WASHINGTON–Maryland is ready to drill into 100,000 acres in the western part of the state to collect the natural gas beneath, but concerns of contaminated groundwater resulting from hydraulic fracturing must be settled first.
Energy Information Agency/DOE
The large Marcellus formation stretches across several states and provides natural gas to countless wells.
While mindful of the potential benefits, “we are alert to the potential adverse impact on health and the environment,” said Maryland Secretary of Environment Robert Summers. Until those concerns are resolved, no drilling permits would be approved, he said.
Policymakers, industry experts and an Environmental Protection Agency official agreed Wednesday at a hearing on Capitol Hill that there are no documented cases of groundwater contamination as a result of hydraulic fracturing—referred to as “fracking”—but what should be done with that information is a matter of debate.
An EPA study commissioned by Congress last year is meant to research that very contamination worry. Due to be completed at the end of 2012, it’s intended to determine if there are factors of hazard and exposure, so that a risk analysis can then be made, said EPA Assistant Administrator Paul Anastas.
But it’s a “waste of taxpayer’s money,” said chairman Ralph Hall, R-Texas, and other House members. Elizabeth Jones, commissioner of the Texas Railroad Commission, said the EPA study was duplicative research, and that there were “more reports than you can shake a stick at.”
The issue at the core of both the congressional hearing and the EPA’s study is the potential contamination of drinking water by a drilling process that injects often-toxic fluids thousands of feet underground as a way to access abundant shale gas reservoirs. Concerns from the public and in the media have appeared for more than a year, where contamination is thought to occur though above ground spills of the fluid, as well as deep underground where some worry gas and the drilling fluid could leak into water reservoirs.
But when pressed to give examples of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing both Anastas and Summers agreed that there were none documented.
Even without documented cases, Anastas said the EPA had to take seriously recent reports that have expressed worry about contamination. “The American people expect us to ask tough questions, and to answer those tough questions in a process that preserves scientific integrity,” and the EPA must conduct the scientific study before they can say definitively that there is no risk of groundwater contamination, he said.
In 2004, the EPA concluded that hydraulic fracturing used in drilling into a different classification of gas reservoir did not pose a threat to groundwater, but last year Congress asked the agency was to conduct this second study, which will specifically look into the relationship between water reservoirs and hydraulic fracturing, as a part of approving its budget
During the next year, the Maryland Department of Environment will create a standard of “best practices” for drilling and fracking, and in a written statement, Summers wrote that the state will not begin issuing drilling permits until that standard is established.