EPA Weighs In On New York Fracking Regulations

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

January 13, 2012 | 11:29 AM

The Environmental Protection Agency appears to have a much different relationship with New York than it does with Pennsylvania.
A few days after the EPA was on the receiving end of yet another critical letter from Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer, the federal agency offered suggestions to the department developing new hydraulic fracturing regulations in the Empire State.
From the AP:

ALBANY, N.Y. — The Environmental Protection Agency says New York regulators should set limits for radioactive materials in gas-drilling wastewater sent to public treatment plants before allowing any hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells in the state.

The federal agency made that suggestion and others related to radiation from gas-drilling activities in 44 pages of comments submitted Wednesday night on the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s proposed rules for high-volume hydraulic fracturing.