A heaping mound of black trash bags stuffed with radioactive nets that strain liquids during the oil production process — commonly known as “oil filter socks” — has been found in an abandoned North Dakota gas station, state officials confirmed Wednesday, in what may be the biggest instance of illegal oil socks dumping the state has ever seen.

Police last week discovered the illegally dumped oil socks piled throughout the old gas station building and attached mechanic garage in the small town of Noonan, state Waste Management Director Scott Radig told ThinkProgress. The bags were covered in a layer of dust, Radig said, meaning they had probably been sitting in the building for some time.

The 4,000-square-foot building is owned by a felony fugitive named Ken Ward, who Radig said likely did independent work for the state’s booming oil and gas industry.

“I suspect that [Ward] was doing contract work for some oil company and he told them he would — I’m sure for a price — take these and properly dispose of them,” Radig speculated. “He did it the cheap way, took the money and took off.”

The radiation found in oil socks is naturally occurring, Radig said, but winds up concentrating onto the socks during their filtration process. Like a small net, the socks are used when pumping oil field fluids to filter out anything companies don’t want to go through the pump, or down into an injection well.

North Dakotan soil has a limit of 5 picocuries — the standard measure for the intensity of radioactivity — of radium per gram of soil in order to be considered not radioactive. The oil socks, Radig said, are typically in the range of 10-60 picocuries of radium per gram. Though the bags haven’t been taken to a laboratory for examination yet, Radig said an initial reading showed that the oil socks were “above background, so they are slightly radioactive.”

Radig said the public would not be at risk of exposure unless they ventured over to the abandoned building and began opening the bags. Local police have secured the building with caution tape while they try to make arrangements with Ward’s family. If Ward’s mother — who Radig says has been paying taxes on the building — does not cooperate with cleanup, the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s oil and gas division will have to dip into a fund for cleaning up illegal dump sites. While some of the socks have serial numbers, Radig said it is not possible to track down who they once belonged to, meaning it will likely be either the property owner’s or the state’s responsibility to clean it up.

“The public really isn’t at risk, so from that aspect it’s not an emergency,” Radig said. “It is angering us in the Health Department here that people are doing illegal dumping, and I know people are very upset over it.”

People are upset because the incident is not the first time residents have been informed of illegal radioactive oil waste dumping in their immediate vicinity. In the last decade, North Dakota has quickly risen to the second-largest oil-producing state in the country, inevitably increasing the amount of radioactive waste that must be disposed. North Dakota’s Department of Health in 2013 commissioned a study to look at the rising tide of drilling waste containing naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM), and found that oil socks have been increasingly showing up in trash loads over the last two to three years, as drilling in the Bakken and Three Forks formations continues.

Radig said that the increasing problem has prompted the Department to develop waste regulations that would enhance the state’s capacity to track the generation, storage, transportation and disposal of radioactive material from the oil and gas industry. He anticipates having those proposed regulations drafted by June 2014.

Reporting by Emily Atkin – This article was originally published by ThinkProgress

The post Radioactive ‘Oil Socks’ Found Illegally Stockpiled In Abandoned North Dakota Gas Station appeared first on dogWAGGER.

North Dakota’s new voter ID law went into effect in August of last year. I knew it was troublesome, but yesterday I realized just how difficult the law would be to enforce when I went to vote on the local Mill Levy for Fargo School District.

Here’s what happened: I stopped in at my polling place, Roosevelt Elementary School to cast my vote. As I approached the entry way to the voting location the poll worker asked if I would be voting today, I said yes. I was then instructed that to vote I needed a photo ID with my current address. Yes, I had my driver’s license with me. No, it did not show my current address (I’d recently moved, and hadn’t made it down to the Department of Transportation to have it changed). But I knew this before going to the poll, which is why I was armed with several pieces of mail (a bank statement, utilities bill, and my car insurance) to prove my address in Fargo.

