EPA Buries Its Own Good News About Fracking
EPA Buries Its Own Good News About Fracking
BY THOMAS MCARDLE
06/04/201
Want to see a perfect example of spin as a Washington art form? Read the results of the federal government's most in-depth investigation ever of fracking. As Institute for Energy Research president Thomas Pyle pointed out, "It only took four years and 1,000 pages, but the EPA finally confirmed what we already knew — hydraulic fracturing is safe, and states have been effectively regulating the process."
Americans love good news, but President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency couldn't treat it as such. The report's "Major Findings" didn't celebrate that your well water is safe. It instead leads with scaremongering about fracking's "above- and below-ground mechanisms" and their "potential to impact drinking water resources," including "spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids ... and discharge of wastewater."
Only after this does the EPA admit: "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States."
But, refusing to accept the good news, the EPA then ponders possible "limiting factors" in the investigation, like "insufficient pre- and post-fracturing data on the quality of drinking water resources . .. and the inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts."
It's no mystery why the Obama administration can't celebrate its own findings that fracking is safe. As President Obama said last month, "My approach when it comes to fracking ... has remained consistent throughout: I believe that we are going to have to transition off of fossil fuels as a planet in order to prevent climate change."
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