EPA Advisors Contradict Themselves on Landmark Fracking Study
Wednesday January 27, 2016
The hydraulic fracturing panel of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board (SAB) recently released its draft recommendations on EPA’s landmark draft assessment of hydraulic fracturing and groundwater. In the document, the SAB suggests that the agency change the language of its primary finding that hydraulic fracturing has “not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources” as well as a number of its top line findings. But not once in the over-100 page document, does SAB provide any evidence to support its request.
Even more confounding is that the SAB seems to contradict itself at every turn, which raises a lot of questions about how thorough of a review SAB actually did.
With the teleconference on the SAB’s draft recommendations coming up early next week, Energy In Depth has laid out the top six contradictions and inconsistencies we found in the text:
#1: Using ‘outliers’ to demand ‘systemic’ changes
What’s particularly revealing is a comment by one SAB member to Bloomberg:
“‘It’s important to characterize and discuss the frequency and severity of outliers that have occurred,’ said panelist Katherine Bennett Ensor, chairwoman of the Rice University Department of Statistics.” (emphasis added)
In other words, SAB is asking EPA to alter scientific findings based on what they admit are “outliers.” By definition, an “outlier” is neither widespread nor systemic.
#2: Admit ‘infrequent’ impacts, yet want EPA’s similar finding changed
The SAB states,
“Page ES-6, lines 20-21: ‘The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to...