Hydraulic fracturing itself may not directly contaminate groundwater supplies, as the oil and gas industry has steadfastly maintained for years, but the wastewater associated with the controversial process can be very hazardous to forest life, at least according to a new study produced by a U.S. Forest Service researcher.

Conducted by researcher Mary Beth Adams and published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, the study is entitled “Land Application of Hydrofracturing Fluids Damages a Deciduous Forest Stand in West Virginia.”

The Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia (USFS photo).

“The explosion of shale gas drilling in the East has the potential to turn large stretches of public lands into lifeless moonscapes,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which reported on Adams’ study last week.

Ruch noted that land disposal of fracking fluids is a common practice and that Adams’ study was conducted with a state permit. “This study suggests that these fluids should be treated as toxic waste,” Ruch added.

In Colorado, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette for several years has been pushing different versions of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which in its latest incarnation would require the national disclosure of chemicals used in the process.

The oil and gas industry maintains it must keep its formulas secret for proprietary reasons, and the process is exempt from federal regulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But state oil and gas regulators in Colorado, as well as state industry representatives, argue that chemical disclosure will not prevent spills from holding pits and pipelines and that those areas of concern should be the real focus of regulatory efforts.

Fracking typically injects water, sand and chemicals thousands of feet below the surface to crack open tight rock and sand formations in order to free up more natural gas. Those results occur far below drinking water wells and groundwater supplies. There is still debate, even among scientists, over whether fracturing itself can cause contamination of groundwater.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., a co-sponsor of the FRAC Act with Colorado Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, on Sunday called for a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe of the natural gas industry after a New York Times article brought up allegations of an “Enron-style Ponzi scheme.”

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.

“Today’s revelations should raise more serious questions about the economics behind the shale gas rush,” said Hinchey, whose New York district is in the Marcellus Shale formation. “We already knew shale gas drillers were misleading the public about hydro-fracking’s environmental risks. Now we are learning that these companies may be cooking the books and using Enron-like tactics to paint a rosy and unrealistic picture for investors, policymakers and local communities.

“This should be a wakeup call for everyone concerned about our energy future and a spark for the SEC to investigate whether shale gas investors and the public have been intentionally misled.”

Hinchey, DeGette and Polis introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act to require the national disclosure of chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process. The bill would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process that was granted by Congress, with the backing of the Bush administration, in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently told the Colorado Independent that the industry should welcome the disclosure of fracking chemicals – they currently resist for proprietary reasons – as a means of protection from future litigation.

And environmental shareholder advocacy groups have been forcing votes on fracking chemical disclosure at companies like Exxon and Chevron that have garnered increasing support among all shareholders.

As the Times story points out, the controversy over fracking and its potential to contaminate groundwater has become part of the economic uncertainty looming over the current gas boom

“There are implications for the environment, too,” the Times wrote. “The technology used to get gas flowing out of the ground — called hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — can require over a million gallons of water per well, and some of that water must be disposed of because it becomes contaminated by the process. If shale gas wells fade faster than expected, energy companies will have to drill more wells or hydrofrack them more often, resulting in more toxic waste.”

ProPublica today posted a story saying SEC rule changes in 2008 made it easier for oil and gas companies to inflate natural gas reserves.

“Investigative reports we have released, peer-reviewed studies of shale gas production, news reports of spills and contamination, and regulatory action in three different agencies have raised numerous concerns about the practice of hydraulic fracturing,” reads the letter (pdf) to Upton, who chairs the committee.

Rep. Diana DeGette

DeGette is also pushing for the removal of a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for fracking granted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Colorado’s senior member of Congress says she has quite a bit of bipartisan support for her efforts, even in the GOP-controlled House.

“We know natural gas is an important economic driver and a significant bridge fuel – particularly for Colorado – but we must ensure the process for extracting it is done safely and responsibly,” DeGette said.

Colorado’s top oil and gas regulator and the head of one of the state’s leading industry lobbying groups both say federal legislation compelling disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing would not have prevented the state’s worst cases of groundwater contamination.

