The New York Times has an important story on natural gas fracking and the longstanding lack of government regulation over the industry. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times article:
“It was like the science didn’t matter,” Carla Greathouse, the author of the [1987 E.P.A.] study [of oil and gas drilling waste], said in a recent interview. “The industry was going to get what it wanted, and we were not supposed to stand in the way.”
E.P.A. officials told her, she said, that her findings were altered because of pressure from the Office of Legal Counsel of the White House under Ronald Reagan. A spokesman for the E.P.A. declined to comment.
Ms. Greathouse’s experience was not an isolated case. More than a quarter century of efforts by some lawmakers and regulators to force the federal government to police the industry better have been thwarted, as E.P.A. studies have been repeatedly narrowed in scope, and important findings have been removed.
This report in the New York Times follows many others in recent months that point to the same conclusion about natural gas "fracking." For instance, the Energy Collective recently wrote that "fracked gas is only cheap because extractors do not clean up after themselves." Then there's also the Oscar-nominated film Gasland, which finds "a trail of secrets, lies and contamination" across the country, including a town in Pennsylvania where "residents are able to light their drinking water on fire." Given all this, perhaps it's time to stop "fracking" and to start focusing on what really works: clean, safe, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Or would that be too simple?
