As I said: Natural Gas is NOT Clean

Clean Natural Gas? Not in My Backyard

More truth telling by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

In a report to be issued tomorrow, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer cites two dozen cases across the country where drilling pollution appears to pose a threat to public health. Most of those cases were originally documented [1] in a series of stories by ProPublica.

And here’s the reason we can’t PROVE–to industry satisfaction–the source of water contamination:

Scientists have had difficulty measuring any threat because they can’t trace the source of pollution without knowing the names of the chemicals used in fracturing.

We don’t know the chemicals used because In 2005, at the urging of Dick Cheney, former Halliburton CEO, Congress exempt fracing from the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In 2001, Cheney’s energy task force report “touted” benefits and ignored consequences. His office was “involved in discussions about how fracturing should be portrayed in the [EPA] report.” Halliburton earns about $1.5 BILLION annually from hydraulic fracturing. (Ibid)

H.R. 7231 will reinstate basic federal standards for hydraulic fracturing under the SDWA and enable the EPA to protect our drinking water from oil and gas pollution.