COGCC Director David Neslin

“Has the action of injecting at high pressure these fluids into the hydrocarbon formation, do we have evidence that that has contaminated groundwater? No, we don’t,” said David Neslin, executive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates natural gas drilling for the state.

“But I’ve also made no secret of the fact that, yes, there have been other operational aspects of oil and gas development such as pit leaks, pipeline breaks and in a couple of cases bad cement jobs that have leaked methane, which have impacted the environment.”

U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, are sponsors of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which would require public disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Rep. Diana DeGette

DeGette says it’s necessary to disclose the chemicals and regulate the process under the Safe Drinking Water Act because of public fears and anecdotal evidence that fracking has contaminated groundwater supplies. The process has been exempt fro the Water Act since the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Industry officials, however, say secrecy is necessary for proprietary reasons. They also maintain fracking — which involves the high-pressure injection of mostly water, sand and some chemical additives deep into natural gas wells to force open fissures and free up more gas — occurs so far below the surface that there’s no way the chemicals, some of which are known human carcinogens, are contaminating much shallower groundwater supplies.

“The main question that I contemplate is why the focus on disclosure?” said Tisha Schuller, executive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA). “Disclosure doesn’t actually prevent groundwater contamination.”

Schuller also echoed Neslin’s sentiments in an article posted on the COGA website: “The two most important areas to prevent environmental effects are spills and proper well construction. Both of these areas are regulated by state law.”

But DeGette, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, has helped spearhead two recent congressional probes showing the use of diesel fuel in fracking, as well as up to 29 known human carcinogens.

“We have all of this anecdotal reporting of hydraulic fracturing fluid harming people, but because [companies] don’t have to report what’s in it [under the Safe Drinking Water Act], then we don’t have proof that that’s what’s harming people,” DeGette said, “so I’ve suggested an interim remedy since the industry says there’s nothing wrong with this fluid of reporting it.”

Her bill would only require companies to report the types of chemicals used in fracking, not the proportions. Current Colorado regulations require operators to keep a list of chemicals being used on site at drilling operations and to make it available to state regulators and emergency responders upon request within 24 hours.

“But if the industry thinks, ‘Well, gee, we should regulate these holding ponds and the casings and things like that,’ what that is, that’s my original bill that they really disagree with,” DeGette said. “So they may not want to make that argument, because the issue of disclosure is sort of a medium-range issue.”

The record state fine for contamination of a drinking water well was leveled against Oklahoma-based Williams, the largest natural gas producer on Colorado’s Western Slope. Ned Prather chugged benzene-laced water from his well near Prather Springs, prompting a $423,000 fine for Williams and shattering the old mark of $390,000 against Oxy USA in the Cascade Canyon spill.

“Would requiring the disclosure of the chemicals in the fracking fluid that was used for the well in question have better protected Mr. Prather from impact or prevented a leak of condensate from the pit? No, it wouldn’t have,” Neslin said. “A better lined pit and better monitoring and maintenance of the pit would have reduced the risks in question in the Prather situation and so that’s what we should be focusing on.”

Lined holding pits are used to store fracking fluids for re-use, but they also hold condensate (hydrocarbons naturally present in the formation that come to the surface during drilling) and produced water (water naturally in the formation that’s “produced” along with oil and gas).

The most famous case of groundwater contamination occurred when a badly cemented well bore resulted in methane flowing into West Divide Creek in Garfield County. For years, that case held the record fine amount of more than $370,000 leveled against EnCana.

“The cement job that everybody thinks of is Divide Creek of course, and that didn’t involve contamination by fracking fluids. It involved contamination by methane,” Neslin said. “These are important issues, but we need to deal with them factually and deal with them specifically and deal with them in context.”

Neslin was accused by the nonprofit Checks and Balances Project of misleading the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when he testified last month that hydraulic fracturing has never been found to have contaminated groundwater in Colorado. He later told the project’s reporter that other aspects of drilling – bad cement jobs, pit leaks and pipeline failures – have caused contamination.

