News

The  National Association of Royalty Owners recently called upon the University of Cincinnati (UC) to publish its recent study on fracking and groundwater properly, in a peer-reviewed public journal, something the authors have confirmed is underway.

While this news may appear promising, the reality is the study’s data, which showed “no evidence for natural gas contamination” and was paid for by activists and taxpayers, was in fact concluded almost a year ago. EID recently discovered that another UC taxpayer funded fracking study only took three months to publish! So why then is this latest study still unpublished?

One possibility is that some of the funders—those with ties to the anti-fracking movement who initially stalled the release of the results—have asked for more time to prepare to dispute the data. While this is speculation, it is a fact that anti-fracking groups are trying to discredit the data to achieve their “Keep It in the Ground” aims, as EID recently caught on film. Interestingly enough, we have also discovered that the University of Cincinnati has been lending its name to a host of anti-fracking events, and will participate in an upcoming event hosted by the Southeast Ohio Alliance to Save Our Water from Fracking.

Let’s take a look at some of the latest revelations.

UC Taxpayer Funded Fracking Air Study Published in Less than Year

In January 2014, UC announced a new study to determine air quality impacts of oil and natural gas. UC’s Center for Environmental Genetics (CEG) received federal tax dollars for this study in the form of a grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) for $47,910. The results of that study were made available a year later (January 2015) at a meeting hosted by the anti-fracking activist Carroll Concerned Citizens. Three months later (March 2015), UC announced that the View Full Article