And here’s the key thing about the new voter law: it doesn’t require voters to present photo ID. Instead an eligible voter can present a number of documents to make up the name, address, and birthdate requirements provided by the Secretary of State.Roblox HackBigo Live Beans HackYUGIOH DUEL LINKS HACKPokemon Duel HackRoblox HackPixel Gun 3d HackGrowtopia HackClash Royale Hackmy cafe recipes stories hackMobile Legends HackMobile Strike Hack

I presented the required materials and was turned away from the polls with a suggestion that I could travel all the way to the Department of Transportation office and update my current address so that it could be updated in the voter record, which, as the helpful poll worker said, would be immediate and would allow me to come back to vote later that same day. Okay, thanks. But what if I don’t have the time? A mild inconvenience perhaps, but it got me thinking of others who may have had a difficult time voting yesterday.

What if I didn’t have a driver’s license to begin with and I’m told to get a non-driver ID card. But then to obtain the non-driver ID card I need a birth certificate which I too, don’t have? And what if I am a college student who wants to fulfill my civic duty? Nope, can’t do it. I need a “student certificate” to vouch for me. What if I tried to use my tribal ID to vote and it didn’t contain my residential address? Again, I may have been turned away.

We haven’t even gotten to the June primary and problems have already started to surface. I can’t help but wonder what the purpose of this law is and why politicians want to make it so difficult to vote. The law is complicated and nuanced, so nuanced that poll workers are unsure of how to enforce the law.

All right, rant over. Here’s what I need from you, my fellow North Dakotans: if you had a difficult time voting yesterday, lodge a formal complaint with the Secretary of State at 701-328-4146 and tell them your story. I did it and it took a whole 5 minutes. These stories will help us to correct misinformation and ensure that eligible voters, like you and I, aren’t turned away at the polls.

Zach Packineau
Organizer, ACLU of North Dakota

http://www.aclund.org/
https://www.facebook.com/ndaclu
https://twitter.com/ndaclu

The post New voter ID law hits close to home! appeared first on dogWAGGER.

12,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from a Canadian Pacific Railway train on Monday in Minnesota, dribbling oil along the tracks for 68 miles, according to local media reports.

Officials at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said Tuesday they would investigate the cause of the spill, but said no major cleanup effort was planned because of its relatively small size (one single tanker car carries 26,000 gallons) and the way that it happened: the tanker carrying the oil didn’t derail and leak all in one place, rather oil gradually splattered out of the car between the rails onto the track bed as the train was moving. The leak, according to the Star-Tribune, was traced to a valve or cap problem.

“It’s like it spray-painted oil,” MPCA spokesperson Cathy Rofshus told the Leader-Telegram. There were no reported pools of oil, Rofshus added, saying the agency would continue to monitor the area’s conditions.

Some have raised concerns about the proximity of the spill to the Mississippi River, and the railbed itself cuts across the river’s tributaries and wetlands (See map below).

Concerns about the safety of transporting crude by rail have ballooned in the last year, most infamously characterized by the deadly derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec this past summer. The derailment caused a 1.5 million gallon oil spill, and an explosion which killed 47 people. Federal regulators recently reported that more oil has spilled from rail cars in 2013 than in the last four decades combined, which is in line with how much the practice itself has increased.

Google Map of Red Wing to Winona, Minnesota

View Larger Map

Includes reporting by  Emily Atkin originally published by the Center for American Progress Action

The post Train Spills 12,000 Gallons Of Crude Oil Near Mississippi River in Minnesota, No Major Cleanup Effort Planned appeared first on dogWAGGER.

During the President’s SOTU address, Kevin Cramer was busy on his phone posting snarky comments to his Twitter feed. One gem: “rather than perpetual unemployment benefits how about getting out of the way and letting business create jobs?”.

Where’s that Jobs Bill, Cramer? Instead you cut food assistance for 2 million more Americans this morning. Let’s unemploy Cramer.

See Kevin Cramer’s tweets below the photo.

Kris is happy happy happy she came to the State of the Union pic.twitter.com/U6I3wRMxjC

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

I love real Americans! pic.twitter.com/UUDUoAfgjl

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU thanks to ND more oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world.