“I don’t view it as compartmentalizing,” Neslin said. “I view it as our job as regulators to look at the different aspects of oil and gas development, try to understand the risks associated with those different operations or aspects of development and ensure that those risks are properly regulated and mitigated.”

But Democratic lawmakers, and even some Republicans, continue to make the argument that if hydraulic fracturing is so benign, then the industry should simply disclose the chemicals and no longer hide behind the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the process granted by Congress during the Bush administration in 2005.

“It’s a Catch 22 in that there’s no reporting [of chemicals] and so they say there’s no evidence [of fracking contaminating groundwater], so let’s find out,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Colorado Independent. “It may be that they’re not in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and that they’re going deeper or whatever it happens to be. But if there’s so much natural gas that they want to get at, the public has a right to know.”

Neslin said that so far this year about 75 percent of the new natural gas wells in Colorado have been drilled by companies that are participating in or have committed to participating in the state’s new voluntary disclosure website. He hopes that percentage will only increase over time.

“I know that there have been concerns about the fact that it’s a voluntary website, but if you look on the website, it contains an impressive level of detail and information and in terms of accuracy there are ways that organizations involved can audit the information or have audits of the information done to hopefully provide even greater levels of credibility for that website,” he said.

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A new scientific study conducted by researchers at Duke University for the first time shows drinking water wells closer to natural gas drilling activity contain higher levels of flammable methane gas that the federal government says could require “hazard mitigation” action.

Published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the peer-reviewed study tested 68 drinking water wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling areas in Pennsylvania and New York. On Monday, the award-winning ProPublica website first reported the results of the study, which did not include data on wells in Colorado.

However, owners of drinking water wells on both the Western Slope and Front Range have reported contamination resulting from nearby natural gas wells. In some cases, those property owners have been able to light their tap water on fire.

“Our results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale gas exploration worldwide,” Monday’s study reads.

Debate around gas-drilling impacts on drinking water supplies has raged in Colorado in recent years, with a creek near Silt contaminated by a bad cement job on a natural gas well, a drinking water well contaminated in Wyoming and cases of flammable tap water near Fort Lupton on Colorado’s Front Range famously demonstrated in the documentary “Gasland.”

But Monday’s study, according to ProPublica, for the first time scientifically demonstrates “that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself.”

However, the study did not find the presence of chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process, which involves the high pressure injection of water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep into natural gas wells to fracture tight geological formations and free up more gas. That process has been the subject of congressional probes and pending federal regulatory legislation proposed by Colorado Congress members Diana DeGette and Jared Polis.

While not directly addressing Monday’s study, Colorado top oil and gas drilling regulator in a recent interview told the Colorado Independent that the state Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has been conducting extensive testing of drinking water wells near natural gas drilling activity.

“We do a great deal of groundwater sampling,” said COGCC executive director David Neslin. “We collected groundwater samples from I think about 5,000 water wells in the state. Some of that is large programmatic efforts that we undertake to try and ensure that we have baseline water quality samples before wells are drilled in particular areas or before development proceeds in particular areas.”

So far, so good, Neslin said, especially as it relates to hydraulic fracturing.

“So we’re doing a lot of water well sampling and the data that we’ve collected to date, including data we’ve collected down in La Plata County dating back more than a decade, we’ve had that independently analyzed and that analysis is not reflecting any kind of physically significant change in water chemistry that might suggest there has been an impact from fracking,” Neslin said.

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In a sit-down interview with the Colorado Independent in Denver this week, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette said the natural gas industry should support full public disclosure of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing as a “protection” from potential litigation.

Nancy Pelosi

DeGette’s FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act would compel the industry to disclose chemicals used in the process, which industry officials say must be kept under wraps for proprietary reasons. Known as “fracking,” the process frees up more gas by injecting water, sand and chemicals into natural gas wells deep underground – too deep to contaminate groundwater supplies, industry officials say.

