EPA Links Fracking to Water Contamination for the First Time

In the 121-page draft report released December 8th, 2011, EPA offi­cials said that the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and con­tained at least 10 com­pounds known to be used in frack fluids.

“The pres­ence of syn­thetic com­pounds such as gly­col ethers … and the assort­ment of other organic com­po­nents is explained as the result of direct mix­ing of hydraulic frac­tur­ing flu­ids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field,” the draft report states. “Alternative expla­na­tions were care­fully considered.”

The agency’s find­ings could be a turn­ing point in the heated national debate about whether con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from frack­ing is hap­pen­ing, and are likely to shape how the coun­try reg­u­lates and devel­ops nat­ural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale and across the Eastern Appalachian states.

Some of the find­ings in the report also directly con­tra­dict long­stand­ing argu­ments by the drilling indus­try for why the frack­ing process is safe: that hydro­logic pres­sure would nat­u­rally force flu­ids down, not up; that deep geo­logic lay­ers pro­vide a water­tight bar­rier pre­vent­ing the move­ment of chem­i­cals towards the sur­face; and that the prob­lems with the cement and steel bar­ri­ers around gas wells aren’t con­nected to fracking.

Environmental advo­cates greeted the report with a sense of vin­di­ca­tion and seized the oppor­tu­nity to argue for stronger fed­eral reg­u­la­tion of fracking.

“No one can accu­rately say that there is ‘no risk’ where frack­ing is con­cerned,” wrote Amy Mall, a senior pol­icy ana­lyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on her blog. “This draft report makes obvi­ous that there are many fac­tors at play, any one of which can go wrong. Much stronger rules are needed to ensure that well con­struc­tion stan­dards are stronger and reduce threats to drink­ing water.”

A spokesman for EnCana, the gas com­pany that owns the Pavillion wells, did not imme­di­ately respond to a request for com­ment. In an email exchange after the EPA released pre­lim­i­nary water test data two weeks ago, the spokesman, Doug Hock, denied that the company’s actions were to blame for the pol­lu­tion and sug­gested it was nat­u­rally caused.

“Nothing EPA pre­sented sug­gests any­thing has changed since August of last year– the sci­ence remains incon­clu­sive in terms of data, impact, and source,” Hock wrote. “It is also impor­tant to rec­og­nize the impor­tance of hydrol­ogy and geol­ogy with regard to the sam­pling results in the Pavillion Field. The field con­sists of gas-bearing zones in the near sub­sur­face, poor gen­eral water qual­ity para­me­ters and dis­con­tin­u­ous water-bearing zones.”

The EPA’s find­ings imme­di­ately trig­gered what is sure to become a heated polit­i­cal debate as mem­bers of Congress con­sider afresh pro­pos­als to reg­u­late frack­ing. After a phone call with EPA chief Lisa Jackson this morn­ing, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told a Senate panel that he found the agency’s report on the Pavillion-area con­t­a­m­i­na­tion “offen­sive.” Inhofe’s office had chal­lenged the EPA’s inves­ti­ga­tion in Wyoming last year, accus­ing the agency of bias.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at ProPublica.org.