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EPA Lets Energy Firms Pollute America’s Underground Water Supply
Posted by ProPublica: Abrahm Lustgarten on December 11th, 2012
ProPublica: A primary concern about the proposed Keystone XL [3] oil pipeline is that a leak would contaminate the Ogallala aquifer, one of the nation's most important sources of drinking and irrigation water. InsideClimate News is republishing this investigative story from ProPublica [1] because it highlights another risk to U.S. aquifers: The EPA is allowing some of them to be used as dumping grounds. Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500...
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Oil and gas drillers have injected more than 10 trillion gallons of wastewater into the earth
Posted by ProPublica: Abrahm Lustgarten on September 21st, 2012
ProPublica: On a cold, overcast afternoon in January 2003, two tanker trucks backed up to an injection well site in a pasture outside Rosharon, Texas. There, under a steel shed, they began to unload thousands of gallons of wastewater for burial deep beneath the earth.
The waste -- the byproduct of oil and gas drilling -- was described in regulatory documents as a benign mixture of salt and water. But as the liquid rushed from the trucks, it released a billowing vapor of far more volatile materials, including...
Climate benefits of natural gas may be overstated
Posted by ProPublica: Abrahm Lustgarten on January 25th, 2011
ProPublica: The United States is poised to bet its energy future on natural gas as a clean, plentiful fuel that can supplant coal and oil. But new research by the Environmental Protection Agency--and a growing understanding of the pollution associated with the full "life cycle" of gas production--is casting doubt on the assumption that gas offers a quick and easy solution to climate change. Advocates for natural gas routinely assert that it produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal and is a significant...