NEPA Congressman Introduces Bill to Close Gas Loophole

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.

July 26, 2013 | 4:49 PM

$A truck delivers drilling waste water to a frack water recycling plant in Susquehanna County$

Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania

A truck delivers drilling waste water to a frack water recycling plant in Susquehanna County

U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat from Lackawanna County, has introduced a bill to end an oil and gas exemption to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which was passed back in 1976 establishes standards for proper disposal of hazardous waste. RCRA tracks industrial wastes from “cradle to grave.” But when it comes to the oil and gas industry, as long as the waste water is on the drill site, or in transit, it is not considered hazardous. This also applies to drilling mud.

“Under current federal law, oil and gas companies do not even have to test their waste to see if it is toxic,” said Cartwright in a press release, “leaving us with no way of knowing what is being disposed of and how it is being treated. It is time oil and gas companies comply with existing minimum standards and oversight.”

With no federal oversight of the waste, regulation is left to the states. Cartwright says that has yielded mixed results, and thinks there needs to be one federal standard. The “Closing Loopholes and Ending Arbitrary and Needless Evasion of Regulations” Act, or CLEANER, would eliminate the oil and gas exemption. But the bill may have a tough time getting through the Republican controlled House.