DeGette points to anecdotal evidence of fracking causing groundwater contamination and to recent probes by her congressional committee revealing diesel fuel and up to 29 known cancer-causing human carcinogens are being used in hydraulic fracturing operations. She wants the chemicals disclosed and regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Pelosi chimed in that the industry should want the same thing, if for no other reason than to “protect” itself. That sentiment is echoed by environmental shareholder groups that forced votes at ExxonMobil – the nation’s largest natural gas producer with its acquisition last year of XTO Energy – and other natural gas companies showing some support for the full disclosure of fracking chemicals. The groups view the move as a means of avoiding future litigation.

Similar votes have occurred among shareholders of companies such as Williams, the largest natural gas producer on Colorado’s Western Slope.

Pelosi said the industry should not continue to oppose the release of more information on fracking by arguing there’s been no evidence thus far of fracking contaminating groundwater.

“It’s a catch 22 in that there’s no reporting and so they say there’s no evidence, so let’s find out,” Pelosi said. “And I think it’s a really important issue that deserves a bright spotlight on and it may be that they’re not in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and that they’re going deeper [than groundwater] or whatever it happens to be. If there’s so much natural gas that they want to get at, the public has a right to know [the chemicals].”

Pelosi said fracking has sparked a highly emotional debate around the country that needs to be informed by more study, more information and greater industry transparency.

“Natural gas is a domestic supply that again is plentiful and is not so expensive and I hope not as dangerous to the environment as other fossil fuels. The evidence seems to point that it isn’t,” Pelosi said. “It’s a great transition to when all the renewables are ready and much more operating. And it may be that it’s clean enough to be an answer for a very long time to come. But this [fracking issue] has to be cleared up.”

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Even as U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, continued his crusade last week to step up federal oversight of the natural gas drilling industry, his fellow Western Slope congressman, Republican Scott Tipton of Cortez, proposed a new regulatory impact study (RIS) to tabulate the fiscal impacts of federal regulations on industry.

“I’m exploring ways to cutback regulation, including possible legislation to require a regulatory impact study — an RIS, similar to an EIS for environmental issues — and establish a joint House and Senate committee on regulatory oversight,” Tipton wrote in a guest column for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on Sunday.

Tipton, who represents the vast majority of the Western Slope in his 3rd Congressional District, has also floated legislation to strip the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a significant amount of its regulatory authority.

Polis, whose 2nd Congressional District straddles the Continental Divide and stretches from Boulder west to the western edge of Eagle County, wants to see the EPA regulating certain aspects of natural gas drilling previously exempted from federal oversight.

Polis last week introduced the BREATHE (Bringing Reductions to Energy’s Airborne Toxic Health Effects) Act to remove two natural gas exemptions from the Clean Air Act. Earlier this month, Polis, along with Denver Democrat Diana DeGette, reintroduced the FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, which would eliminate another natural gas drilling exemption from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Today the Colorado Oil & Gas Association — the primary lobbying organization for the industry in Colorado – responded to Polis’s BREATHE Act:

“Our industry supports reasonable environmental regulation,” COGA President and CEO Tisha Conoly Schuller wrote in an email. “It is crucial that we carefully evaluate new regulation to ensure that it is adding additional safeguards and not simply providing impediments to economic development and affordable energy creation.

“We encourage our lawmakers and stakeholders to avoid hyperbole and mischaracterizations of the industry as they engage in a dialogue to strike a balance between appropriate environmental protections and economic development. Nationwide, it is important that we have a balanced conversation about energy development and environmental protection.”

Polis, in a release last week, cited an ozone alert in Pinedale, Wyo., that shut down drilling operations in that area, and he said that increased drilling activity nationwide has led to a spike in emissions that in some areas is having adverse health impacts.

“The sheer number of wells has grown exponentially in recent years, and this growth correlates directly to an impact on regional air quality and resident health in areas of active drilling,” Polis said.

