EPA Says Fracking Harmful to Drinking Water - Will Trump Listen?
By Thom Hartmann A...
Here in Washington, DC, the Environmental Protection Agency - EPA - has reversed course on fracking.
Initially, the agency had concluded in a draft report that released last year that fracking had no "widespread, systemic impact" on drinking water.
That conclusion outraged environmentalists as well factions of scientists within the EPA itself.
In a final report released last Tuesday, however, the EPA reached a different conclusion.
It now says that fracking DOES contaminate drinking water - although it still says that a lack of data makes a 100 percent definitive answer impossible.
Like President Obama's announcement yesterday of a permanent ban on drilling in the Arctic and along the Atlantic Seaboard - the EPA's new report might be the last piece of good environmental news for a long - long time.
Donald Trump's choice for EPA director - Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt - is a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and has received hundreds of thousands in campaign donations from big oil.
But with things looking as dire as they do - could the EPA have taken an even bolder stance on fracking?
Comments
#2
This is just one of so many issues that now seem catastrophic. It's hard to know where to start. Remember the noise from the "opposition" when Obama was elected? It hasn't let up for 8 yrs. Today's Democratic Party? Silent. Bernie is invisible to the Media; his issues and we, his supporters, completely dismissed. It's going to do an an Interesting 4 years.
#3
Profits over people. No one gets rich selling pharmaceuticals to healthy people. With outsourcing and prison slave labor leaving a bunch of unemployed healthy people. Fracking helps stimulate the economy by getting people sick. This is only one tool in their toolbox.
Like diverting tax money from safety nets and infrastructure to multinational gun manufacturing corporations, or bombs and jets and bullets. The drug war is over a Trillion dollars diverted. Keeping alternatives outlawed and putting sick people in jail for committing illicit remedies.
Prevention and potential cures are not prudent at this juncture. Fossil Fools rule and anything else that harms the environment. Clear cutting forests or dumping Koch paper waste into rivers or plastic from crud into the oceans. Forming goop islands starving the plankton and messing with the food chain. More reason to buy Monsanto Frankenfud.
Follow the money and stash the emotions. These Neocon psychopaths aren't shedding any tears over it. Unless the bottom line isn't met in the daily tally. I'm sure its only happenstance Bush and the Moony's own over a million acres of land over the largest Aquifer in Latin America while they frack up our water with nasty Tar Pipelines and Nukes over dormant fault lines becoming not so dormant in OKieland due to fracking. If the Fossil Fool suggestion for EPA doesn't care about his homey's???
The G-20+- Neocon's want to govern the country of Earth. If they can make middle class wages equal to third world countries, that is their definition of World Peace. The New Weird Odor from the World Trade Orchestrations. A world of equals, governed by the elitist 10% who believe those with the Money are the true examples of God's chosen ones. All others are here to serve.
Lying and cheating, buying elections to sell legislation or inheriting the money, are just various "means" to the end. Selling treatment for misery they create. Banning cures and prevention. Profit is the new Mother of Invention. Necessity is a deterrent to questioning authoritah or whistle blowing. The homeless are reminders to those living paycheck to paycheck. More every year.
Sabotage and Intimidation, a corporate media reading memo's. It most assuredly can happen here. Actually following the Ganjawar the past 45 years, there is little question about it. Special laws circumventing the Constitution for the message it might send the kids. Now the middle class is seeing what oppressed groups have been living since forever in some cases. At least since Nixon.
First they came for the people of color, then the counter culture, then women and gays. Now the disabled, unemployed, under the table and poor in general are of more "value" in a profit prison cage. $35k/yr to spend and tax verses minimum wage jobettes at $12-15k/yr w/o taxes going back. Who are the prime candidates? Trump voters. Poverty can lower your IQ, Almost All Rural Whites are In Poverty With over half of the people believing Trump and his Posse are dangerously unqualified while the other lesser half are obedient Wingnuts following orders and praying for the day Voodoo Economics starts trickling down.
Cheney's Legacy of Fracking America to Death
It Can't Happen Heeere
Halliburton Watch: fracturing Americans 1949 - ?
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1745
The logical answer is also the biggest threat to the status quo. Removing Cannabis from the CSA is a win win for America. Giving the middle class a job market staple, while putting the Wall St Bankster Beast on a Diet. Or continue whining about the bullies stealing everything in sight until FDR's accomplishments are nothing but a distant memory.
