[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: EPA Multi Year Study on Hydraulic Fracturing

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Cowles, Macon

I attended the EPA’s Webinar this morning wherein EPA presented a progress report on its national study to understand the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing (HF) on drinking water. At the end of the presentation, during Q&A, I was able to ask a question pertinent to surface water concerns related to HF here in the West.
 
Here is the question, which was read verbatim to the audience:
 
“One thing that appears to be missing from the Technical Roundtables [where specific questions or hypotheses that will be answered in the research] is this: analyzing how the fracturing of rock by HF provides the solvent and a path for
 leakage of acid and heavy metals over a long period of time. We have found the leakage from mines in the West to have a long-term negative impact on stream and river quality, where these mines release very high levels of acid and metals into the watershed. It seems that the fine-grained fracturing of the crust of the earth by HF may create such a long-term problem as well.
 
“Is this long-term impact being studied within the bounds of this?”
 
It turns out that this is NOT part of the research project. The project director responded to my question by saying that the fractured pathways between adjacent wells is being studied, and the pathways opened by HF for the HF chemicals to migrate into groundwater where well casings are inadequate—these are the subject of research. But EPA is not looking at whether HF may cause seeps of contaminated water and metals akin to what we see now coming out of abandoned mine sites, sometimes in the form of brightly colored, toxic water discharges.
 
Obviously, this is an important failure that ought to be addressed.
 
The final report of EPA on the impact of HF to groundwater will not be released until 3Q2014.

Macon Cowles
Boulder City Councilor