Is Fracking Exempt From Clean Water Act
This story was co-published with WHYY and West Virginia Public Broadcasting. A version was published in The Dallas Forenoon News. Audio story by Susan Phillips of WHYY.
Nearly mornings, when his 7-yr-one-time son Ryan gets up for school at 6:55, Bryan Latkanich is nonetheless awake from the night earlier, looking online for another abode in some office of Pennsylvania with expert schools and skillful h2o.
Six years ago, Latkanich signed on to let an energy visitor tap natural gas beneath his holding past pumping water, sand and chemicals into rock formations, a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Before long subsequently, Latkanich'due south well h2o got a metallic taste, he developed stomach problems, and his son one twenty-four hour period emerged from a bath covered in haemorrhage sores. More than recently, Ryan became incontinent.
Testing by state regulators and a researcher at nearby Duquesne University showed the well water had deteriorated since gas extraction started but no proof of the crusade. The state recently began another circular of testing.
Latkanich is a single parent. He'southward jobless and bullheaded in his right eye from encephalon surgery. "I worry about my son getting sick, about my getting sick and what would happen to him if I did," he said. "I'm doing this all lonely. And I proceed asking myself, 'How do we become out?'"
For Latkanich and all those who believe their water has been tainted by fracking, at that place are few remedies. Congress took abroad the most powerful one in 2005, prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from safeguarding drinking water that might be harmed by fracking and fifty-fifty denying the regulator the authority to find out what chemicals companies use. That provision of the Energy Policy Deed was justified by an EPA study about fracking into coalbed methane reservoirs, completed nether the George W. Bush assistants, that ended that fracking posed no run a risk to drinking water.
Concerns almost the study emerged from the outset, including a 2004 whistleblower complaint that called it "scientifically unsound." At present, InsideClimate News has learned that the scientists who wrote the report disagreed with the conclusion imposed by the Bush-league EPA, saying there was not enough evidence to back up it. The authors, who worked for a authorities contractor, went so far as to have their visitor's name and their own removed from the final document.
At EPA, "at that place was a preconceived conclusion that there'southward no risk associated with hydraulic fracturing into coalbed methane. That finding made its style into the Energy Policy Human activity, but with broader implications," said Chi Ho Sham, the grouping manager of a team of scientists and engineers for The Cadmus Group, the Massachusetts business firm hired to practise the report. "What nosotros would take said in the determination is that there is some grade of risk from hydraulic fracturing to groundwater. How you quantify information technology would require further analyses, but, in general, there is some adventure."
The fracking provision, widely known as the Halliburton loophole, later on the oilfield services visitor once run by Bush'southward vice president, Dick Cheney, is amidst a host of exemptions to federal pollution rules that Congress and successive administrations take given oil and gas companies over the final xl years.
Winning these exemptions is at the heart of a successful strategy past the fossil fuel industry and its allies in Washington to limit ecology oversight of companies' operations. Every bit a upshot, oil and gas drilling and production are exempt from laws regulating hazardous waste, chemical-laced runoff from well sites and toxic air pollution from well equipment. Some exemptions, such as the Halliburton loophole, were justified by EPA studies whose findings were ignored or bent to political ends, according to documents and interviews with scientists, lawmakers and sometime regulators who have worked on federal rulemaking since the late 1970s.
The Cadmus study was not the first EPA report to have its science thwarted, and nether President Donald Trump, information technology likely won't be the last. Current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is a staunch ally of fossil fuels, and his bureau is moving on several fronts to quash science that documents the oil manufacture's contributions to climate change and other forms of pollution, the beginning step to rolling back regulations, critics said.
"I've been defenseless off-baby-sit by how fast and diverse the attacks are on scientists within the government and how science is used," said Gretchen Goldman, enquiry manager for the Center for Science and Commonwealth at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The EPA did not respond to multiple requests for comment made over 2 months. Former EPA officials from the Bush administration involved with the study would not comment on the record. Cadmus also would not annotate and referred inquiries to the EPA.
