Regional
(2009-11-19)
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A just-passed Interior Department spending bill includes a provision that encourages the agency to study whether fracking is polluting groundwater. Fracking - short for hydraulic fracturing - has made it easier for companies to drill for natural gas in energy-rich states like Colorado.
A similar study during the Bush Administration concluded there was no threat to groundwater. But that was widely criticized by environmentalists and some members of Congress who said the government's analysis was based primarily on input from Halliburton and other energy companies.
"If we're going to try to figure out how to regulate hydraulic fracturing, we need to make sure that we have all the scientific data on our side," says Denver Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette, who's been pushing for the study.
She's also co-sponsoring a bill that would require companies to disclose the chemicals in their fracking fluids. Since the 2005 Energy Bill, they've been exempted from this reporting requirement under the federal safe drinking water act.
Industry officials say they're open to a study, but at the same time, they question whether one is needed.
"Fracking has been done for over sixty years, over a million wells have been fracked and there's no documented case of contamination," says Kathleen Sgamma, director of governmental affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.
IPAMS penned a letter last week to DeGette, accusing the Congresswoman of spreading false information about fracking. Sgamma says energy producing states like Colorado already require companies to disclose the chemicals anyway. And the group is worried that a federal law could cost a company upwards of a hundred thousand dollars for every well it wants to drill.
Sgamma says that would be a huge blow to one of this region's biggest industries. In the Denver area alone, the industry employs more than fifty thousand people.
"And that's not because obviously we're drilling wells here in Denver," Sgamma says, "But because Denver is such a regional hub, and so many companies have their headquarters here, that we provide that much economic activity."
But Congresswoman DeGette isn't buying assertions that her bill would bring more unnecessary red tape to the industry.
"I've asked the industry to show me why, it would be so much more costly to report under the Safe Drinking Water Act, if in fact they already have to do it under a robust state law," DeGette counters.
Still, anytime a new regulation comes along, businesses do have to pay more.
Abrahm Lustgarten has spent the past year following back and forth's like those between DeGette and her opponents.
"A close reading of the act itself, makes it very clear that authority is designated to the states," says Lustgarten, who's with the investigative on-line journalism group, Pro Publica.
Lustgarten says there's a lot of debate over how MUCH new regulation the bill would actually pose.
"The EPA would designate authority to Colorado to continue doing exactly what it's doing, but simply say that you have to meet some minimum standard to protect drinking water, as established by the safe drinking water act," he adds.
Lustgarten says he's not sure whether the recently-approved study will delay the bill from moving forward.
But for her part, Congresswoman DeGette concedes there's little chance of it passing this year anyway, with Congress devoting nearly all its attention to health care, and most of the rest to climate legislation.
© Copyright 2010, KUNC