In Garfield County, the second most drilled county in the state, Battlement Mesa residents continue to push for increased county regulation over a proposed drilling plan that could see up to 200 new wells on public areas inside the subdivision. Garfield County is in Tipton’s congressional district.

Paid for by the county and conducted by the Colorado School of Public Health using data collected in large part by Antero Resources, the Denver-based company proposing the Battlement Mesa drilling planning, the health impact assessment (HIA) is open for public comment until April 27.

In its executive summary, the HIA states that the “health of Battlement Mesa residents will most likely be affected by chemical exposures, accidents/emergencies resulting from industry operations, and stress-related community changes.” The HIA goes on to make more than 70 recommendations for mitigating those impacts.

Four of its recommendations, including full public disclosure of all chemicals used during drilling operations, should be implemented prior to the county approving a special use permit for Antero’s drilling plan, according to the HIA. There are another 16 actions recommended as conditions of the county permit approval.

“I feel the HIA team has done an outstanding job of identifying the risks and making recommendations to minimize the negative impacts,” Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens wrote in an email. “It will soon be up to our county commissioners to listen to the public health experts and heed their warnings.”

Antero was seeking a one-month extension to continue to review the second draft of the HIA, which has already been rewritten once to address industry concerns, and the commissioners granted that request in a meeting this afternoon.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis on Thursday followed up his reintroduction this week of the FRAC Act — which would tighten federal regulation of natural gas drilling’s impacts to water quality — with the BREATHE Act, a bill that would remove two exemptions for gas drilling under the Clean Air Act.

Rep. Jared Polis

But closer to home, Garfield County – second only to Weld County in terms of Colorado drilling activity – has been the scene of intense public debate about air quality standards. Air quality is a major focus of an ongoing health impact assessment paid for by the county and in many ways colors the debate over major new drilling proposals in and around subdivisions in Silt and Battlement Mesa.

Polis, a Boulder Democrat, has taken up the cause of better regulating natural gas drilling since being elected in 2008. His 2nd Congressional District doesn’t include much drilling – in fact it ends at the eastern edge of the Garfield County gas patch. But some Republicans in rural areas of Polis’ district would like to join Republican Scott Tipton’s 3rd Congressional District, which does include Garfield County and an enormous amount of energy extraction activity on the Western Slope.

Tipton, since beating out Democrat John Salazar in last year’s midterm election, has been relentlessly trying to roll back the policies of Salazar’s brother Ken – a former Colorado senator who now heads up the Obama administration’s Department of the Interior. Tipton also has joined with other Colorado Republicans in seeking to reduce the overall influence and regulatory authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Polis on Thursday joined with Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., whose district is in the midst of a major natural gas boom, and Rush Holt, D-N.J., to introduce the BREATHE (Bringing Reductions to Energy’s Airborne Toxic Health Effects) Act, which would close two gas drilling exemptions under the Clean Air Act.

“The sheer number of wells has grown exponentially in recent years, and this growth correlates directly to an impact on regional air quality and resident health in areas of active drilling,” Polis said in a release.

“Surely we wouldn’t assume that as long as one car meets emissions standards, 20,000 cars wouldn’t affect air quality. Unfortunately, this exact false logic is currently being applied to oil and gas drilling and it’s causing noticeable health impacts. It’s simply common sense to ensure that we monitor extremely dangerous emissions, equip communities in heavy drilling areas with the tools they need to stay safe, and reverse these exemptions to the Clean Air Act.”

Natural gas production in the United States is up 20 percent over the last six years, and that statistic is expected to increase as the industry successfully positions itself as a cleaner-burning alternative to coal. In Colorado, that’s meant major legislation that compelled Xcel Energy to convert several aging coal-fired power plants over to natural gas, which burns about 50 percent cleaner than coal.

But natural gas comes with its own set of problems, according to conservationists, and therefore it needs to be regulated more tightly at the state and federal level.

Like the FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act — which would remove an exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act granted natural gas drilling under the Bush administration – the BREATHE Act targets two Clean Air Act exemptions.