The consequences of loopholes congenital on disputed science take rippled through the land during the latest free energy boom. Domestic production of oil and gas has surged, creating thousands of jobs and boosting visitor profits—and leading to thousands of complaints in states such as Pennsylvania, Texas and North Dakota that drinking water is existence contaminated. Simply, in the absence of federal protections, at that place is just a patchwork of ofttimes-lax country regulations. If it were not for the Halliburton loophole, the EPA could accept developed standards for the unabridged country. Land rules could have been tougher, only not weaker, than the national standards, and if states failed to regulate effectively, citizens could have petitioned the federal government to intervene.
"My dream was to build houses on this land for my sons and their families when they grew up, and to start a truck farm when I retired," Latkanich said. "Now I'm but fighting a boxing by myself against a billion dollar company."
Chevron Comes Calling: 'This Was a Godsend'
Earlier four Chevron Appalachia employees came calling in 2022 with promises of riches, Latkanich'south life had crumbled. In 1998, he had used an inheritance to purchase land from a farmer in Deemston, 35 miles south of Pittsburgh. Latkanich was a advisor at the Washington County jail, often working with murderers. His wife was a nurse at a state penitentiary. They bought the rural tract equally a haven from their tough jobs and congenital a dream house on a colina, with a wide forepart porch overlooking a 2-acre pond.
Only past 2022, the marriage had ended. His wife had left for a nearby town with his two older sons. Latkanich underwent an operation to remove a beneficial encephalon tumor, which, because of its size and location, threatened his life. While he was in a coma, his girlfriend gave birth to Ryan. She was addicted to cocaine and opioids, and the newborn spent three weeks going through withdrawal. The state placed Ryan in foster intendance.
When Chevron Appalachia showed up, Latkanich was on disability. He had spent the year in a hospital bed in his dining room with failing kidneys, back problems and $150,000 in bills from lawyers handling his divorce and efforts to regain custody of Ryan. Chevron offered him $400 for each of his 33 acres and estimated thousands more than in royalties a month once the gas started to flow. He signed on. "In my state of affairs, when it looked similar I could lose everything, this was a godsend," he said.
To Regulate or Non: Industry Gets Boost From Cheney
The two wells on Latkanich'southward property are among 1,655 that have been hydraulically fractured in Washington Canton since 2004. Halliburton fracked the kickoff commercial well in the United States in 1949. Technology has improved over time, getting a big boost from more than $135 one thousand thousand in federal grants starting time in the 1970s to spur development of oil and gas in shale formations. In the 1990s, fracking was used to extract coalbed methyl hydride, or natural gas, touted then equally the next great investment for the industry.
The EPA and industry long maintained that fracking did not need federal oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The EPA used the constabulary to protect groundwater from other industrial activities, such as disposal of oilfield wastewater equally function its Underground Injection Control (UIC) plan. Merely the agency contended that fracking did not fall under the UIC program and land oversight was adequate.
That assertion was successfully challenged in 1997 when the Legal Ecology Assistance Foundation (LEAF) won a case against the EPA on behalf of an Alabama couple who said their well h2o had been contaminated by nearby fracking for coalbed methane. The Foliage suit alleged that federal oversight of fracking nether the SDWA was needed because the process was in fact a class of underground injection and state regulation was insufficient.
LEAF'south success scared the industry and politicians allied with information technology, said Hannah Wiseman, a constabulary professor at Florida Land University. They didn't want federal rules that would have required a UIC allow for each frack task, potentially slowing free energy extraction and choking revenues.
In 1999, Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), longtime allies of the oil manufacture, introduced a bill to exempt fracking from the Prophylactic Drinking H2o Human activity. A year afterward, the EPA announced a report to determine if fracking into coalbed methyl hydride reservoirs afflicted drinking water.
Industry got a huge heave when Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton, became vice president in 2001. At the time, fracking was unknown to the broader public. But an free energy policy task force Cheney helmed in spring 2001 highlighted fracking'due south potential, and it recommended a comprehensive exemption to the SDWA for all types of fracking, not just for coalbed methane. The EPA cautioned against an overly broad arroyo.
EPA Ambassador Christine Todd Whitman wrote to Cheney on May iv, 2001, "I strongly suggest limiting the recommendation to the problem we know about—hydraulic fracturing for coalbed methane. Otherwise, before the (coalbed methane) study is completed, nosotros are potentially walking into a trap considering we don't yet know the environmental consequences of the broader exemption, or why it is needed."
