programs did not report data on such violations completely or consistently.”
Officials examined types of violations ranging from “unauthorized injection” to lapses in reporting and “failure to plug” a well in seven states — Colorado, Kentucky, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas.
They found 29 of the 93 significant violations should have been reported to the EPA on a form. Only seven, however, were properly reported as required.
The GAO report also cited problems in California, where in recent years the EPA has not regularly reviewed permitting. In 2014, a review by California officials found that injection wells had been wrongly approved in various locations where aquifers were not exempt from the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA found California's regulatory program wasn’t meeting state and federal requirements.
As of October 2015, California officials had identified more than 500 wells injecting wastewater into 11 nonexempt aquifers “with the potential to threaten underground sources of drinking water,” the GAO report said. It noted that California had halted the reinjection of oilfield fluids into some of those wells.
Adam Peltz, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, pointed out the report did not say states and the federal government are doing a bad job that’s leading to pollution of drinking water. States actually appear to be doing a pretty good job of administering the “underground injection control” programs, Peltz said.
“One of the reasons why the EPA has fallen short on some of its statutory duties is that it doesn’t have enough funding for this program to really fully do the inspections of the states’ programs on as frequent of a basis as it probably should,” he said.
“But there are some key areas where more cooperation and more thoughtful cooperation and information sharing would make a big difference,” Peltz said. “The decision to grant an aquifer exemption should be made clear-eyed with all available information, and then that decision should be properly recorded so that it’s accessible to everyone.”
Peltz said the review should help prod the EPA and state agencies to make necessary improvements. Officials at both the state and federal level, he said, realize that they have work to do.
Opponents of fracking say federal leadership is needed to protect drinking water against pollution.
Adam Briggle of the group Denton Drilling Awareness in Texas said the EPA should step in and protect drinking water because the state regulator, the Texas Railroad Commission, is so lax. Denton, a Dallas-area community, in 2014 passed a fracking ban, only to reverse itself a year later after the Texas Legislature passed a law rendering it unenforceable.
“When we have a community that is concerned about the quality of their water, we pretty much have to pass the hat around to get it tested,” Briggle said. “There’s an extreme regulatory void.”
. There are several threads in here on fracking, this is some wild stuff, check them out. You make a quick hefty buck for 2-3 years, but leave behind aquifers that will remain technically undrinkable...........until they use the water anyway for some type of human consumption.....
Review faults EPA oversight of oil and gas wastewater
Review faults EPA oversight of oil and gas wastewater
Ian James, The Desert Sun12:38 p.m. PDT April 12, 2016A federal review has faulted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not taking sufficient steps to safeguard drinking water supplies from the wastewater generated by the oil and gas industries.
The Government Accountability Office said in its report to members of Congress that the EPA has failed to adequately collect information from state and regional regulators about inspections or their enforcement actions to protect underground sources of drinking water. Auditors also found the EPA has not consistently carried out oversight of programs that regulate injection wells where oil and natural gas companies send streams of wastewater into the ground.
“The most important thing is that finally the government investigators confirm that EPA does not have the adequate amount of information to safely oversee its programs and ensure that underground sources of drinking water are protected,” said John Noel, national oil and gas campaigns coordinator for the group Clean Water Action in Washington, D.C. “It confirms our suspicion that drinking water is not being protected at the highest levels.”
An increase in U.S. oil and gas production since the 2000s has led to growing amounts of wastewater, and much of that water ends up routed back into aquifers through a type of injection wells called “class II” wells. The GAO said that as of 2013, there were more than 176,000 of these wells across the country, in states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and California.
State agencies and EPA regional offices are supposed to report information to the EPA about their regulatory programs relating to the injection of oil and gas wastewater into aquifers. And the EPA is charged with assessing whether those programs are effectively preventing potential contamination of drinking water. But GAO auditors found the federal agency “has not consistently conducted oversight activities necessary to assess whether state and EPA-managed programs are protecting underground sources of drinking water.”
“Without well-specific data on inspections, EPA cannot assess whether state and EPA-managed programs are meeting annual inspection goals,” the GAO said in the report, which was released on March 28.
The EPA said it generally agrees with much of the GAO's analysis and findings, and has agreed to “take actions to best advance our data collection and oversight efforts.”
The office recommended the EPA take steps including:
• collect well-specific data on inspections;
• complete a database of aquifers that have been exempted from protections under the Safe Drinking Water Act;
• clarify the agency’s instructions to regulators on the data they report on forms;
• carry out an analysis to determine the staff and other resources needed to adequately carry out oversight.
Various oil and gas extraction processes generate wastewater, including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves injecting water, sand and chemicals under high pressure.
In order to have aquifers exempted from the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act, oil and gas companies can apply to the EPA — a process that in many states begins with a review by state regulators. When an aquifer is declared exempt, the lifting of protections allows companies to inject fluids or wastewater into aquifers.
The GAO report said the EPA annually collects data from state and regional EPA regulators on the types of inspections they conduct. But the report said the information collected is not “specific enough to determine the number of different types of inspections” those agencies are supposed to be conducting each year.
The federal agency’s procedures also include collecting information on “unresolved significant violations” to determine if enforcement actions are necessary. But when government auditors looked at a sample of 93 significant violations between the federal budget years 2008 and 2013, they found that “state and EPA-managed programs did not report data on such violations completely or consistently.”
Officials examined types of violations ranging from “unauthorized injection” to lapses in reporting and “failure to plug” a well in seven states — Colorado, Kentucky, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas.
They found 29 of the 93 significant violations should have been reported to the EPA on a form. Only seven, however, were properly reported as required.
The GAO report also cited problems in California, where in recent years the EPA has not regularly reviewed permitting. In 2014, a review by California officials found that injection wells had been wrongly approved in various locations where aquifers were not exempt from the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA found California's regulatory program wasn’t meeting state and federal requirements.
As of October 2015, California officials had identified more than 500 wells injecting wastewater into 11 nonexempt aquifers “with the potential to threaten underground sources of drinking water,” the GAO report said. It noted that California had halted the reinjection of oilfield fluids into some of those wells.
Adam Peltz, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, pointed out the report did not say states and the federal government are doing a bad job that’s leading to pollution of drinking water. States actually appear to be doing a pretty good job of administering the “underground injection control” programs, Peltz said.
“One of the reasons why the EPA has fallen short on some of its statutory duties is that it doesn’t have enough funding for this program to really fully do the inspections of the states’ programs on as frequent of a basis as it probably should,” he said.
“But there are some key areas where more cooperation and more thoughtful cooperation and information sharing would make a big difference,” Peltz said. “The decision to grant an aquifer exemption should be made clear-eyed with all available information, and then that decision should be properly recorded so that it’s accessible to everyone.”
Peltz said the review should help prod the EPA and state agencies to make necessary improvements. Officials at both the state and federal level, he said, realize that they have work to do.
Opponents of fracking say federal leadership is needed to protect drinking water against pollution.
Adam Briggle of the group Denton Drilling Awareness in Texas said the EPA should step in and protect drinking water because the state regulator, the Texas Railroad Commission, is so lax. Denton, a Dallas-area community, in 2014 passed a fracking ban, only to reverse itself a year later after the Texas Legislature passed a law rendering it unenforceable.
“When we have a community that is concerned about the quality of their water, we pretty much have to pass the hat around to get it tested,” Briggle said. “There’s an extreme regulatory void.”
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