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU I will act on my own to slash bureaucracy. U S House has been trying to do that for 3 years.

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

Energy Security is easy. Turn U S Energy policy over to North Dakota Mr. President

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU All the above energy does not mean taking profits from successful fossil fuel industry to prop up inefficient sources.

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU rather than perpetual unemployment benefits how about getting out of the way and letting business create jobs?

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU approve keystone now. Create real jobs that pay well above $10.10.

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

Raise minimum wage and kill jobs #CloseTheGap

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

Raise minimum wage so McDonalds cancels the dollar meal #CloseTheGap #SOTU

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU mom's should get their kids to sign up for healthcare coverage they don't need or want. #CloseTheGap

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

Democrats seem willing to ride Obama Care over the cliff.

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

#SOTU America will always stand with Jewish State of Israel.

— Rep. Kevin Cramer (@RepKevinCramer) January 29, 2014

The post Kevin Cramer Loves Real Americans – Like Reality TV Stars appeared first on dogWAGGER.

The “astroturf” group that calls themselves ROPE is a front-group for the oil industry.

Check out their “Members”:

Officers
President: Julie Musselman – Royalty Owner
Vice President: Matt Thompson – Apache Corp.
Secretary: Candice Brewer – Royalty Owner
Treasurer: Allen Wright – Devon Energy

Directors
Bruce Stallsworth – Newfield Exploration
Blu Hulsey – Continental Resources
Bill Sinclair – Royalty Owner
David Sikes – Royalty Owner
Executive Vice President: Jerry R. Simmons

Sponsoring Companies
Apache Corporation
Continental Resources, Inc.
Devon Energy Corporation
Newfield Exploration Company, Inc.

Not a single North Dakota land owner in the bunch.

Check out Jim Fuglie’s post on The Prairie Blog for all the nasty details.

The post Who is behind the “landowners group” opposed to protecting North Dakota state treasures from oil development? appeared first on dogWAGGER.

ND GOP District 3 Rep. Roscoe Streyle thinks windmills are a blight on the landscape, while oil rigs are beautiful. Roscoe should change the names of his Pita Pit restaurants in Minot and Grand Forks to “Drilling Wastewater Open Pit” in honor of the way the oil industry treats our landscape.

The post ND GOP District 3 Rep. Roscoe Streyle Thinks Windmills are a Blight on the Landscape, While Oil Rigs are Beautiful appeared first on dogWAGGER.

North Dakota Republican Representative Kevin Cramer joined 50 GOP Representatives in signing a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that makes Social Security cuts the latest ransom demand of the Republican hostage-takers in Congress. In North Dakota, 122,084 seniors and disabled citizens depend on Social Security payments to survive. Additionally, 7,848 North Dakota children rely on those benefits.

The letter, signed by Cramer, says that “Social Security provides us the best opportunity to begin solving our nation’s significant budget imbalances” and that “the ongoing fiscal discussions in Congress provide an opportunity to address entitlement program deficits…with our limited time frame to take action before we run up against fiscal deadlines” according to the AFL-CIO who discovered the letter and posted it online.

The letter says that there are only a few way in which Social Security can be gutted for the GOP’s purposes:

• Cutting Social Security benefits with a chained CPI cost-of-living formula;
• Raising the Social Security retirement age; and
• Means-testing Social Security benefits.

Under chained CPI, someone retiring at age 65 would lose nearly $5,000 in Social Security benefits by age 75. By age 85, that person would lose almost $14,000. If he or she lived until 95, the loss would be more than $28,000. Making people wait until age 67 to receive Medicare would mean that people who are 65 and 66 would lose Medicare coverage under this change and would, on average, face higher out-of-pocket health care costs. Two-thirds of this group would face an average of $2,200 more each year in premiums and cost-sharing charges. 92,629 North Dakotans who receive Social Security benefits are over the age of 65.

