EPA Gets a Congressional Grilling Over Recent Fracking Report

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

February 3, 2012 | 12:03 PM

Kris Connor / Getty Images

Gasland director Josh Fox (R) with actor Mark Ruffalo on Capitol Hill last February.

Amidst all the hoopla and press coverage of Gasland director Josh Fox getting ejected from a Congressional hearing this week, an actual hearing did take place. The House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment took testimony Wednesday on the EPA’s Pavilion, Wyo. report, which made a “likely” link between fracking and drinking water contamination. The controversial report is the first of its kind to make that assertion. Maryland Republican Andy Harris led the hearing, which became contentious. High Country News reported on the back-and-forth between the EPA officials and industry representatives.

The hearing, led by Andy Harris, subcommittee chairman and Maryland Republican, questioned the scientific integrity of a draft report on fracking-caused groundwater contamination released by the Environmental Protection Agency Dec. 8. Since its release, the State of Wyoming and industry representatives have attacked the draft report. They don’t like its conclusions: that fracking in the area around Pavillion, Wyo. was likely the cause of ground water pollution in the area.
Testimony from the study’s opponents attacked those results.
“The EPA’s own data contained within [the report] doesn’t support the conclusions presented up front,” said Kathleen Sgamma, an industry representative from the Western Energy Alliance, sitting on the witness panel. “We are left wondering why the EPA would jump to conclusions, proceeding without State input or peer review.”

Read more about Wednesday’s testimony from the High Country News here. The House subcommittee on Energy and Environment live streams its hearings, and posts the archives online. But several attempts to view them on this computer were unsuccessful.