A draft version of the coalbed methane report was released in 2002 for public annotate. Manufacture and environmental activists alike remarked on the disparity between the details of the study, which noted the possibility of threats to drinking h2o from fracking with toxic chemicals, and the overall conclusion, which stated that fracking was entirely safe. Manufacture wanted the details inverse; activists wanted the conclusion amended to reflect the details.
EPA's Own Contractor Finds Fracking Poses Risks; EPA Dismisses It
Cadmus took over the written report in late 2002 from the original contractor. The projection faced obstacles from the outset, according to EPA documents and Cadmus staff. The oil and gas industry declined to provide data about the composition of fracking fluids, asserting that they were merchandise secrets. There wasn't enough time or coin for Cadmus to begin monitoring groundwater before, during and after fracking jobs to run into if the process affected water quality. With little insight into what was actually pumped into the globe during fracking, Cadmus researchers had to rely on existing literature and discussions with a limited number of experts familiar with the process.
Cadmus sent chapters of its working draft to the EPA starting in mid-2003. The bureau immediately questioned the validity of the findings. Against common scientific practice, the EPA urged Cadmus to include an oil industry study that had not been peer-reviewed. When Cadmus staff resisted, the EPA manager asked a Cadmus scientist, "'Tin't you say something positive well-nigh it?'" the scientist recalled.
The industry report fell past the wayside. But the EPA changed parts of the working draft that suggested fracking for coalbed methane could pose risks to drinking water, according to the documents and Cadmus scientists.
A March 3, 2004, EPA calendar entitled "Hydraulic Fracturing Projection Condition" listed amid the tasks "Soften conclusions and ES [executive summary]."
In drafts of the executive summary, typically a report's most widely read department, the authors referred to potential threats to public wellness as the reason for the study. "The goal of this Stage I study was to determine if a threat to public health exists equally a result of USDW [Cloak-and-dagger Sources of Drinking H2o] contamination from hydraulic fracturing fluid injection into CBM [coalbed marsh gas] wells, and if it does, whether the threat is swell enough to warrant farther study," the authors wrote.
The final version of the report omits mention of public health except in the discussion of methodology and in paraphrasing public comments deep into the 463-folio written report.
EPA documents testify Cadmus recommended revisions to reflect complaints by some Virginia residents virtually possible contamination of their water from fracking. The contractor raised the question of an investigation to see if the complaints were warranted. The final version did not include the changes Cadmus recommended, and EPA did non launch an enquiry into the complaints.
The Cadmus scientists said they realized over fourth dimension that their findings about risks to underground drinking h2o diverged from what the EPA wanted. The scientists determined that fracking does pose some chance to drinking h2o. They concluded that monitoring of fracking activities and more information from industry would be needed to quantify the take a chance. The EPA decided the study's determination should be that fracking did non pose a threat to groundwater and therefore did non require further study or federal oversight.
The Cadmus scientists came to believe that abiding past the EPA's conclusion violated their standards of integrity. "If you say in that location is no take chances associated with hydraulic fracturing, and we see risk, y'all either didn't practice a good job or you're lying," Sham said. "The data and analyses tell the states there is risk associated with information technology, and we were asked to written report there is no risk, and we can't say that."
The EPA routinely hires contractors to deport studies, and the firms' names are generally tucked away in appendices or acknowledgements. Contractors appreciate a mention because if the studies are well-regarded, they serve as a grade of marketing. The 2004 coalbed methane study notes the apply of a contractor but does not identify Cadmus.
"Nosotros had no power over the concluding study. The but ability we had was to have our names off it," said a Cadmus team scientist who declined to be identified because of concerns nearly chore security.
Within the EPA, some scientists were also troubled by the study. "What I found objectionable was that it was written to have a good P.R. effect on people," said Mario Salazar, an engineer who was an internal reviewer of the report and worked as a technical expert at the EPA's hugger-mugger injection office. "Then that people would read the written report and say in that location was no trouble with hydraulic fracturing and water."