According to the AFL-CIO, the letter spells out exactly how the GOP can use the upcoming “debt ceiling” battle to get these Social Security proposals through Congress. First, they agree to increase the debt ceiling for six weeks, then in the intervening six weeks they attach Social Security legislation to a longer-term increase in the debt ceiling. All of these ransom demands piggy-back on the current shutdown.

The post Kevin Cramer Signs GOP Shutdown Ransom Note Threatening 122,084 on Social Security in ND appeared first on dogWAGGER.

Guest blog by M.

In an ideal world, every child is wanted and no person is ever hungry.

Unfortunately, the reality is nearly half of pregnancies in our country are unintended. A third of Americans need food assistance.

Also unfortunately, the majority of Republicans seem to be stuck in an alternative reality. Rather than advancing policies to address these issues, lawmakers at both the federal and state levels are passing legislation that will exacerbate these problems.

Why? Because these Republicans believe that only careless women get abortions and use them as a method of birth control – without a second thought. These Republicans believe that only Welfare Queens get food assistance – because they are too lazy to get a job.

Their views are judgmental and misogynistic – not to mention woefully narrow and inaccurate.

Let’s start with abortion rights. The states are on the frontline of this battle.

In just the first half of 2013, 19 states adopted 43 restrictions related to access to abortion. Some restrictions are outright challenges to Roe v. Wade, which grants women a constitutional right to an abortion up until viability at about 24 weeks, while others are meant to sharply reduce access. Two states continued a disturbing trend related to limiting access to family planning.

In North Dakota, lawmakers passed five pieces of abortion legislation this spring. Four go into effect on Aug. 1 unless they are enjoined due to litigation — including the strictest abortion law in the U.S. (banning abortion at 6 weeks, before many women realize they are pregnant) and unnecessary restrictions designed to shutter the only clinic that provides safe pregnancy terminations (ironically under the pretext of “safety”). The fifth is a personhood constitutional amendment that – if passed by the people in November 2014 – would give legal rights to one-celled fertilized eggs – impacting IVF, birth control and all abortion.

Further proving they don’t trust women, North Dakota’s legislative kooks also tried their darndest to stop an evidence-based program to educate at-risk teens about their bodies, sex and sexually transmitted diseases, all of which will actually prevent abortion.

Republicans around the country are making themselves a laughing stock with their efforts. Just last week:  North Carolina legislators snuck an amendment into a motorcycle safety bill to include abortion restrictions. In Texas, state troopers confiscated tampons from women who wanted to observe debate on its latest abortion legislation, fearing they’d be used as projectiles – but it remained ok to bring guns into the gallery. Pro-tip for the GOP: When #motorcyclevagina and #tampongate are trending on Twitter, you know the message isn’t going your way.

The message NOT getting through to these Republican zealots: this isn’t an ideal world where every child is wanted.

The reality is that sometimes 11-year-old girls get pregnant from their molesters. Women are routinely raped on dates and by strangers. Wanted pregnancies have devastating medical problems. Birth control fails. Regardless, the decision to carry or terminate a pregnancy is not made lightly but it is the woman’s decision alone.

Republicans take a paternalistic view that THEY know what’s best for all women. They want women to keep their legs closed or stay home and raise kids.

Rather than reduce the 49% unintended pregnancy rate (and thus the abortion rate) through sex-ed and family planning, these same Republicans are doing the opposite by passing restrictions designed to close women’s health clinics and barring state and federal funding for women’s health care services.

We know the dangerous impact of their actions:  low-income women will lose life-saving cancer screenings and seek out risky back-alley abortions. Because we know that Roe didn’t mark the start of abortions – it was the beginning of safe abortions. But misogynists don’t care; they value an unborn fetus more than the lives of real women.

Ironically, the same lawmakers who protest “ObamaCare” because it “gets between a patient and a doctor” are inserting themselves into exam rooms across the country with an avalanche of abortion legislation.

And then there’s food assistance, which also has a major impact on women and children in our country.

