Passions on Display at E.P.A. Meeting
New York Times
24 July 2010
By Tom Zeller, Jr. <http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/author/tom-zeller-jr/>
Jeff Swensen for The New York Times
Over 1,000 people turned out for ahearing on hydraulic fracturing in
Canonsburg, Pa.
If the Environmental Protection Agency had hoped that the hundreds of
landowners, students, community activists, environmentalists and oil
and gas representatives invited to a hotel ballroom in southwestern
Pennsylvania Thursday night would really stay on point, they were
surely disappointed.
The aim of the meeting, which drew well over 1,000 attendees, was to
solicit advice from stakeholders on how E.P.A. should focus and design
a study of the impact of hydraulic fracturing http://www.epa.gov/safewater/uic/wells_hydrofrac.html
on groundwater.
The agency's regional administrator instructed the crowd at the outset
that the meeting was not to become a debate on the merits of the
practice, which involves injecting a high-pressure cocktail of water,
sand and chemicals deep underground to crack the rock and release
natural gas deposits.
Much advice was offered, and E.P.A. scientists and regulators took
copious notes. Industry supporters, too, were on hand to urge that
science trump emotion in any analysis, and to point out that hydraulic
fracturing has never been definitively linked to groundwater
contamination.
But the vast majority of the more than 100 speakers used their
two-minute turns at the microphone to unleash furious recriminations at
the gas industry, hydraulic fracturing and state and federal regulators
for negligence in allowing it to continue. One resident called the
E.P.A.'s pending analysis the equivalent of studying the flammability
of Rome while the city was burning, while others offered a litany of
personal experiences with ponds, streams and wells - all contaminated,
they believe, by nearby natural gas fracking fluids.
"Corporations have no conscience," said Dencil Backus, a resident of
Mount Pleasant Township in Pennsylvania. "E.P.A. must give them that
conscience."
Hydraulic fracturing has been practiced in Pennsylvania and around the
country for decades. The gas industry insists that no clear evidence
has ever surfaced linking the fluids they use to crack open gas
deposits to contamination of drinking water or any other systemic
environmental problems.
The E.P.A.'s study - which is just getting started and is expected to
be completed in early 2012 - aims to explore the connection further.
Pennsylvania is among several northeastern states where the natural gas
industry is priming for a boom. An industry-sponsored and financed
study released this week suggested that the gas play, known as the
Marcellus
Shale <http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/46288.html>
, could generate some $6 billion in government revenues and create up
to 280,000 jobs.
But with oil still washing up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, many
residents were witheringly skeptical of drillers in general. "If you
believe the industry line, it's all coincidental and it's not their
fault," Mel Packer, a member of Pennsylvania's Green Party and a
congressional hopeful, said of the dozens of personal stories from
landowners complaining of water contamination from nearby gas wells. "I
recognize a scam when I hear one."
Whether the opprobrium is justified or misplaced remains a matter of
debate, particularly among those seeking to nudge the nation toward
cleaner sources of energy. Many experts consider natural gas, which
burns more cleanly than coal or oil, to be a crucial bridging fuel in
that process.
"Natural gas has played and will continue to play an important role in
our energy portfolio as we transition to a new energy future, and we
are fortunate to have domestic resources to help meet our growing
needs," Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said in a prepared
statement delivered to the assembly. "But I believe it is important to
protect the health and safety of Pennsylvanians as we further develop
the Marcellus Shale."