According to a release from Polis, the bill specifically:

• Closes the NESHAP exemption: While some emissions requirements exist for individual wells, oil and gas drilling is exempted from aggregated “major source” requirements under the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP).
• In practical terms, this would prompt the industry to follow NESHAP’s required use of best available and currently used emissions control technology —technology that the best actors of the industry are already using and which has already proven to be profitable for the oil and gas industry in many instances.
• Closes the Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) exemption: Hydrogen Sulfide, emitted from oil and gas operations, is a highly toxic gas which can lead to neurological impairment or even death and is currently exempt from regulation as a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Originally included in the Clean Air Act’s list of hazardous air pollutants, H2S was removed with industry support.

Colorado Oil and Gas Association officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, have once again introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (FRAC Act) to regain federal regulatory authority over the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

DeGette and Polis unsuccessfully ran the legislation last session, seeking to close the so-called “Halliburton Loophole” named for the oil and gas services company previously headed up by former Vice President Dick Cheney. It was during the Bush-Cheney administration in 2005 that Congress granted hydraulic fracturing an exemption from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

A Bush administration U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official in charge of water quality issues recently told the ProPublica website that an EPA study used to justify the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption should not have been used and that the current policy is too lenient in regulating fracking operations.

This is DeGette’s third crack at removing the exemption and requiring oil and gas companies to reveal exactly what chemicals they’re injecting under extremely high pressure, along with mostly water and sand, deep into natural gas wells to fracture tight geological formations and free up more gas.

DeGette, Polis and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., — another sponsor of the FRAC Act — recently unveiled a congressional investigation that found oil and gas companies have been using diesel fuel in the fracking process, which many fear is contaminating groundwater supplies. A New York Times investigation of fracking found wastewater treatment facilities are being overwhelmed with sometimes radioactive fracking fluids.

“As we recognize the need for energy independence and alternative sources to power our nation, natural gas is an important economic driver and a critical bridge fuel,” DeGette said in a release.

“However, it is incumbent upon us to ensure the process for extracting natural gas from our land is done safely and responsibly. The FRAC Act takes necessary but reasonable steps to ensure our nation’s drinking water is protected, and that as fracking operations continue to expand, communities can be assured that the economic benefits of natural gas are not coming at the expense of the health of their families.”

State regulators who oversee oil and gas drilling in Colorado have said the FRAC Act is unnecessary and could create another layer of regulation that could actually spread the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission staff too thin.

Oil and gas industry officials have consistently pointed to a lack of evidence that fracking contaminates groundwater or poses a public health threat, but opponents of the practice say that’s because chemical ingredients are not being revealed so it’s difficult for regulators to know what to test for.

“There is a growing discrepancy between the natural gas industry’s claim that nothing ever goes wrong and the drumbeat of investigations and personal tragedies which demonstrate a very different reality,” Polis said in a release.

“The FRAC Act is a simple, common-sense way to answer the serious concerns that accompany the rapid growth of drilling across the country. Our bill restores a basic, national safety-net that will ensure transparency within the industry and safeguard our communities. If there is truly nothing to worry about, then this bill will lay the public’s concern to rest through science and sunlight.”

The House bill was introduced along with the Senate version, which is sponsored by Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

According to today’s joint release by DeGette, Hinchey and Polis, the FRAC Act would specifically:

• Require disclosure of the chemical constituents used in the fracturing process, but not the proprietary chemical formula.
• The proprietary chemical formulas are protected under our bill – much like the way Coca-Cola must reveal the ingredients of Coke, but not their secret formula; oil and gas companies would have to reveal the chemicals but not the specific formula.
• Disclosure would be to the state, or to EPA, but only if EPA has primary enforcement responsibility in the state. The disclosures would then be made available to the public online.
• This bill does include an emergency provision that requires these proprietary chemical formulas to be disclosed to a treating physician, the State, or EPA in emergency situations where the information is needed to provide medical treatment.
• Repeal a provision added to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempting the industry from complying with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), one of our landmark environmental and public health protection statutes.
• Most states have primacy over these types of wells, and the intent of this Act is to allow states to ensure that our drinking water is safe. EPA would set the standard, but a state would be able to incorporate hydraulic fracturing into the existing permitting process for each well, and so this would not require any new permitting process.