The US House of Representatives just passed a Farm Bill but stripped out the nutrition portion that’s been in this traditionally bi-partisan legislation for the past 40 years. Besides helping our agricultural industry, the national Farm Bill funds the food stamp program, supplements food banks and supports food programs for low-income students, seniors and pregnant women.

Here’s the reality that the House Republicans don’t accept: a third of our country needs help getting the food it needs. Of the 47 million people covered by food stamps, half are children and many are elderly and disabled. Are you going to call your grandpa who’s a Korean War vet “lazy”? Is your disabled grandma who pays sky-high rent in Williston a “Welfare Queen”? No? Maybe some think they are just “more entitled” than others.

Kevin Cramer, North Dakota’s only Representative, called the food stamp debate a “distraction.” Yes, hunger pains CAN be a big distraction, especially when you’re a growing kid trying to get through the school day or a mom working two jobs without health insurance. The real priority for House Republicans is repealing ObamaCare, which they recently voted on for the 37th time. Just in case you missed their point the first 36 times. Good use of time, Congressmen.

These misogynistic ideologues must be replaced so they can no longer hijack federal and state laws with their far-right views. Most people DON’T want lawmakers in their doctor’s office. Most DO want a safety net for kids and seniors. Most DON’T want to spend tax money defending abortion lawsuits for years.

Elections will demonstrate the backlash to this extreme lawmaking. The rates of unintended pregnancy and hungry Americans may not be part of Republicans’ reality, but the ballot box will be real enough.

The post Republican Ideologues Will See Backlash appeared first on dogWAGGER.

It seems that Congressman Kevin Cramer is traveling around the western part of the state with some friends:

U.S. House members Fred Upton, Ed Whitfield, Lee Terry, Cory Gardner, Mike Pompeo, and Bill Johnson.

They are hosting at least one press event where it’s said they will discuss, “North Dakota’s energy boom.” On it’s face, you may think this is not so interesting, and you would be right! What is interesting is that every one of these members of the United States House of Representatives voted FOR the Southerland amendment, which has been blamed for the failure of the comprehensive farm bill.

So to recap…the House produces a bi-partisan farm bill, which was promptly hijacked by a crazy, Republican amendment (a.k.a. the Southerland Amendment) that drastically and dangerously cut funding to the SNAP. The bill failed. The House then passed a version of the bill that severed nutrition assistance from the bill (you might remember—this happened yesterday), effectively going against hundreds of ag groups who strongly opposed this scheme, not to mention jeopardizing needy kids and families AND most likely jeopardizing the likelihood that a farm bill will pass at all….and now, several of the members who are responsible for this failure (Cramer included—we wouldn’t want to leave him out seeing as how he too voted for the Southerland amendment) are prancing around our state like one big happy family.

Coincidence?? We think not viagra generique sans ordonnance.

Press Release from Kevin Cramer:

MEDIA ADVISORY

Cramer to Host Energy and Commerce Leadership in the Bakken

MEDIA ADVISORY
cramer.house.gov
July 11, 2013

BISMARCK, N.D. – Congressman Kevin Cramer will host the Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce along with top committee leadership in Minot tomorrow, July 12. The group will participate in a news conference and share their observations of North Dakota’s energy boom.

Cramer will be joined in the news conference by:

• Congressman Fred Upton, Michigan, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Congressman Ed Whitfield, Kentucky, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power
• Congressman Lee Terry, Nebraska, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade
• Congressman Cory Gardner, Colorado, Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Congressman Mike Pompeo, Kansas, Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Congressman Bill Johnson, Ohio, Committee on Energy and Commerce

Friday, July 12

3:00PM CST
News Conference
Hampton Inn & Suites
1400 North Broadway
Minot

###

The post Veeeeery Interesting… appeared first on dogWAGGER.

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

When the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike.

In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution of an aquifer deep below the town of Pavillion, Wy. 2013 the first time such a claim had been based on a scientific analysis.