After the EPA published the final coalbed marsh gas report in June 2004, Weston Wilson, an environmental engineer in the EPA's Denver office, filed a formal whistleblower complaint about it. Wilson alleged in his complaint that the study's conclusions were "unsupportable" and based on "limited enquiry."
The EPA's inspector general launched an investigation into Wilson'southward complaint. But the inquiry was airtight afterwards the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Energy Policy Act in 2005, codifying in law the conclusion of the coalbed methane study and exempting fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Back in Pennsylvania, A Boy'south Health Problems Abound
In mid-2012, Chevron Appalachia hydraulically fractured two wells on a hill about 400 feet behind Latkanich'due south house. They produced gas by winter, and Latkanich got royalty checks that at first were as high as $11,000 a month. He paid off legal bills and his mortgage.
But problems soon cropped up that grew increasingly alarming.
The company carved out a two-acre well pad from the hillside for 3 large impoundments to hold water from other gas sites that was trucked in to frack the two Latkanich wells. During a hard rain or snowfall cook, runoff from the well pad flowed downwards the loma, over the site of Latkanich'due south well, and into his garage and basement.
Latkanich's drinking h2o developed a metallic gustation over the form of the yr. He started to get frequent diarrhea. In early 2022, Ryan, then 3, came out of the tub covered in open sores. Latkanich called the country Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to test the h2o. Chevron Appalachia declined to hook up Latkanich's home to the nearby municipal water system and provided him with a large outdoor tank instead. The DEP tests did not bear witness anything wrong with the drinking water, and the company took the tank away.
Still worried even after the 2022 tests, Latkanich began to have bottled h2o delivered. Because he's on a fixed income, Latkanich and Ryan use it just for drinking. They still cook, castor their teeth, breast-stroke and launder dishes and clothes in well h2o. Ryan's mother left in August 2022.
In Dec 2022, Ryan started to soil himself nearly daily. He was 6, a chubby precocious redhead with perpetually askew glasses. One day, he soiled himself at school. "Charlie was the smartest kid in the form. He was making fun of me in front end of the whole class. He said I stink," Ryan recalled. He doesn't take many friends at school now. "I'll never forget that."
Medical tests establish cypher incorrect with Ryan. Peer-reviewed science has been mixed and so far near the links between fracking and incontinence or gastrointestinal problems among residents who use nearby well water. Latkanich called the country DEP to exam his water. He as well contacted John Stolz, director of Duquesne University'south Eye for Environmental Research and Education.
The results have been ambiguous. Unlike most people, Latkanich had an independent lab test his water in 2022 earlier fracking began, giving him a baseline. In its Feb 2022 test, the state establish increased turbidity, or cloudiness, and the presence of coliform bacteria. DEP officials returned in early November to take more than samples. Stolz'due south test found college levels of iron, calcium and strontium. The corporeality of sodium had more than doubled to 510.38 milligrams per liter of water from 238.38 in 2022, before fracking began.
The elevated levels of sodium pose a high risk to Latkanich, who suffers from kidney illness. "The test results prove I can't potable this water," he said.
The ambiguity is typical of water tested near fracking sites. If water quality has worsened, there is seldom a bright line to the fracking. That's partly because nether the Halliburton loophole, companies do not reveal everything they inject hugger-mugger, so labs do not know all the substances they should exam for. And in many cases, homeowners enter into settlements with energy companies that prohibit them from revealing what happened.
Chevron Appalachia has not seen Latkanich's 2022 water test results, merely a spokeswoman said that by water testing didn't back up his claim that fracking affected his water. "Based on a review of the 2022 pre-drill and 2022 post-drill water samples, both Chevron and the DEP concluded that Chevron Appalachia's operations did not impact Mr. Latkanich's h2o," Veronica Flores-Paniagua said in an email. "Nosotros empathize that Mr. Latkanich has recently raised the same concerns again regarding his well water. Equally always, Chevron Appalachia will continue to fully cooperate with the DEP in this thing."
The Legacy of the Now-Disputed EPA Study
When the Energy Policy Deed passed, the industry celebrated the exemption of fracking from safety drinking water scrutiny and cited the at present-disputed EPA study whenever complaints about pollution arose. In a September 2005 newsletter, the Interstate Oil and Gas Meaty Commission said the study had establish "no confirmed cases that drinking water wells had been contaminated by hydraulic fracturing fluid injection into coal bed marsh gas wells."