Natural gas hydraulic fracturing took an alarming star turn in the national media this weekend, spurring lawmakers to call again on their colleagues to pass the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, a bill first introduced by Colorado lawmakers Diana DeGette and Jared Polis in 2009. An Academy award-nominated documentary and a Sunday New York Times expose underlined the chemical and radioactive hazards “fracking” poses to drinking water.

Over the last decade, gas companies have turned increasingly to fracking, a process in which water and sand and chemicals are injected under high pressure into deep wells to break up sandstone formations and free up previously inaccessible gas. The identity of the chemical ingredients in fracking fluid have so far been shielded by energy company arguments that the recipes are proprietary, a kind of secret sauce they have the right to keep from competitors.

As government and media reports have made clear, however, the fracking-fluid chemicals pose only a part of the environmental risks posed by the process. Hydro-fracturing loosens more than gas from the earth. It also frees up high concentrations of salt and toxic minerals and radioactivity, all of which rise to the surface in the millions of gallons of fracking waste-water and can seep into ground-water sources.

Although the documentary Gasland didn’t win an award Sunday night, it featured toxic and flammable tap water from Weld and Garfield Counties in Colorado, where activists and property owners have been warning about the negative effects of fracking for years. And the New York Times report explained that taps that pour out gas and chemicals may well be pouring out unacceptable levels of radioactivity, too.

“The industry keeps telling everyone that nothing is wrong, but more and more investigations like the ones conducted by The New York Times and Congressional investigators show a very different reality,” Rep. Polis told the Colorado Independent in an email. “This is exactly why we need the FRAC Act, which requires basic common sense safeguards, not a patchwork of laws or lack thereof from state to state. We need to… keep science and safety at the forefront of our nation’s energy policy.  Hopefully this investigation will give further credence to the need for reform and the real troubles that can accompany gas drilling, and will further support action by the EPA and Congress regarding violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

Reporters for the New York Times found that drilling companies were sending billions of gallons of waste-water to sewage treatment plants ill-equipped to remove toxic fracking materials. It also found that sewage plants in at least three states were releasing inadequately treated fracking water into rivers, lakes and streams, and that nearly 200 fracking wells were producing waste-water that contained hundreds and even a thousand times the amount of radioactive material considered acceptable according to water safety standards.

In January Polis and DeGette called on the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether oil and gas service companies violated the Safe Drinking Water Act by using more than 32 million gallons of diesel fuel in their fracking operations.

DeGette and Polis were responding to an investigation conducted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which found that drilling companies used 32.2 million gallons of diesel fuel or fluids containing diesel fuel in fracking operations in 19 state between 2005 and 2009. The companies admitted using diesel fuel in testimony to the committee. The committee found that 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel had been used in Colorado fracking operations.

Fracking was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act under the Energy Policy Act passed by the Bush administration in 2005. The exemption did not cover cases where fracking included the use of diesel fuel.
 
Oil and gas companies and sympathetic politicians have fought against efforts to further regulate fracking. State regulators in Colorado at least have also come out against the need for federal oversight.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), for example, the primary state regulator of oil and gas drilling, has long maintained the FRAC Act is unnecessary because fracking is covered by state rules.

Yet the COGCC interactions with the Energy Committee that investigated diesel-fuel fracking inspire little confidence.

“In some instances, the officials we contacted expressed doubt that companies still used diesel as a hydraulic fracturing fluid or additive or were unaware of continued diesel fuel use,” the Energy committee wrote, after detailing how oil and gas companies admitted to using diesel fuel– including the million-plus gallons used in Colorado.

“An engineer from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), for example, said that diesel is ‘rarely used’ and said he knew of only one time diesel fuel was used in hydraulic fracturing in Colorado.”

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