Seyfarth Synopsis: With significant objection from Industry, EPA has issued its Final Report on whether hydraulic fracturing activities can impact drinking water resources under certain circumstances.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published its controversial final report on "Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States." In the report, which has already been subject to great objection from Industry, EPA issued its finding that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activities in the U.S. may have impacts on the water lifecycle, affecting drinking water resources. The Agency had put out a draft of the report for public comment in June 2015, which we blogged on at that time. 80 Fed. Reg. 32111.
The report was prepared at the request of Congress. Its purpose was to follow water resources used for fracking through the entire water cycle from water acquisition, to chemical mixing at the well pad site, to well injection of fracking fluids, to the collection of fracking wastewater (including flowback and produced water), and finally, to wastewater treatment and disposal. EPA claimed that the study "identified conditions under which impacts from hydraulic fracturing activities can be more frequent or severe." The report also identified "data gaps [that] limited EPA's ability to fully assess impacts to drinking water resources both locally and nationally." The final conclusions were based on review of over 1,200 cited sources.
In response to EPA's report, the American Petroleum Institute (API) blasted the EPA's "abandonment of science in revising the conclusions to the Assessment Report...." API and the fracking industry requested changes to EPA's Draft Report that EPA did not incorporate in the Final Report. As a result, API Upstream Director Erik Milito said, "the agency has walked away from nearly a thousand sources of information from published papers, technical reports and peer reviewed scientific reports demonstrating that industry practices, industry trends, and regulatory programs protect water resources at every step of the hydraulic fracturing process."
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