Cannabis Food Fuel Fiber FARMaceuticals
Hemplastic or Fossil Fools Crud
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/forums/2
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
— Frederick Douglass
#4
I will recommend your blog to my friends so that they can increase their knowledge. link
#5
Now that we have reached the point where solar power is CHEAPER than fossile fuel power, it is just a matter of time before before the fossil fuel industry disappears.
#6
"... - could the EPA have taken an even bolder stance on fracking?"
Well, at least, they've progressed from the euphemistic word, "impact," to the semi-euphemistic, "contaminate."
How about just saying it like it is, with no high-brow ambiguity at all, by using the simple word, "poison?" As in, "Hey, the goddamn fracking companies are poisoning our water!"
Or, more pointedly, "F--king Republicans and their f--ked-up policies are poisoning our water, our air, our food, our environment, our economy, our healthcare, our education, our retirement, our foreign affairs, and just about everything else they touch with their greasy, greedy little hands -- including our whole goddamn planet!"
Maybe then, even Trump's uni-brow, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging ass-kissers might understand.
Naw...
#7
Steve Pruitt was picked, as the head of the EPA, by Trump to shut down the EPA.
#8
... regressing right along ...
#9
If you actually d/l and read the report, as I have done, you will see that try as they may, the EPA couldn't issue a more damning conclusion because there simply isn't evidence to support one. They instead resorted to generalities: Drill a well next to a water well and you MIGHT get contamination. Duh!
"To achieve these goals, the EPA conducted independent research, engaged stakeholders through technical workshops and roundtables, and reviewed approximately 1,200 cited sources of data and information."
"To assess whether hydraulic fracturing operations are a relatively large or small user of water, we compared water use for hydraulic fracturing to total water use at the county level (Text Box ES-5). In most counties studied, the average annual water volumes reported in FracFocus 1.0 were generally less than 1% of total water use. This suggests that hydraulic fracturing operations represented a relatively small user of water in most counties."
"This analysis suggests that there was enough water available annually to support the level of hydraulic fracturing reported to FracFocus 1.0 in most, but not all, areas of the country."
"According to the information examined in this report, the overall occurrence of hydraulic fracturing within a drinking water resource appears to be low, with the activity generally concentrated in some areas in the western United States."
#10
Sooo ... these goddamn greedy domestic terrorists are only poisoning some of our water in only certain areas. Great! It's a damn good thing you don't have a well close by, huh?
Here's a thought: Why don't we wean ourselves off poison altogether and save the environment and the life it supports at every location? Or, is it that you don't really believe in science, despite having "read the report?"
Go to the I.P.C.C. website; they have lots of reports about anthropogenic climate disruption for you to read.
#11
Is Trump gonna shut down the EPA? Is it just a matter of time? He's now busy with the out-of-country political issues, but I'm sure he won't give up his psycho dream to do it. God save us from him.
Brian - one freelance limited educator.
#12
Significant deterioration of the ecology manifests itself with increasing momentum, but it is not known when the authorities will pay attention to this. I wanto to byu speeches for disclosure of this problem. Hope this will bring the result.
#13
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#14
I've found great site with quality essay
#15
Environmentalists seized on the new report as evidence that the federal government should strengthen federal protections on fracking.
BTW for writing good reports or reviews visit https://ewritinghelp.com
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What's the point of having a government agency to protect anything that is good for the people and the environment if they can be, essentially, bought off for corporate profits? I started seeing the tap water set on fire because of its methane content several years ago. The EPA is apparently gutless and the people en masse are going to be the losers. Most things in this country are out of control in some real important areas: GMO's, fracking, continued drilling for oil and its unreliable transport (pipeline breaks, trains derailing), not to mention the CO2 release with the burning of fossil fuels, and the factory farming of cattle. The Europeans are far saner than we. It's hard for me to be optimistic about our future. The greatest recent loss was having Bernie be President. I don't see how we'll recover from what 'could have been'. Looks like corporate control on steroids for our future. And I forgot to mention the stratospheric aerosol spraying....'chemtrails'.....you should read the list of toxic metals that are being released in the atmosphere...globally. So much for the EPA.