"It was the one big report. Y'all heard it quoted for a decade or more than afterwards: that fracking never harmed water," said Greg Dotson, a constabulary professor at the University of Oregon and old lead free energy policy staffer for Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the House Free energy and Commerce committee during the Bush era. For members of Congress, "if you wanted to do the right thing, yous needed to accept data on your side, and this report deprived yous of an belittling basis. … The oil and gas guys always used it. Information technology was instrumental to their winning the debate."
The Trump EPA does non endeavour to hide its intention to roll back rules to assistance oil and gas. Before taking the reins at EPA, Pruitt built a career based on deep ties to industry. He led a political not-profit funded in role by the petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch. He sued the EPA more a dozen times equally Oklahoma attorney general over new pollution standards. As EPA administrator, he has halted or slowed several rules affecting oil and gas.
He has moved to undermine the scientific underpinnings of major rules in part past removing independent academics from the agency's scientific advisory panels that review studies on issues such as fracking. In their place, the Pruitt squad has put forth the names of corporate representatives, many fatigued from the oil and gas industry, who deny prevailing science on public health hazards such as climate change and ozone.
EPA Issues New Report, but Change Is Unlikely
In Dec 2022, equally the Obama administration was almost to leave function, the EPA issued a new report, which stated for the first fourth dimension that fracking in some cases had contaminated drinking h2o. It identified possible risks to groundwater unless certain safeguards are implemented. Cadmus was the authorities contractor who helped deport the written report, and this fourth dimension, its proper noun is repeatedly mentioned in it.
The new study won't change annihilation on the basis unless Congress acts to repeal the Halliburton loophole, which is unlikely for the nowadays.
Latkanich expects no aid from the government. It immune all he sees effectually him to happen, he figures. He has a reputation with Chevron as a troublemaker because he monitors and criticizes its practices. Early, he grew suspicious of the visitor when he learned from a neighbor that a Chevron contractor had released stormwater runoff into a stream on the other side of his property. The company was cited past the state, only Chevron and state regulators did not tell Latkanich about the violation, he said.
Latkanich would like to stay in his firm, which he poured thousands of dollars into considering he thought he would grow erstwhile in it. Now, his fears most the well water nudge him to get, but he worries he can't discover a buyer. "I tin can't sell the house now: It has foundation issues and pollution. The value of the house has dropped like a stone," he said.
The most probable heir-apparent would be Chevron, and Latkanich is determined to wrest accountability for the damage he believes the company has done. Simply he tin't beget a lawyer to help him negotiate a settlement. Ane non-profit told him his case was as well big and complex for it to handle. He gets a disability cheque and nearly $550 monthly now in royalties for his two gas wells, so he doesn't have the money to hire private firms.
"This farm is ruined," he said.
"Forever," said Ryan, who had come into the kitchen from running around outside.
"Buy me out and I'll move somewhere where there isn't fracking," Latkanich said.
"Japan?" Ryan offered. "Because I don't think there's fracking there."
An earlier version of this story reported that Chevron was cited past the Pennsylvania Department of Ecology Protection for dumping wastewater into a stream on Bryan Latkanich's property. After the story was published, Chevron said the pollution for which it was cited was not wastewater. The DEP confirmed the violation involved stormwater runoff from a well pad, which is laden with sediment, not wastewater from a gas well; the sentence was changed to reflect that.
Senior Contributor, Washington, D.C.
Neela Banerjee is a Washington-based reporter for InsideClimate News. She led the investigation into Exxon's early climate research, which was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service reporting and the recipient of most a dozen other journalism awards. Before joining ICN, she spent four years every bit the energy and environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau. Banerjee covered global energy, the Iraq State of war and other issues with The New York Times. She also served as a Moscow correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. Banerjee grew upwardly in southeast Louisiana and graduated from Yale University.
You can reach her by email at neela.banerjee@insideclimatenews.org. For encrypted communication, use neela_banerjee@protonmail.com.
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