Which StateImpact Posts Drew The Most Comments In 2011?

All week, we’ve been highlighting the year’s most popular StateImpact posts. Today, we’re focusing on the stories and reports that generated the most buzz from our readers.
Not surprisingly, the posts with the most comments covered controversial topics: Dimock’s water well woes, the Delaware River Basin Commission’s decision to delay a vote on new fracking regulations, and the Clean Water Act loophole authored by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2005.
How Fracking Causes Earthquakes, But Not The One In Virginia. Within hours of August’s Virginia earthquake, people began speculating about whether or not hydraulic fracturing played a role in the event. StateImpact talked to a geologist, who said injections of fracking fluid deep underground has led to low-level tremors in the past, but wouldn’t be able to produce a quake felt throughout the entire east coast. An installment in our “Burning Questions” series elaborated on the question:

Some stud­ies look­ing at the earth­quake con­nec­tion to frack­ing are ongo­ing. Sci­en­tists with the British Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey are study­ing the link between small earth­quakes near Back­pool, Eng­land, and frack­ing. All drilling in the area was haltedafter two earth­quakes occurred about a month apart last spring. Results from that inves­ti­ga­tion should be released at the end of October.
Just last week, Arkansas reg­u­la­tors banned the use of deep injec­tion wells to store waste­water after they found the activ­ity caused a rise in small earth­quakes last win­ter. The Arkansas Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey told the AP last July that seis­mic activ­ity decreased dra­mat­i­cally once the wells were shut down. The Arkansas Oil and Gas Com­mis­sion has not banned frack­ing, only the use of wells to dis­pose of wastewater.

The “Burning Questions” series provided the next burst of comments, on our post recapping the first three topics we addressed: how much water is used during fracking, and where it comes from; baseline well testing; and the earthquake issue.
When the Delaware River Basin Commission delayed a vote on new drilling regulations,  readers debated whether the move was a responsible environmental decision, or a concession to politics and anti-drilling hysteria.
Earlier this month, anti-drilling protestors converged on Dimock, Susquehanna County, to speak out against the Department of Environmental Protection’s decision to let Cabot Oil and Gas stop delivering water to residents with methane in their water wells. A group of counter-protesters held an event, too, making the case the media has over-hyped the township’s water problems. That led to a robust discussion of who was funding the “Enough Is Enough” group, and the overall quality of Dimock’s drinking water.
Finally, StateImpact’s look at the 2005 Clean Water Act and its impact on federal fracking regulation drew more comments than any other post this year. That’s not surprising, given how much attention has been paid to the so-called “Halliburton Loophole.” Our verdict: the legislation’s reputation among drilling opponents isn’t fully deserved, as it’s just one of several  laws exempting natural gas drilling from complete federal oversight:

And it’s not just the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drink­ing Water Act that exempt the oil and gas indus­try. The Clean Air Act, passed by Con­gress in 1970, exempts oil and gas wells from aggre­ga­tion. That means, each well site is con­sid­ered an indi­vid­ual source of pol­lu­tants, and does not take into account all of the well sites in a spe­cific area.
When it comes to the han­dling of waste water, or frack water, that too is exempt from a fed­eral statute called the Resource Con­ser­va­tion and Recov­ery Act. The 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 being trans­ported, it is not con­sid­ered haz­ardous. This also applies to drilling mud. That’s why trucks car­ry­ing waste water, which con­tains high lev­els of salts, toxic chem­i­cals, as well as radioac­tive mate­r­ial, may be labeled “resid­ual waste.”

 

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