Part Two of a four-part series by Wes Wilson, former Environmental Engineer for the EPA. 

In this series, Wilson presents his answers to six challenging questions that were asked by students in a Pennsylvania middle school science class attended by his nephew.

2.    Why is the government choosing to continue fracking when so many people are against it?

Our government attempts to balance many competing interests and sometimes, as with fracking, the claims about environmental harm and damage to public health, are not taken as seriously by our government as the certainty of making large amounts of money from oil and natural gas.

When I worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, I realized that an EPA study concluding that fracking was safe and posed little risk, was invalid and fraudulent.  In 2004, I wrote to Congress and requested an investigation

.^[1]  However, in 2005, the Congress exempted fracking from being regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.  See this summary  of those events from the environmental organization Earthworks. ^[2]

In 2011, I was concerned about the industry attacks on Ian Urbina, a New York Times reporter, who had uncovered that radioactive fracking waste was being disposed in sewer plants in Pennsylvania.^[3]  I wrote an editorial  about not allowing the EPA to buckle to the oil and gas industry pressure to ignore the local environmental problems due to fracking. ^[4]  Later, EPA and Pennsylvania did stop the industry practice of dumping radioactive frack fluids in community sewer plants. This was due to the exposure brought to that practice by the New York Times’ investigations.

Some local governments are choosing to stop fracking.  The City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, banned fracking in their city.^[5]  Last November, the people of Longmont , Colorado, voted to ban fracking in their town.^[6]  Fracking has been banned in New Jersey ^[7] and Vermont. ^[8]  The state of New York currently has a moratorium on fracking while state officials conduct studies on whether fracking operations adversely affects people’s health.^[9]

3.    How could fracking affect someone who lives very close to where the drilling is taking place?

There are two main ways that fracking could adversely affect someone who lives close to drilling.  One way is that improperly sealed wells or spills of the toxic fracking fluids can allow methane and fracking fluids to contaminate a homeowner’s water well.  This has happened in Dimock, Pennsylvania; Weatherford, Texas; and Pavilion, Wyoming.

Another way nearby residents can be harmed is more common because all fracking releases toxic fumes.  These chemical fumes have been shown to cause cancer and other health problems for people living close by.  A colleague of mine, Dr. Theo Colborn, who runs the Endocrine Disruptor Exchange in Paonia, Colorado, recently published results of air sampling from a home 0.7 miles from drilling.  Dr. Colborn found concentrations of toxic hydrocarbons from drilling that would harm people even at low doses .^[10]  In a recent video Dr. Colborn addresses the President and First Lady about the dangers of endocrine disruptors — toxic hydrocarbon chemicals made from fossil fuels — which adversely affect unborn babies .^[11]  Another report from Colorado by the Colorado School of Public Health reported that people living within one-half mile of drilling had a 60 percent higher chance of getting cancer .^[12]

Last year NOAA found high concentrations of methane, propane, and 44 other hydrocarbons in the town of Erie, Colorado coming from fracking operations near that town.^[13]  The town of Erie has some 400 fracked wells nearby and Weld County, where Erie is located, has 18,000 fracked wells producing oil and natural gas.

Next installment: “Why are many people still in doubt of the safety of fracking when the EPA claims that it is safe?”