The study drew heated criticism over its methodology and awaited a peer review that promised to settle the dispute. <a href="http://governor pharmacie de viagra.wy.gov/media/pressReleases/Pages/WyomingtoLeadFurtherInvestigationofWaterQualityConcernsOutsideofPavillionwithSupportofEPA.aspx”>Now the EPA will instead hand the study over to the state of Wyoming, whose research will be funded by EnCana, the very drilling company whose wells may have caused the contamination.

Industry advocates say the EPA’s turnabout reflects an overdue recognition that it had over-reached on fracking and that its science was critically flawed.

But environmentalists see an agency that is systematically disengaging from any research that could be perceived as questioning the safety of fracking or oil drilling, even as President Obama lays out a plan to combat climate change that rests heavily on the use of natural gas.

Over the past 15 months, they point out, the EPA has:

·      Closed an investigation into groundwater pollution in Dimock, Pa., saying the level of contamination was below federal safety triggers.

·      Abandoned its claim that a driller in Parker County, Texas, was responsible for methane gas bubbling up in residents’ faucets, even though a geologist hired by the agency confirmed this finding.

·      Sharply revised downward a 2010 estimate showing that leaking gas from wells and pipelines was contributing to climate change, crediting better pollution controls by the drilling industry even as other reports indicate the leaks may be larger than previously thought.

·      Failed to enforce a statutory ban on using diesel fuel in fracking.

“We’re seeing a pattern that is of great concern,” said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. “They need to make sure that scientific investigations are thorough enough to ensure that the public is getting a full scientific explanation.”

The EPA says that the string of decisions is not related, and the Pavillion matter will be resolved more quickly by state officials. The agency has maintained publicly that it remains committed to an ongoing national study of hydraulic fracturing, which it says will draw the definitive line on fracking’s risks to water.

In private conversations, however, high-ranking agency officials acknowledge that fierce pressure from the drilling industry and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill 2013 as well as financial constraints and a delicate policy balance sought by the White House — is squelching their ability to scrutinize not only the effects of oil and gas drilling, but other environmental protections as well.

Last year, the agency’s budget was sliced 17 percent, to below 1998 levels. Sequestration forced further cuts, making research initiatives like the one in Pavillion harder to fund.

One reflection of the intense political spotlight on the agency: In May, Senate Republicans boycotted a vote on President Obama’s nominee to head the EPA, Gina McCarthy, after asking her to answer more than 1,000 questions on regulatory and policy concerns, including energy.

The Pavillion study touched a particular nerve for Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the former ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.

According to correspondence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Inhofe demanded repeated briefings from EPA officials on fracking initiatives and barraged the agency with questions on its expenditures in Pavillion, down to how many dollars it paid a lab to check water samples for a particular contaminant.

He also wrote a letter to the EPA’s top administrator calling a draft report that concluded fracking likely helped pollute Pavillion’s drinking water “unsubstantiated” and pillorying it as part of an “Administration-wide effort to hinder and unnecessarily regulate hydraulic fracturing on the federal level.” He called for the EPA’s inspector general to open an investigation into the agency’s actions related to fracking.

When the EPA announced it would end its research in Pavillion, Inhofe 2013 who’s office did not respond to questions from ProPublica — was quick to applaud.

“EPA thought it had a rock solid case linking groundwater contamination to hydraulic fracturing in Pavillion, WY, but we knew all along that the science was not there,” Inhofe said in a press release issued the day of the announcement.

Others, however, wonder whether a gun-shy EPA is capable of answering the pressing question of whether the nation’s natural gas boom will also bring a wave of environmental harm.

“The EPA has just put a 2018kick me’ sign on it,” John Hanger, a Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania and the former secretary of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, wrote on his blog in response to the EPA news about Pavillion. “Its critics from all quarters will now oblige.”

**

Before fracking became the subject of a high-stakes national debate, federal agencies appeared to be moving aggressively to study whether the drilling technique was connected to mounting complaints of water pollution and health problems near well sites nationwide.

As some states began to strengthen regulations for fracking, the federal government prepared to issue rules for how wells would be fracked on lands it directly controlled.

