EPA Chief Grilled on Safety of Hydraulic Fracturing
Wall Street Journal
3 March 2011
By Ryan Tracy
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as part of its
review of a natural-gas drilling procedure, is looking at the
radioactivity of wastewater used in the process.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, speaking at
a congressional hearing Thursday, defended her agency's efforts to
study the safety of natural-gas drilling and left the door open to
further regulatory action on the issue. The process, known as hydraulic
fracturing, is used to extract hard-to-reach natural-gas pockets in the
ground.
Ms. Jackson suggested that if public water-treatment plants couldn't
adequately treat wastewater from hydraulic fracturing to safe levels—a
central concern of critics of extraction method—EPA could impose
standards on drillers who send the waste to the plants.
"EPA can at any time set additional standards for what we call
pretreatment, for waste that may go to a treatment plant," Ms. Jackson
said.
Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a mixture of water, sand, and
chemicals underground at high pressures to release natural gas from
shale deposits. In recent years, new technology has unlocked shale gas
that was not previously accessible, leading to a boom of new wells
across the country.
Critics say environmental regulators and the industry have failed to
ensure the practice is safe, particularly with respect to fracturing
fluid contaminating drinking water.
"What we see here are deliberate attempts to shield from the public
additional concerns expressed by EPA scientists," said Rep. Maurice
Hinchey (D., N.Y.) said at a congressional hearing on EPA's budget.
Ms. Jackson pushed back. "We have used a transparent, consensus-based
process to scope the study," she told lawmakers at the hearing. "We
don't want to stifle science."
She said EPA intends to study the issue and take action to enforce the
law if it has evidence of violations and if states, which she called
the "primary" enforcers, do not act.
Mr. Hinchey pressed Ms. Jackson on whether the national study should be
the EPA's only effort to study the risks of hydraulic fracturing.
"I will not say the national study should be the only study," Ms.
Jackson said. But she said the process to develop the current study had
been "transparent" and "rigorous."
"I would want my science adviser to understand what additional work is
happening so that we're not being redundant," Ms. Jackson said of other
studies.
The growing pressure to do more on hydraulic fracturing comes as the
EPA faces opposition for a raft of other regulatory initiatives related
to industrial pollution, greenhouse gases, coal mining, and other
sectors.
Some lawmakers at the hearing Thursday defended natural-gas drillers.
"There's never been a connection proven, in spite of frequent
revisiting of the hydraulic-fracturing issue, between the diminution of
water quality and modern hydraulic-fracturing techniques," said Rep.
Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.), echoing the statement of industry supporters.
Ms. Jackson said many of the "issues" identified by Mr. Hinchey stemmed
from the agency's regional office in Philadelphia and that she would be
travelling there Friday to discuss them.
"There is no 'look the other way' stand-down" on concerns about
natural-gas drilling, she said. "We intend to do our jobs."
Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@dowjones.com