Green groups threaten to sue over fracking regulations
A number of leading environmental organizations filed a legal notice with the Environmental Protection Agency Wednesday demanding that the agency stop what they say is improper disposal of drilling and fracking waste by oil and gas companies.
“We’re asking that EPA finally do what it found to be necessary back in 1988: update the regulations for oil and gas wastes”, said Adam Kron, attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project.
The move – formalized with a notice of intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency – is the latest bid by conservationists to prod greater scrutiny of oil and gas drilling and the industry’s handling of millions of gallons of water and other waste that can spring from individual wells.
EPA should ban the practice of spreading fracking wastewater onto roads or fields, which allows toxic pollutants to run off and contaminate streams.
If the EPA does not take action on fracking waste within 60 days, the coalition says it will file a lawsuit. Waterford, received 29 complaints in 2014, up 20 from the nine complaints the EPA received about it for odour in 2013.
“The federal rules governing this waste are basically the same rules as what apply to your household garbage”, said Matthew McFeeley, an attorney with the NRDC.
Environmental groups are threatening to sue federal regulators if they don’t issue new standards for hydraulic fracturing. But the agency’s last review was 27 years ago.
The organizations would like to see stricter controls on the disposal of oil and gas drilling wastes that could cause contimination.
And, with narrowing disposal options, the oil industry is pursuing drilling and fracturing techniques that produce less liquid waste – including so called “dry fracs” that rely on liquefied petroleum gas gel instead of water. These include known carcinogens such as benzene, toxic metals such as mercury and radioactive materials.
The contention stems from a decades-old congressional exemption of certain oil and gas wastes from RCRA’s hazardous waste requirements.
The EPA had no immediate comment on the environmental groups’ claims.
West Virginia: Oil and gas wastewater dumped or spilled in rivers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania contains high levels of potentially hazardous ammonium and iodide, according to a study by Duke University scientists. In July 2011, a pipeline serving a well in Bottineau County leaked over two million gallons of fracking wastewater, damaging twenty-four acres of private land.
“So the more you put in landfills, the hotter (radioactively) the landfills become”, he said.
In the absence of federal regulation, states are left to determine how to classify oil and gas waste. And the EPA already has moved to foreclose one wastewater disposal option used previously in Pennsylvania: trucking the waste to municipal treatment facilities.
“The supposed harms that these groups are citing are the same theoretical risks that they’ve been screaming about for years”, he said in an email, adding that states have taken the lead on regulating disposal wells by crafting state rules that go beyond federal requirements. In 2012, Ohio developed UIC regulations to help mitigate concerns with injection induced seismicity.
Oklahoma officials acknowledged in April that the state’s fracking sites had contributed to a surge in earthquakes there.