The EPA also launched prominent scientific studies in Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania, stepping into each case after residents voiced concerns that state environmental agencies had not properly examined problems.

The EPA probe in Pavillion began in 2008 with the aim of determining whether the town’s water was safe to drink. The area was first drilled in 1960 and had been the site of extensive natural gas developmentsince the 1990’s. Starting at about the same time, residents had complained of physical ailments and said their drinking water was black and tasted of chemicals.

The EPA conducted four rounds of sampling, first testing the water from more than 40 homes and later drilling two deep wells to test water from layers of earth that chemicals from farming and old oil and gas waste pits were unlikely to reach.

The sampling revealed oil, methane, arsenic, and metals including copper and vanadium 2013 as well as other compounds –in shallow water wells. It also detected a trace of an obscure compound linked to materials used in fracking, called 2-butoxyethanol phosphate (2-BEp).

The deep-well tests showed benzene, at 50 times the level that is considered safe for people, as well as phenols — another dangerous human carcinogen — acetone, toluene, naphthalene and traces of diesel fuel, which seemed to show that man-made pollutants had found their way deep into the cracks of the earth. In all, EPA detected 13 different compounds in the deep aquifer that it said were often used with hydraulic fracturing processes, including 2-Butoxyethanol, a close relation to the 2-BEp found near the surface.[1]

The agency issued a draft report in 2011 stating that while some of the pollution in the shallow water wells was likely the result of seepage from old waste pits nearby, the array of chemicals found in the deep test wells was “the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field.”

The report triggered a hailstorm of criticism not only from the drilling industry, but from state oil and gas regulators, who disagreed with the EPA’s interpretation of its data. They raised serious questions about the EPA’s methodology and the materials they used, postulating that contaminants found in deep-well samples could have been put there by the agency itself in the testing process.

In response, the EPA agreed to more testing and repeatedly extended the comment period on its study, delaying the peer review process.

Agency officials insist their data was correct, but the EPA’s decision to withdraw from Pavillion means the peer-review process won’t go forward and the findings in the draft report will never become final.

“We stand by what our data said,” an EPA spokesperson told ProPublica after the June 20 announcement, “but I do think there is a difference between data and conclusions.”

Wyoming officials say they will launch another year-long investigation to reach their own conclusions about Pavillion’s water.

Meanwhile, local residents remain suspended in a strange limbo.

While controversy has swirled around the deep well test results — and critics have hailed the agency’s retreat as an admission that it could not defend its science — the shallow well contamination and waste pits have been all but forgotten.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the federal government’s main agency for evaluating health risk from pollution, has advised Pavillion residents not to bathe, cook with, or drink the water flowing from their taps. Some have reported worsening health conditions they suspect are related to the pollution. They are being provided temporary drinking water from the state in large cisterns.

**

The EPA opened its inquiry in Dimock, Pa., after residents provided it with private water tests detecting contaminants and complained that state regulators weren’t doing enough to investigate the cause.

When an elderly woman’s water well exploded on New Year’s morning in 2009, Pennsylvania officials discovered pervasive methane contamination in the well water of 18 homes and linked it to bad casing and cementing in gas company wells. In 2010, they took a series of steps against the drilling company involved, citing it for regulatory violations, barring it from new drilling until it proved its wells would not leak and requiring it to temporarily supply water to affected homes.

But residents said state officials hadn’t investigated whether the drilling was responsible for the chemicals in their water. The EPA stepped in to find out if residents could trust the water to be safe after the drilling company stopped bringing replacement supplies.

Starting in early 2012, federal officials tested water in more than five dozen homes for pollutants, finding hazardous levels of barium, arsenic and magnesium, all compounds that can occur naturally, and minute amounts of other contaminants, including several known to cause cancer.

Still, the concentration of pollutants was not high enough to exceed safe drinking water standards in most of the homes, the EPA found (in five homes, filtering systems were installed to address concerns). Moreover, none of the contaminants 2013 except methane — pointed clearly to drilling. The EPA ended its investigation that July.

Critics pointed to the Dimock investigation as a classic example of the EPA being overly aggressive on fracking and then being proven wrong.

Yet, as in Pavillion, the agency concluded its inquiry without following through on the essential question of whether Dimock residents face an ongoing risk from too much methane, which is not considered unsafe to drink, but can produce fumes that lead to explosions.

The EPA also never addressed whether drilling 2013 and perhaps the pressure of fracking 2013 had contributed to moving methane up through cracks in the earth into their water wells.

As drilling has resumed in Dimock, so have reports of ongoing methane leaks. On June 24, the National Academy of Sciences published a report by Duke University researchers that underscored a link between the methane contamination in water in Dimock and across the Marcellus shale, and the gas wells being drilled deep below.

The gas industry maintains that methane is naturally occurring and, according to a response issued by the industry group Energy In Depth after the release of the Duke research, “there’s still no evidence of hydraulic fracturing fluids migrating from depth to contaminate aquifers.”

**

In opening an inquiry in Parker County, Texas, in late 2010, the EPA examined a question similar to the one it faced in Dimock: Was a driller responsible for methane gas bubbling up in residents’ water wells?

This time, though, tests conducted by a geologist hired by the agency appeared to confirm that the methane in the wells had resulted from drilling, rather than occurring naturally.

“The methane that was coming out of that well 2026 was about as close a match as you are going to find,” said the consultant, Geoffrey Thyne, a geochemist and expert in unconventional oil and gas who has been a member of both the EPA’s Science Advisory Board for hydraulic fracturing, and a National Research Council committee to examine coalbed methane development.

The EPA issued an “imminent and substantial endangerment order” forcing Range Resources, the company it suspected of being responsible, to take immediate action to address the contamination.

But once again, the EPA’s actions ignited an explosive response from the oil and gas industry, and a sharp rebuke from Texas state officials, who insisted that their own data and analysis proved Range had done no harm.

According to the environmental news site Energy Wire, Ed Rendell, the former Governor of Pennsylvania, whose law firm lobbies on behalf of energy companies, also took up Range’s case with then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Internal EPA emails used in the EnergyWire report and also obtained by ProPublica discuss Rendell’s meeting with then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, though Range has denied it employed Rendell to argue on its behalf. Neither the EPA nor Rendell responded to a request for comment on the Parker County case.

In March 2012, the EPA dropped its case against Range without explanation. Its administrator in Texas at the time had been assailed for making comments that seemed to show an anti-industry bias. He subsequently lost his job. An Associated Press investigation found that the EPA abandoned its inquiry after Range threatened not to cooperate with the EPA on its other drilling-related research.

Agency critics see a lack of will, rather than a lack of evidence, in the EPA’s approach in Parker County and elsewhere.

“It would be one thing if these were isolated incidents,” said Alan Septoff, communications director for Earthworks, an environmental group opposed to fracking. “But every time the EPA has come up with something damning, somehow, something magically has occurred to have them walk it back.”

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So where does this leave the EPA’s remaining research into the effects of fracking?

The agency has joined with the Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Interior to study the environmental risks of developing unconventional fuels such as shale gas, but those involved in the collaboration say that little has happened.

That leaves the EPA’s highly anticipated national study on hydraulic fracturing.

When the EPA announced it was ending its research in Pavillion, it pointed to this study as a “major research program.”

“The agency will look to the results of this program as the basis for its scientific conclusions and recommendations on hydraulic fracturing,” it said in a statement issued in partnership with Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead.

That national study will concentrate on five case studies in Pennsylvania, Texas, North Dakota and Colorado.

It will not, however, focus on Pavillion or Parker County or Dimock.

Nor will it devote much attention to places like Sublette County, Wy., where state and federal agencies have found both aquifer contamination and that drilling has caused dangerous levels of emissions and ozone pollution.

It will be a long time before the EPA’s national study can inform the debate over fracking. While the agency has promised a draft by late 2014, it warned last month that no one should expect to read the final version before sometime in 2016, the last full year of President Obama’s term.

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